The Storytellers Goddess Part 21

Vishnu curved His beautiful lips and told Narada that He recommended the contentment that came with their own friends.h.i.+p. He said that knowledge of the Maya was too much of an undertaking, even for such a one as the saint Narada.

Narada was silent awhile as he and Vishnu strolled in the sheltered hermit's grove. Though they talked of other things, it happened that Narada persisted in his plea to know the real power of the G.o.d, and Vishnu finally shrugged and relented.

He took Narada to a place on the desert where the heat s.h.i.+mmered in the sands and the white ball of the sun seemed to scorch the very blood.

Narada's thirst grew, but he rested in the knowledge that soon he would know the Maya of the world.

"Narada, I am thirsty," said Vishnu finally. He pointed in the direction of a tiny hamlet of houses moving in and out of their vision like waves in the light.

"Pray go to the first house and bring Me a gla.s.s of water."

Narada bowed and made his way across the burning hills to the first house. He knocked.

When the door opened, a young woman greeted Narada and bade him enter, gazing at him all the while with eyes that filled Narada suddenly and completely with mysterious feeling. And it happened that the feeling so overtook Narada that he simply forgot why he had come.

His eyes with the woman's seemed to lock, and he continued to return to their depths as he drank from her dipper of water. How very like his Lord's they were! How kind and fathomless at once!

Soon Narada met her family in the next room. Her father and mother sat at a feast table, along with three brothers, all of whom had wives and beautiful children of various ages. Like the woman herself, none of the family commented on his arrival but seemed to accept him as if they'd known he was coming.

The foods of the evening were sumptuous, and Narada felt himself held in a sweetness of pleasure. It was a sensation what with the delicacies and the eyes and conversation of this woman like none he had ever known before.

It came to pa.s.s that there flowered between Narada and the woman a friends.h.i.+p that brought both peace and joy and an enthusiasm for the future. Before long, the two had wed, and all the village rejoiced.

Eleven years went by. Narada joined with the family of his wife in the seasonal tasks of farm and home. He and the woman had three children.

Narada felt richness and grat.i.tude overflow in his heart.

In the twelfth year, the rains came with a fury rarely seen before.

Straw huts and cattle were carried away on their torrent, and people fled. One howling night, the waters began to flood the house. Narada woke his wife and their children, and, clinging to each other, the family made its way into the dark. Narada carried the smallest child and held tight to the hand of the next, who clutched her brother's hand in her own. The mother clung to the hand of the eldest. The current tore at their legs, and the parents could barely manage their burdens.

Narada made himself heard over the gale that they must find the top of the hill.

Suddenly, at the moment lightning cracked the sky, a mountain of water ripped Narada's baby from his arms. With a cry, he lunged after the child and lost the girl's hand. Another stroke of lightning revealed the avalanche of water that struck Narada's wife and children.

Helpless, their screams piercing his heart, Narada saw his family sucked under the deep.

The next thing Narada knew, he was atop the hill of the village, able only to weep.

Narada then felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked to find the G.o.d Vishnu beside him, shaking his head gently.

"You come at last," said the G.o.d.

"I have been waiting for you almost half an hour. Do you now understand the secret of My Maya?"

VI. G.o.ddess As Archetype Jungians use the word archetype to talk about the blank molds of expectation with which we humans come into the world. No matter what the context or the age, all human cultures seem to hold ideal concepts of home, hero, healer, mother, father, or trickster. It is as if we humans are born with a row of labeled white plates on the mantelpieces of our minds. Depending on the culture we live in and the details of our environments, we then find sketched on our mother plate, for example, the specifics of what mother is in our case. Sometimes that plate takes our situation-specific inscription rather well: our sketch defies little of the promise of that archetypal plate. Often, though, our mother plate cracks or shatters under the weight of differences between the sketch of our particular mother and the expected mother plate with which we are born. The Jungians use this concept of the broken archetype to explain the tremendous pain we a.s.sociate with lack of tender mothering by an actual mother, even if our caretaking experiences were themselves not extraordinarily painful.

In other words, even if we have not experienced loving mothering, we do know it on what Jungians call the archetypal level. We therefore experience great longing to unite with an actual life experience that matches what we know archetypally to be possible. Similarly, a person without a home aches after the sense of being home, even if she has never known a safe, private place of her own, even if the weather is fine.

For years now, women, people of color, and people with physical differences have wrestled to identify, remove, and replace the common images of ourselves that narrow our hopes and compel us to think of ourselves in life-deforming ways. Stories about the G.o.ddess begin to glue together the archetype of the Great Feminine that has been shattered by the culture's stereotypes.

For, even if we choose not to wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ddess, we can find in Her stories images of our true inner and outer selves many hued, endlessly costumed and shaped, awesome, loving, raging, tender, knowing, able, and proud. The G.o.ddess changes our posture; no longer do Great and Feminine seem contradictions in terms. Like children with role models, our eyes melt in adoration of these ways we can copy, and we find ourselves growing feet sure, stomachs round, and voices bold and free.

