Hospicing Modernity Part III: Dreams as Metabolism
One of the most difficult things to explain about…Indigenous worldviews is the fact that the ancestors are also an active part of the metabolic reality. Just as tangible as the plants that grow in the fields, the ancestors who have gone before and are yet to come are integral to the ecology…Ancestors are also special because they can intervene across metabolic layers and negotiate on our behalf. These negotiations can include anything from how diseases are healed, and the amount of rain that will secure the crops, and the good fortune of businesses, to the trajectory of our livelihoods…In this worldview, misfortunes are caused by blockages in the flows of reciprocity of the metabolism and if this is not rectified right away more misfortune of one type or another will follow.
- Vanessa Andreotti, Hospicing Modernity, p. 225
In my experience, dreams are also an active part of the metabolic reality. Stephanie and I have both written about dreams as digestion, dreams as metabolism.
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My ancestors from the northern part of the Korean peninsula appeared to me at the end of May. They helped to metabolize the imperialist amnesia I was experiencing, reminding me that my motherland is the entire peninsula of Korea. US imperialism conditioned me to claim the Republic of Korea, also known as South Korea, as my home-country, and to repudiate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea. From that day onward, I embrace all of Korea as the land that continues to raise me.
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At the end of September, I felt called to hold a healing ceremony for my maternal great-grandmother who lived in North Korea. I wasn’t sure if this message that came through was something that felt true or if it was a story I was creating. Initially, I wrote down everything I would need for the ceremony and looked up the low-tide schedule for the Salish Sea, a body of water I have developed a relationship with since I arrived in Seattle. For the next several days, doubt, certainty, absurdity, and resolve rattled around inside me. Days before the tentative date of the ceremony, I had a dream:
The ocean was black tar, with big rolling waves coming towards the shore. Frightened, I started to run away. When I looked back, I noticed a new wave train of clear blue water trailing the dark and ominous waves.
When I awoke, I knew the ceremony was meant to take place at the Salish Sea.
Two Saturdays ago, just as the sun rose, I walked to the edge of the low tide and performed the ceremony, just as I had rehearsed it in my mind; it felt natural and true.
[Image of the ceremony I felt called to perform on behalf of my maternal great grandmother, held by our Mother Water]
My dream metabolized my thoughts stuck in an endless loop of muddied thinking into a clarity. The clarity led me to perform a ceremony, with the support of my well ancestors and our nonhuman kin (white chrysanthemums, red roses, mugwort, fire, water, minerals, stones, crustaceans, herons, gulls, crows, sun, air, mountains, seaweed), to metabolize the pain my great grandmother was imprisoned by into relief.
The omnidirectional coordination of metabolic processes across the seen and unseen is intergenerational healing for my suffering ancestors and for the suffering my family is enduring in the present-day. Our collective healing across metabolic layers flows into healing thoughts and actions my family contributes out into the world, guided by our healed and benevolent ancestors.
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The demilitarized zone (DMZ) arose from an unsanctimonious need for a “convenient dividing line” in which “two U.S. young defense officials…Charles Bonesteel and Dean Rusk, later secretary of state, tore a page from the National Geographic and literally drew a line across the 38th parallel, giving north of it to the Soviets, and the U.S. keeping south of it and Seoul.” “The Korean War, which never actually ended, and Israel’s war on the Palestinians have produced two of the longest-running occupations in the world today.”
The 38th parallel symbolizes a metabolic blockage.
In [the Indigenous] worldview, misfortunes are caused by blockages in the flows of reciprocity of the metabolism and if this is not rectified right away more misfortune of one type or another will follow.
The grave misfortunes that continue to arise from both occupations are fueling more violent misfortunes. However, there is growing momentum for rectifying the blockages in the flows of reciprocity evidenced by the global solidarity that continues to amass for Palestine and ending the Korean War.
Korea Peace Now! “[originally] launched as a global campaign in March 2019 by four women’s peace groups — Women Cross DMZ, the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and the Korean Women’s Movement for Peace.” Leymah Gbowee, peace activist who received a message in a dream to organize the women’s non-violent peace movement in Liberia, was one of 30 women brought together to cross the DMZ to raise awareness about the impact of the unresolved Korean War. Leymah Gbowee’s dream metabolized Liberia towards liberation that later inspired Women Cross DMZ; one metabolic process nurtured another. The documentary Crossings captures this courageous and sacred event that was sparked in 2013 and continues to generate healing metabolic processes today.
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Our ancestors and our dreams are mysterious interrelated metabolic processes for the personal, interpersonal, and systemic scales, and in the seen and unseen realms.
How have your dreams and your ancestors supported you in metabolizing?
How have you supported your ancestors in metabolizing blockages?