Speaker 1: A centeral is the protection of my heart radio. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere will experience the shortest day and longest
Speaker 1: night of the year. In our era of electric lights,
Speaker 1: high speed travel, and commercially regulated harvests, it might as
Speaker 1: well be a blip on the calendar. And yet this moment,
Speaker 1: one far end on the spectrum of natural change, hits
Speaker 1: all of us somewhere deep, like it has for people
Speaker 1: dating back to the beginning. I'm feeling a little thrilled
Speaker 1: to be talking about it today because I'm not only
Speaker 1: in the midst as we all are, of a seasonal solstice,
Speaker 1: but also I think we're in a cultural solstice right now,
Speaker 1: where we don't really know what's going to happen, in
Speaker 1: this same way that the ancients huddled around Stonehenge didn't
Speaker 1: really quite know whether or not the sun would begin
Speaker 1: to move again. I'm Caroline McVicker Edwards, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to talk about a book that I wrote
Speaker 1: about twenty years ago called The Return of the Light,
Speaker 1: Twelve Tales from around the World for the Winter Solstice.
Speaker 1: Carolyn is also a lifelong educator. I imagine that you
Speaker 1: have spent a lot of time talking to children. That's true.
Speaker 1: If you were having a discussion, maybe doing some explanation
Speaker 1: to a child about the sun and the changing of
Speaker 1: seasons and that drama, how might that conversation go mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So every year there's a time. It's summertime, when school
Speaker 1: is out, when the days are really long, Right, you're
Speaker 1: playing out in the street till nine clock, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to come in because it's getting dark, and
Speaker 1: it's not cold. In fact, it's hot and the sun
Speaker 1: is there all day long for you to swim and play.
Speaker 1: And depending on where you are, it might be really
Speaker 1: hot and you might have to come in and get
Speaker 1: in the shade, but the sun is out. And then
Speaker 1: comes Halloween, and Halloween you can tell that by the
Speaker 1: time you go trick or treating, it's dark much earlier
Speaker 1: than it was in the summer. Halloween is a time
Speaker 1: when we think about the dark, we think about the
Speaker 1: beginning of the dark. Like we plant a seed inside
Speaker 1: of the dirt, and the seed is, of course, the sun.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a Halloween. We're plucking the seed
Speaker 1: of the sun out of the sky. It's not there
Speaker 1: for us anywhere. We're putting it in the ground. And
Speaker 1: it's going to grow again. It we have to plant
Speaker 1: it and be in the dark, be with the idea
Speaker 1: that death comes and the leaves fall, and all the
Speaker 1: fruits that we're on our fruit trees we've now gathered
Speaker 1: in and we're eating. And especially if we celebrate the
Speaker 1: Day of the Dead, we think about all the people
Speaker 1: who came before us that handed down our stories and
Speaker 1: our ways of connecting to each other. And then after
Speaker 1: Halloween it gets even darker and darker, and people start
Speaker 1: putting up lights. And then somewhere after whatever holiday you celebrate,
Speaker 1: it might be Christmas, it might be Quands, that might
Speaker 1: be Honukkah, then you start noticing, oh, it's getting a
Speaker 1: little bit lighter and a little tiny bit lighter every day,
Speaker 1: until it's almost like the light has been born, like
Speaker 1: it's a little baby. And by February it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a teenager. The days are much longer than they
Speaker 1: were in December, and then they get longer and longer
Speaker 1: and longer, until finally in June the days are as
Speaker 1: long as they're going to be all year. If you
Speaker 1: live way up high towards the North Pole, the sun
Speaker 1: doesn't set at all. It doesn't appear to set. It's
Speaker 1: just light all around the clock, and then it gets
Speaker 1: darker and darker and darker. The light gets smaller and smaller,
Speaker 1: and the dark gets bigger and bigger, and then it
Speaker 1: happens all over again the next year. What do we
Speaker 1: mean by the word solstice, So it literally means sun
Speaker 1: soul stice stands still around what we call the winter solstice,
Speaker 1: which is the twenty two December in the northern hemisphere
Speaker 1: on the horizon. The sun appears to just sort of
Speaker 1: hang there that period of time. Those six days where
Speaker 1: the sun does not appear to be moving were terrifying.