Mbaba Mwana Waresa (mah-BAH-bah mah-WAH-nah wah-REH-sah) Great Rain Mother of All (Zulu People) Introduction The oldest human remains and the earliest human tools ever made have both been found on the continent of Africa, in today's Kenya and Tanzania. From this vast land, which stretches five thousand miles north to south and likewise east to west, come the human ancestors of early European culture and the Divine Ancestress Herself. In those beginning times, from 30,000 to 15,000 B.C.E." when politics and religion were one, nearly identical paintings that froze the sacred Life Spirits on the womb walls of caves have been found in ancient France and Spain, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Libya, and around the Sahara Desert. As from the center of a great web, the peoples of Africa must have migrated over the millennia to the slender ends of their world. The bone characteristics of the skeletal remains of ancient Europeans show unmistakably their black African heritage.

Out of Africa, the cradle of a thousand human cultures, rises the G.o.ddess by as many names. The Zulu people of Natal, South Africa, understood Her, like so many people the world over, as personifying the Water of Life. Other peoples wors.h.i.+p Her in the river, the lake, and the ocean (see story of Yemaya and lamanja). The Zulus call Her Mother of Rain, Mbaba Mwana Waresa.

Since the Zulu people are renowned for their beautiful and complicated dances for all sacred occasions, Her traditional story in this collection, adapted from the one told in Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, may well enact a reverential dance for rain. The October sky actually sprinkled a couple of years ago during a Berkeley evening of telling Her story and chanting Her name. I dream of the day we take to the streets, en ma.s.se, with pots and pans in honor of Her water. Mbaba's story also p.r.i.c.ks me with hope about our far-reaching abilities to take back the idea of beauty from the mongers of self-hatred.

The Choice of the Wise Husband Over the green, brown, and blue Earth lives the Sky Mama. Ma-baba.

In the lightning and thunder hear Her voice and Her drums. Ma-wana.

The glistening, the slicking, the wa-wet drops slanting, sleeking down are Her arms and Her legs, Her hands and Her feet. Wa-resa.

Ma-baba Ma-wana Wa-resa.

In the rainbow is Her smile.

Mbaba Mwana Waresa.

Mbaba Mwana Waresa.

It is Mbaba Mwana Waresa who pours down Her sacred waters to Her thirsty people, plants, animals, lakes, and rivers. Mbaba Mwana Waresa cleans, cools, quenches, fills, soaks, pounds, drizzles, and streams.

Mbaba Mwana Waresa, Rain Mother of All, is the One without Whom There Is No Life.

In Her absence we long for Her, dance for Her. Mbaba! we cry. Mwana!

Waresa! Gone too long, we die, Mbaba. Come to us!

In Her presence we put away our fans. We are thankful. We collect Her sacred waters in our pots. We s.h.i.+ver and dream of fire. Mbaba! Mwana!

Waresa! Your noise is mighty. The night is long. We want a fire and a story. The fire is built. Here is the story.

Once upon a time Mbaba Mwana Waresa wished for a husband. When none of the G.o.ds in Heaven pleased Her, She went to Earth to look for the wisest, most handsome man She could find. When the young man She had chosen heard tell he was to marry Mbaba Mwana Waresa, he went away by himself for a long while to think and prepare himself.

Mbaba Mwana Waresa returned to Heaven to ready Herself for the wedding.

But to the astonishment of all in Heaven, Mbaba Mwana Waresa did nothing to decorate Herself. Instead She asked Her friend to dress as the Zulu bride. Wondering at Mbaba's request, Her friend had the finest cloths wrapped about her body and her hair braided into a hundred delicate plaits with beautiful beads laced at each end. Gold and silver bracelets were coiled at her wrists and ankles, and sacred dyes were painted on her cheeks and forehead. Great hoops were hung in her ears, and s.h.i.+ning stones threaded on thin copper wires beneath her arms jingled softly as she moved. The womb sh.e.l.l of life was hung on her forehead.

When Mbaba Mwana Waresa saw that Her friend was ready, She did an even stranger thing. She removed all Her own precious beads and Her rainbow-colored robes. With a sharp stone She cut all the tiny beautiful curls from Her head. She smeared Her smooth black skin with pale gray ashes and wrapped Herself in the torn skin of a zebra.

Then Mbaba Mwana Waresa declared that the heavenly pair was ready to make the journey to the village where the young groom awaited Her.

The young man knew the wedding day had come when the sky above him darkened and lightning cracked across the clouds. He heard the beat of Her drums in the thunder that followed. The young man held his shoulders very straight as he went to stand in the rain of his good fortune.

The women from the village chosen as wedding attendants gathered with him, and when the G.o.ddess and Her friend arrived, everyone bowed low in reverence. Then all watched to see if the young man would know which of the two from heaven was to be his Wife.

The young man did not hesitate. He extended his hands to Mbaba Mwana Waresa, knowing Her even in the torn skin of a zebra, body gray with ashes, and the hair of Her lovely head shaved away.

"Welcome, Mbaba Mwana Waresa," said the young man.

"You need no precious beads, nor fine clothes, nor silver and gold jewelry to show me Who You are. For I see in Your eyes the richness of the Earth, the bounty of the harvest, and the power of Your thunder and lightning. How honored I am to be Your husband."

Mbaba Mwana Waresa smiled. She had chosen well, for this young man was wise enough to see the truth. The friend of Mbaba Mwana Waresa and all the attendants began to clap and sing. The wedding ceremony was held, and then Mbaba Mwana Waresa took Her husband back to Heaven, where he lives with Her to this very day. Mbaba Mwana Waresa.