Of the earthquakes in our lives…

Rauamoko. Sony NEX-5, 18-55 zoom 1/160s@f9

Hutia te rito o te harakeke,
Kei whea te kōmako e kō?
Kī mai ki ahau;
He aha te mea nui o te Ao?
Māku e kī atu,
he tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata

If the heart of the flax bush is removed, where will the bellbird sing?
If I am asked, what is the most important thing in the world;
I would reply,

It is people,

it is people,

it is people.

Kia ora tatou:

For the last week i have wondered what I could do to help those of you dealing with the after-effects of the earthquake.

I finally decided that this piece, which has been fermenting ( fomenting?) over the last few days, should be published. Normally I keep it away on my other site, but it feels right to publish it here.

A small token of my concern and a way of being, in some small way, of service.

We all have earthquakes in our lives. Very rarely are they geological, very rarely do they tear down our concrete existence, very rarely do they trash our houses and destroy our possessions.

But they happen to all of us. At some time.

They are a part of living.

For all the years I lived in Christchurch, we were told about the risk of earthquake, that one day, sooner or later it would happen. In recent years, as scientists began to understand the geology of the soils in and around Christchurch, we were warned of the risk of liquefaction, of seeing our houses swallowed up by the earth. We listened, took note, and then got on with our lives. We would read about terrible earthquakes in other parts of the world such as Chile, Iran, and Japan, feel for the people who had to live through these geological upheavals, grieve for those who did not survive, then carry on. What, after all, could we do?

But earthquakes happen to all of us.

They are a part of living.

They are a part of our human journey.

Very few of us will have ever encountered Io matua kore, the old Maori spiritual teachings. Io the Unknowable, the matua (teacher/master) of Te Kore, the All.  In the teachings, Hineahuone, realising Death had entered the arena, descended into Rarohenga, the Underworld, to face her fears. She passed by each of the atua or gods until she eventually emerged as Hine-nui-te-po, the princess of Death.

Along the way she met Rauamoko, the god of the Underworld. We see him in other mythologies as well. He is Vulcan in Roman mythologies, Hephaestus in Greek mythology, Pele in Hawaiian and Kisin in Mayan mythology. Why do  they exist in the psychospiritual traditions of so many cultures. What then is the reason for their existence? The figures are archetypal. They are symbolic.

In our own indigenous culture Rauamoko exists as the stuff of legend and is therefore easily dismissed.

Like earthquakes-until we experience them.

But there is another interpretation, a symbolic one.

For the enduring power of myths is not just in the power of the story itself, which is both fascinating and enduring. It lies in what these have to tell us about our own journey. We can think of it as the codification, in narrative form, of a map of the human journey, the journey each of us makes, whthere consciously/aware, or unconsciously. That is our choice.

Hineahuone, the first woman (in Maori tradition, Tiki, the first male, is created after and born of woman) descends into Rarohenga to open the way for others, taking a dark and dangerous journey, willing to risk all for her offspring. As mothers do..

On one level this is a myth. Until we recognise that Rarohenga is the Subconscious, the vast unfathomable well where, like icebergs, most of us float, with only the top few percent showing above the surface, in the Conscious. She is an archetype; as Carl Jung would put  it, ‘… a tendency to form such representations of a motif – representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern…They are indeed an instinctive trend..’

On her journey she meets Rauamoko, the God of the underworld and earthquakes and has to deal with him. So who is Rauamoko?

It is he who shakes us out of our unconsciousness, who forces us to take notice. It may take the form of a tragedy, or illness or a life-changing event, something which causes us to take stock and rethink our whole life. Rauamoko represents those events in our lives which strip off the outer layer of our acceptance and the routine of daily life and force us to take stock. He provides us with a crossroads where we have to make a choice. It may be divorce, or illness, redundancy or an event which arrives in our lives unheralded. But we are then obliged to respond, to engage, to make choices. Rauamoko is a force which we cannot resist. We can only roll with it and respond.

So where does Rauamoko’s power come from? Since he is the shadow side of ourselves, it comes from our willingness to buy in, to engage, to allow the fear, to see the darkness in ourselves, to fall prey to the Guilt Wolf or to blame others. Once we do this, once we point the bone, either at others or at ourselves, then we are lost. In doing so, we separate ourselves from the beauty of who we are and from the beauty of all those around us. And Rauamoko has us. As long as we see those earthquakes in our lives as being curses, then we are in thrall. As long as we ask the question: “why me?”, then we are in chains. As long as we try to blame somebody else, then we will remain in his kingdom, in darkness.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Clichés though they have become, the aphorisms ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ and’ it is an ill wind which blows nobody any good” have Truth and age-old wisdom to them. I have met many people who lost their job, for a variety of reasons. They went through a grieving process, remarkably like Elizabeth Kűbler Ross’s Five Stages of Grief. First there was the shock of the event. The ground was torn away under them. Disbelief and Denial was followed by Anger and Blame (why me? Whose fault is it?), through Bargaining (if I am willing to work reduced hours, is there any way I can keep it?), through Depression until finally there was Acceptance. And they began to look forward, not back. To seek the light and grow. So often I have met them years later and, when I asked them where they were in their lives, the response has been: “it was the best thing that could have happened to me”.

Rauamoko overturns our lives and offers us the opportunity to grow, to move on. Hineahuone, recognises the gift, seizes the opportunity and moves on. Eventually she passes Rehua, the tenth and last of the atua and attains’ the peace which passes all understanding’. She emerges from Rarohenga, the underworld, the Subconscious, whole, complete and fully human.

The whakatauki (proverb) about the harakeke (flax bush) and bellbird seems at first obscure. I know I puzzled over it for a long time. The key however lies in the last three lines. The flax bush is us, our extended human family. Anyone who has ever tried to remove one from the garden knows how difficult it can be. You have to chip away at it from the outside until you reach the heart, the centre. The proverb is telling us that without a centre, without a heart, th plant will not hold together, that there is no way we can sing; there is no way we can survive. And it tells us what the most important thing is; it is people, it is people, it is people. So why is it repeated three times?  The first repetition tells us that it is me, the second it is you, the third that it is all of us. From the centre outward.

When the earthquake comes, we must first check on ourselves, then our whanau (family), and then our community. In that order. When the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling of the plane, put our own mask on before attending to our children. Is this being selfish? No, not at all. What use are we to anybody else if we are asphyxiating. A friend who survived the magnitude 7.1 Inangahua earthquake of 1968 shared a valuable lesson with me; always keep a pair of shoes by your bed, so you don’t get cut feet from broken glass. How can you look after anyone else if you do not take responsibility for yourself?

The whakatauki reminds us of that and of the power of community, of the selflessness that makes us strong as a species, which truly ennobles us and makes us able to withstand the earthquakes in our lives.

The astonishing fact of the last week has been that nobody was killed. Granted, there has been enormous property damage, but that can be, for the most part, remedied. New buildings will rise to replace them.  And a community has proved, and is proving to the amazement of much of the world, just how strong our harakeke is, how we can truly care for each other.

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

As so often happens with my photographs, I make them (or rather they pass through me on their way to the sensor) and the significance only comes later. This one I made a couple of weeks ago. Then forgot it.

Today it called to be released.

Storms gather on the horizon, the waters become unsettled and our tranquillty is disturbed. But the fabric of our  I remains constant. He tangata.

My gift to you all, small though it may be.

Nga mihi ki a katoa.

My deepest respects to you all.

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Published on Thursday, September 9th, 2010, under Thinking about Photography and Art