Speaker 1: If it did not appear to begin to move again,
Speaker 1: the light would not lengthen and there would not be
Speaker 1: light for crops to grow. So there was all kinds
Speaker 1: of rituals that developed, both celebratory but also to teach
Speaker 1: the sun to return, and it became a focus of
Speaker 1: communal life to encourage the sun and encourage each other.
Speaker 1: And we still certainly have remnants of that in all
Speaker 1: the Christmas lights, the Hanukah lights, the Quansa lights, and
Speaker 1: we speak in the way that people have for a
Speaker 1: long time about gathering together and putting away enmity and
Speaker 1: taking care of each other and feeding the hungry. We
Speaker 1: get really collectively tightened up at this time of year
Speaker 1: because it's a scary time of year. For millennia, the
Speaker 1: solstice has been formally recognized by cultures across the world,
Speaker 1: from the Roman festivals of Brumalia, Saturnalia, and Opalia, the
Speaker 1: Chinese dong Gi Yalda, the Persian celebration recognizing the birth
Speaker 1: of Mithra, the sun god, and countless others. It seems
Speaker 1: that commemorating the beginning of winter is an almost universal tradition. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, near the equator, there isn't this big drama
Speaker 1: that we experience in both the southern and northern hemispheres
Speaker 1: as they move farther towards the poles. But there's always
Speaker 1: an experience for human beings of in some way, both
Speaker 1: in our personal lives and in our cultural lives, of
Speaker 1: not no wing what's coming next, and feeling afraid, and
Speaker 1: then this coalescing of community around that. Because we're mammals, right,
Speaker 1: we share a kind of a collective nervous system. We
Speaker 1: share our anxiety, and we share our calm and doing
Speaker 1: things together like singing and dancing and ritual, just being together,
Speaker 1: touching shoulders on the couch, putting our arms around our kids,
Speaker 1: cooking and eating together. These things are nervous system commerce. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is often focused on the sun, but there are
Speaker 1: other ways that we metaphorically experience a standing still in
Speaker 1: the sense that we don't know what's coming. And I
Speaker 1: think that you will find across the world, across cultures,
Speaker 1: ways that people come together around asking for help from
Speaker 1: the gods, from the power, ways that they come together
Speaker 1: around making decisions that are big decisions that affect the group.
Speaker 1: And you will find connected with those a sense of
Speaker 1: humility and surrender to powers that are greater than the group,
Speaker 1: and yet that can be contacted by the group. Caroline's
Speaker 1: Winter Solstice collection, The Return of the Light retaels folk
Speaker 1: tales and myths that have passed down from cultures around
Speaker 1: the world, some of which date back to antiquity. For
Speaker 1: the Retellings, it's a process of finding myself in the
Speaker 1: story in some way, finding the place where I resonate psychologically,
Speaker 1: and then to collect them. It was important for me
Speaker 1: in general, is to have some sort of organizing principle.
Speaker 1: In this case with this book, it was chaos theory,
Speaker 1: which basically says that at the edges of things, it's chaotic,
Speaker 1: but it's paradox because if you look at mandel Brock's
Speaker 1: designs at the microscopic level, they're these fantastically beautiful patterns.
