Prayer of a Woman in Charge of Berry Picking

I come to you,
The one to whom I now pray,
The one whose means are mercy,
To ask that I may remain among the living.

Chief of the Upper World, Owner of Life,
May I come again next year
To stand again in this place
Where I stand now to pray to you.

Prayer to the Sockeye Salmon

Welcome, o Supernatural One, o Swimmer,
Who returns every year in this world
That we may live rightly, that we may be well.
I offer you, Swimmer, my heart’s deep gratitude.

I ask that you will come again,
That next year we will meet in this life,
That you will see that nothing evil should befall me.
O Supernatural One, o Swimmer,
Now I will do to you what you came here for me to do.

The two prayers above were collected (c. 1895) in British Columbia by George Hunt for the anthropologist Franz Boas.

I remember listening to a lecture by the renowned mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in which he said that man’s most basic moral dilemma was knowing that he could survive only if he killed other living things. To assuage the guilt engendered by these acts, early man created rituals that recognized the mutual bond and understanding between mankind and his environment. The Tao symbol captures this mutual connection.

From these ancient prayers comes the concept of thanksgiving we should, but often do not, offer before each meal. Vegetarian, vegan, ahimsa, some of the more esoteric prohibitions such as not killing a mosquito or else you will add to bad karma – all these little ceremonies we perform to shed ourselves of the original survivor’s guilt, the original sin.

In the first poem, the woman prays even before berry picking and addresses her prayer to the Owner of Life. I like that designation for it acknowledges that fundamental truth of existence; we do not have life, we are life.

In the second passage, the woman prays to the sockeye salmon. Her acknowledgement is of the ‘agreement’ between the man and the salmon which sustains the life of the tribe. Before coming into this existence the salmon agreed to give up his life to man; it became the sacrifice, a word whose original meaning is “to make holy.”

By laying down his life for his ‘brother’, the salmon was unselfish and by some definitions moved up in consciousness himself. Man’s role in this eternal drama is to take the gift of life from the salmon and transmute it into gratitude and service to all.

Life feeds on Life and as long as we believe that death is the end of life we will continue to feel guilty and suffer. Birth is the opposite of death. Life has no opposite. It is eternal.