What a columnist has learned about life around First Nations campfires, small town coffee tables, and the everyday
Stoney Nakoda Chief Walking Buffalo, renowned for his global initiatives in reconciliation and goodwill, is one of six honoured on Cochrane’s lamppost banners for their contribution to the foothills community’s heritage.
Back in the early 1980s, I did my PhD studies in world wisdom traditions, with a special focus on the Hebrew Wisdom Literature of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and many of the Psalms. But the more I read from the dusty tomes on university library shelves about the wisdom traditions of antiquity, the more I came to appreciate the living wisdom traditions I’d been exposed to around Stoney Nakoda First Nation campfires, and more recently, around good old-fashioned tables in small-town Alberta cafes with mentors I’ve come to refer to as “my coffee companions.”
At the heart of that wisdom, one quality has stood out: the importance of a listening heart.
In fact, that’s really what prompted me to begin writing newspaper columns 27 years ago in the Western Catholic Reporter, a delightful conversation I’ve continued in word and image on the pages of the Cochrane Eagle since 2001. The title of my weekly columns? “Coffee with Warren.”
Let me begin with my Stoney Nakoda experience.
The Stoney Nakoda First Nation of southern Alberta is centred in Morley, nestled in the Bow River Valley between Cochrane and the foot of the Rockies. Over the half-century I’ve been associated with this community, one value for living has stood out above all others: ahopabi, “respect.” This is a respect deeply rooted in the listening heart.
When I first arrived in Stoney Country in 1965 as a consultant in linguistics, Scripture translation and cross-cultural communication, I naively assumed I had much to say – and weren’t my hosts fortunate to listen to me! I soon learned it was really the other way around: Stoney Nakoda elders had much to say to me, and I was the fortunate one if indeed I listened!
Respectful silence is key to this kind of listening I was observing in the Stoney way. It’s never about chomping at the bit for the next pause in a conversation so I could make my own point. It’s about the greater listening. And that kind of listening isn’t just about hearing human words; it’s at least as much about listening to the wordless wisdom around us, and particularly to Nature. As one of my mentors, the late George McLean, better known as “Chief Walking Buffalo” (Tatâga Mânî in the Stoney Nakoda language), loved to say, it’s about lifelong learning in “nature’s university.”
Stoney Nakoda artist Roland Rollinmud, of Morley, celebrates his late grandfather John Hunter’s legacy of learning in this 36 x 48-inch oil-on-canvas, “The Spirit of the Bow and Arrow.”
Another of my Stoney Nakoda mentors, Morley artist and elder Roland Rollinmud, has understood well this call to respect for nature’s university, a value he learned both from Walking Buffalo and from his grandfather, John Hunter, Ûbi-thka Îyodâge, “Sitting Eagle.” He paid tribute to his grandfather’s legacy in a 36 x 48 inch oil-on-canvas titled, “The Spirit of the Bow and Arrow.”
For both Walking Buffalo and Roland Rollinmud, it’s ultimately about discerning the voice of the Creator in all of life.
It was very much the influence of these elders that led me to pursue graduate studies in Wisdom Traditions. After all, wasn’t a summons to this kind of deeper listening the turning point in the story of the bewildered, many-worded sufferer Job, to whom God finally says: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2), and to whom Job responds: “I have uttered what I did not understand, and things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…. Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 6)?
The lessons of Stoney Nakoda elders also helped me appreciate the words of Israel’s wise King Solomon upon his ascent to the throne. God appeared to him in a dream and asked what he’d like God to give him. In view of the enormous responsibility that he knew had been placed on him as leader of God’s covenant people, Solomon responded, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.” (1 Kings 3:3-14). The phrase “an understanding mind” in the Hebrew text is lev shome’a, literally, “a listening heart.”
Cappuccino artist adds heart to coffee conversation at The Gentry Espresso Bar in Cochrane.
It is this request from Solomon for “a listening heart” that I’ve adopted as an expression of what I’ve learned in the Stoney way, and in what I’m continuing to learn around café coffee tables, and in life as a whole – as a guiding light for my columns, and hopefully, for my life.
For my New Year’s resolution for 2012, I pledged to my readers, with God’s help and theirs, to live my life with new ears of a listening heart characterized by CVC: Clarity, Verity and Charity. Twelve months later, I reported back to my readers about three lessons I’d learned that year.
Lesson One: the importance of “a heart that listens and communicates accurately, sincerely and compassionately about views not always in agreement with my own.” I noted my involvements in a religiously diverse society as one of the directors of the Calgary Council of Christians and Jews, as well as of a monthly dialogue among Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Baha’i leaders.
The lesson I learned through those encounters was that, though our religious traditions differ, our intention is to grow in a spirit of humility, civility and respect for each other based on our common humanity and our desire to seek the greater good of all.
Lesson Two: the importance of “a heart that listens to and discerns affirmingly the beauty in each other.” This is all about affirming what is truly beautiful in the people around us, so as to create “a positive ripple effect,” according to my coffee companion Lori Craig. Lori and I are co-authors of an upcoming book on the theme of how we can be used as fans to rekindle the sometimes-barely-glowing embers in each other’s souls.
When we so affirm what is good and true and beautiful in each other, Lori adds, “strong ripples of positive energy and love” extend outward, starting with ourselves and then benefitting “everyone in my world.”
This was the hoarfrost scene at St. Mary’s Sacred Garden on the weekend of Dec. 1, 2012. The crystalline fairyland, though short-lived, provided a treasured listening-heart experience.
Lesson Three: the importance of “a heart that listens to and celebrates the beauty that is all around us in those serendipitous moments too often taken for granted.” I illustrated this lesson with a photo I’d taken at St. Mary’s Church, Cochrane, one December morning when we here in the Bow Valley awoke to a crystalline fairyland of hoarfrost.
I recently had a similar encounter with unexpected beauty in a knot in the wooden floor of Cochrane Coffee Traders Café, which offered a lesson in recognizing the overlooked beauty in each other.
The knot was regal in appearance, almost symmetrical in design, exquisite in every detail. But for all the years I’d sat at that table, I’d never noticed it before. I’d taken it for granted, walked over it, and gone my way. I’d never tuned into the subtle signals of its inspiring presence in the room. In the stillness of that moment, however, the eyes and ears of my heart were opened and I heard what the knot had been whispering all along: “I am like the many people you encounter every day around town. Don’t just take them for granted, walk all over them, and go on your way. If you enjoy my knotty beauty, then even more so, enjoy those amazing people around you! They are beautiful, too!”
Lost in a crowd, walked all over, ignored, a knot in floor at Cochrane Coffee Traders gives a valuable lesson in embracing overlooked beauty in each other.
So, what is the greatest lesson I’ve learned, not only from the pages of Sacred Text, but also from my mentors in the Stoney Nakoda way, my coffee companions, and my serendipitous encounters with nature and life as a whole?
Just this: the beauty and importance of the Listening Heart. And in that lesson I’m beginning to discern what true love is all about.
All photos by Warren Harbeck. You can reach Warren at warren@harbeck.ca.