Speaker 1: So it's completely chaotic and there's a pattern. It is
Speaker 1: my own overlay, because of course, the ancients did not
Speaker 1: talk explicitly about this kind of anxiety. They told stories,
Speaker 1: and the stories were not invented by one person. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of a mystery how stories rise up and
Speaker 1: get told in our past on. But my hypothesis is
Speaker 1: these stories are the ancients way of talking about the
Speaker 1: chaos at the edge where you don't know what's going on,
Speaker 1: and the folk tales address that by using the themes
Speaker 1: of theft, surrender, and race. The first selection of four
Speaker 1: stories are unified by their theme of theft, the stealing
Speaker 1: of the light. It's it's so interesting. I mean, so
Speaker 1: many of these stories begin with like in the time
Speaker 1: where the world was just dark and like that was
Speaker 1: just not working for people. There was somebody that got
Speaker 1: fed up and or you know, felt ostracized, it felt
Speaker 1: one off, and it was like, okay, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take a leap of faith. I'm gonna do something courageous,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna hatch a crazy scheme and go up
Speaker 1: here and steal all of it are a little bit,
Speaker 1: or get what I can of this light. Yes, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of a celebration of a certain kind of
Speaker 1: initiative from the lament Coo Mewalk tribe people indigenous to
Speaker 1: the north coast of California round Bodega Bay. Our first
Speaker 1: story is why Hummingbird has a red throat. Really, Hummingbird
Speaker 1: ends up being the thief, but the story actually begins
Speaker 1: with marsh wren Chaka, who is left out of the
Speaker 1: group and feels a shame and hunkered down rage that
Speaker 1: he's left out, and so he uses his sharp little
Speaker 1: beak to punch out the sun, almost as if it
Speaker 1: were a bladder. So he pops it like a balloon.
Speaker 1: And then coyote gets involved, and the trickster coyote enless
Speaker 1: Hummingbird to go and steal some of the light. Hummingbird
Speaker 1: is the only one that can get through the tiny
Speaker 1: crack in the sky. Swooping in, he steals some of
Speaker 1: the sun and as he clutches it against his throat,
Speaker 1: he gets that red marking that he doesn't have for
Speaker 1: the story birds. The next story is from the Thoria Risa,
Speaker 1: a group of tribal people's in India, and it's the
Speaker 1: story of a young girl with a set of beautiful
Speaker 1: ear rings. Bearings are classic backed injuries you know who.
Speaker 1: Bearings have always been in style, so it's something you
Speaker 1: can't go wrong with. A kite, which is like a
Speaker 1: kestrel or a hawk rips one of the ear rings
Speaker 1: from her ear steals her earring and carries it up
Speaker 1: to the otherwise all dark sky and hangs it there
Speaker 1: where it becomes the sun gold bearing castabout. In the
Speaker 1: next story from the Inuit people of North America, tuopy Lock,
Speaker 1: who is sort of a magician, ends up taking the
Speaker 1: sun for himself, and then Raven, of course, a very
Speaker 1: famous trickster, figures out a way to turn himself into
Speaker 1: a feather and to float on the water which is
Speaker 1: quoughed down by this beautiful daughter of tuopy Lock, and
Speaker 1: she then gives birth to a little baby, who is
Speaker 1: of course Raven in disguise, who ends up wailing for
Speaker 1: the big bags in which the magician has hung up
Speaker 1: the sun and the moon. They give in to him
Speaker 1: and Raven takes the light back to his people. So
Speaker 1: again it's a trickster kind of energy required to work
Speaker 1: here at the Edges. And then finally again from the Arisa,
Speaker 1: the sun Cow and the Thief. As a special treat,
Speaker 1: we'll have Caroline read the sun Cow in the Thief
Speaker 1: later in the episode. After Theft, come Surrender. In my
Speaker 1: own process, it feels like I have to sit with
Speaker 1: the senses that I have around feeling mugged or that
Speaker 1: kind of shocked grief or that kind of perception of loss,
Speaker 1: and have to move away from my denial and into
Speaker 1: that feeling, and then the next step is to surrender
Speaker 1: to it, to just let go without knowing what the
Speaker 1: outcome can be. So in the theft stories there's sort
Speaker 1: of a resistance to the status quo, and in the
Speaker 1: surrender stories there's more of an allowing change to happen,
Speaker 1: of saying yes, I need to change, we need to change,
Speaker 1: this needs to change, this needs to move, and something
Speaker 1: might even have to be broken. The first story in
Speaker 1: that section about Maui, who is also like Raven, a
Speaker 1: super famous trickster, a Polynesian trickster. This time the surrender
Speaker 1: is actually from the sun itself. His legs are broken.
