Jenkinson - Die wise : a manifesto for sanity and soul

Copyright 2015 by Stephen Jenkinson. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

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Cover photo by Ian MacKenzie
Cover and book design by Jasmine Hromjak
Design assistance by Natasha Kong
Author photo: Mark Tucker

Excerpts from The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, translation 1981 by Bantam, a division of Random House LLC. Used by permission of Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House LLC for permission.

Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jenkinson, Stephen.
Die wise : a manifesto for sanity and soul / Stephen Jenkinson.
pages cm
eBook ISBN: 978-1-58394-974-0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58394-973-3
1. Death. 2. Grief. 3. Bereavement. I. Title.
BF789.D4J457 2015
155.937dc23
2014036180

v3.1

The death trade is awash in contention when it is not subdued by conviction. You find that out when you start wondering why it is the desolate endeavor it has become, and whether it could be otherwise. In times when youre intemperate enough to wonder this aloud, some people put up with you and some people dont. Some stand with you before they know why, and some after. Each of them has a hand in you managing to get anything worthy out into the world. For what there is in this book that might yet earn its keep I owe garlands and gratitude to many.

To those at work in the death trade then and now, and to those allies and adversaries who got me there and for a time kept me there, particularly Michele Chaban: all praises for your labor. May the ragged caravan of sorrows and mystery carry you in hard times.

To those many dying people, all now dead, and their loved ones who burdened and blessed me by including me in their dying time: I remember it all. May you hear your song sung in these pages.

To those who will fail to live forever: May something here find its use in your coming days.

To those robust and jangling scholars of the Orphan Wisdom School past and present, whose willingness to learn dangerous things in a troubled time grants me wild nights in which I plant my dreams for some coming generations chance of a better day: May your hearths and roads be blessed, as you have blessed mine.

To those faithful keepers of our fields, seeds, varmints, and fences and roof, especially and always the staunch ally of our days Daniel Stermac-Stein: May your people know you and claim you.

To those many young people who have sought me out, anger in one hand and sorrow in the other, figuring somehow that perhaps the lateness of our hour alone might be reason enough to try: May the years after our time together prove your judgment good and your purpose right.

To the firm midwives and allies of our noblest endeavors and givers of grandchildren, Natasha Kong and Christopher Roy: May the mists and the wildflowers of your hearts find each other and the swaying green of the fields be a sign of it.

To those staunch allies from the Wedding Days years ago, most of whom have rightly scattered to their lives, and to those who came to us after with those rumors of ceremony stirring: Nothing is forgotten. May the swirl of blessings you learned now gather at your door.

To the wizards of sound and light whove lent their learning and skill to setting my little boat of dreams and principled sorrow into the current of the marketplace, including Ian MacKenzie, Dave Vollrath, Scott Pond, Mike Strait, and Charles Sue Wah Sing; to Tim McKee at North Atlantic, who kept me in mind; to all those who have conjured the many teaching events for this work of mine to appear in their towns in Canada, nobly among them Anne Pitman, Dana Bass Solomon, David Henderson, Kaz Amaranth, and Rachelle Lamb; in the U.S., faithfully among them Reed Larsen, Bodhi Be, Lucia Camara, Douglas Varga, and Karen Paule; in Poland, stoutly among them Dorota Kousnik-Solarska and Dorota Ostoja Zawadzka; in the U.K., keenly among them Neda Nenadic and Duncan Passmore; in Mexico, so generously Susana Dultzin; to the National Film Board of Canada and especially to Tim Wilson for his film Griefwalker and for his indefensible, insoluble insistence that something of all this be heard in the world years ago, before most others wanted it: May your days be hung as garlands round the necks of your families and friends, and may they brag of having had you among them, as I do. There are others remembered but unnamed: You are there still, with us.

To the teachers and storytellers, the blazing stars in the night of our times, the burden carriers and great rememberers in whose steps I found reasons and ways of continuing, chief among them Leonard Cohen, landsman, Jewish patron saint of my school unawares, and defender and master practitioner of elegant longing; Martn Prechtel, giver of immense, detailed, and field-tested choice; and especially the ancient tower and father of my younger days Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill, Brother Blue, and his wife, Ruth Hill, to whom I owe the best of my voice: May your labors be flowers on the altar of life and your names be spoken in the time to come.

To my children, Jesse and Gabriel, and to all their ways of living life sometimes in the ebb and flow of this work of mine: May your days become your own true days, proof of how it all could be, and may this sanity I am bargaining for be planted in your world, soon.

To all the Gods of the holy places and their peoples, including all Gods who remain sure that they are the only ones and all peoples who remain sure that they are too: May humans and Gods find each other again, as it was, and may their time together out on the edge of town commence and continue.

And always to my swarthy, earth-loving, raucous, and life-filled wife, Nathalie Roy, mother, midwife, physician, and priestess to every worthy thing I have done these years together, honey and hearth of our home, dreamer for us both when I stayed too long awake, pilot of our little boat of life, unwavering witness to what is needed, keeper of our altars and our holy things: Would that you take this book as a little love letter in place of those unwritten while I made it.

February 1, 2014

Tepoztln, Mexico

Where I come from we have a word: Yarak . It can be described as the supreme readiness of a hawk as it prepares to hunt. This book has Yarak.