Story and Healing and Martn Prechtel

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Story and Healing and Martín Prechtel
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First, remembering the trauma
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In centuries past, the Canyon Village, like an
ancient tree, had died, flowered again, and
fruited many hundred of times. Most of the
aggression wreaked upon it by neighboring tribes,
the Aztecs, the Spaniards, and other outside
predatory missions had been limited to stealing
the fruit of that tree but had left the tree
standing. After physically surviving the
violent horror and culture-crushing outrages of
the 1980s, the tree had been cut down, its trunk
and roots torn out, and the Hole filled in. The
village where I had become a human being had
disappeared. --Martín Prechtel, Long Life,
Honey in the Heart, p. 341
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Violence, Death, and Suffering
A Leep had been tortured by soldiers for three
months in a hole, until mercifully he died. A
Maash and A Xep were dead. Father Stanley had
been crucified to death. A Culen and his young
bride were killed and mutilated in their new hut.
A Quin was shot off his bicycle Maxar was shot
in his house A Mirex was shot in his store. The
list of friends lost in violence beyond human
imagining rolls on and on in my memory to more
than eighteen hundred villagers, friends,
colleagues, and relatives, all killed and gone in
less than a decade. --Martín Prechtel, Long
Life, Honey in the Heart, p. 341
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People ask me how I could be happy

• or go on living p. 342

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My reply

• as long as my life. p. 342
• The exact things that people imagine I missgive
  me the capacity to love, to live. p.343

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In the village Freedom

• To fail
• To be imperfect
• To tell stories
• To exaggerate together p. 343

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Souls of the modern world Razed and scorched
by

• Literalism
• Rationalist lack of imagination
• Badly remembered history p.343

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weeping and waiting

• somewhere deep in the memory of our own
  souls, no matter what ancestry, a deep
  understanding and capacity of wonderment sits
  weeping and waiting. p.343

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What modern people do not understand

• making gifts for the Spirit from their personal
  resources and by sharing with one another, they
  can feed life and keep their hearts alive. p. 344
• These stories never ended. p. 345

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Story and Healing and Martín Prechtel!
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Certain stories--when truly heard

• become a spiritual enzyme to metabolize
  hatreds amnesia into a liquid grief of
  remembrance.
• Martín Prechtel