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, okay, okay, I give in, and the
Speaker 1: broken legs allow half of the year the sun to
Speaker 1: walk slowly across the sky. That next story, which I'm
Speaker 1: telling not from the emperor's point of view but from
Speaker 1: a tribal point of view, is from the Meut Sioux people's,
Speaker 1: who are indigenous peoples of China. It posits that there
Speaker 1: are six sons which are burning the earth up. This
Speaker 1: very thoughtful warrior realizes that the suns cannot be shot
Speaker 1: out of the sky, as the other warriors are trying
Speaker 1: to do. But there's this as a of so below moment.
Speaker 1: Instead of shooting the sun's out of the sky, he
Speaker 1: finds their reflection in water and shoots them out of
Speaker 1: the water. And then only one son is left, but
Speaker 1: grieving his brother's hides in a cave, and of course
Speaker 1: we have the sun again refusing to come out or
Speaker 1: being resistant. But then the crowing of the rooster outside
Speaker 1: the caves door enchants the sun into coming out. So
Speaker 1: the sun surrenders in a sweet way. In that story,
Speaker 1: instead of like okay, okay, I give in. It's like, whoa,
Speaker 1: what is this beautiful music outside? What is this crowing?
Speaker 1: And then the sun comes all the way out and
Speaker 1: lights things up again. It seems to me that there's people,
Speaker 1: maybe myself being one, that would take issue at the
Speaker 1: sun on that point. It's like, should you have maybe
Speaker 1: like listen to a little bit more rooster crowing before
Speaker 1: you went with that is your wake up song that's
Speaker 1: been driving peoples for ages. But along with these eleven
Speaker 1: folk tns, Caroline decided to include one myth. The North
Speaker 1: Smith poses Light as a beautiful young man and his brother,
Speaker 1: who is Darkness, is blind Balder, the god of Light,
Speaker 1: has a dream that he will die, and so the
Speaker 1: whole story revolves around the frantic work of the gods
Speaker 1: and goddesses to keep this beautiful young man alive. And Loki,
Speaker 1: of course, is the trickster, and he's jealous of all
Speaker 1: the attention the god of Light is getting, and so
Speaker 1: he arranges to trick blind Hode, the twin of Light
Speaker 1: the Dark, into accidentally killing his brother. Loki finds out
Speaker 1: that Mistletoe is the one being on earth not already
Speaker 1: exhorted not to hurt poor Balder, the god of Light,
Speaker 1: because everybody thinks that mistletoe is too weak to do
Speaker 1: any harm anyway. But in Loki's hand, and he puts
Speaker 1: it into the god of Darkness's hand, it does harm Balder,
Speaker 1: and Balder dies, his wife dies of grief. And this
Speaker 1: is the epic level. The whole world collapses because there
Speaker 1: is no light. You find terrible destruction in North Smith's
Speaker 1: and it was a very harsh place on the planet
Speaker 1: to live. Loki is punished, and then finally, out of
Speaker 1: the ashes comes Balder again, light free from the underworld,
Speaker 1: and I love this part. The only two humans left
Speaker 1: in the Middle world, between the Upper world and the
Speaker 1: lower world, the two who had hidden themselves away, came
Speaker 1: out into this new light. Their names were Life and
Speaker 1: the Stubborn Will to Live. The gods and goddesses. Then
Speaker 1: the ones who were left gathered together on the sunlit
Speaker 1: plane of the Upper World, home of the Wind, shyly, joyfully.
Speaker 1: They clung to the returning couple, even as Life and
Speaker 1: Stubborn Will to Live had clung to each other in
Speaker 1: the Middle World. The gods and goddesses sifted through the
Speaker 1: wreckage of their great Hall in the ruins, they found
Speaker 1: the golden chess pieces with which they had once amused themselves. Slowly, slowly,
Speaker 1: they began to play again. So there's the two characters
Speaker 1: of life and the stubborn will to live? What do
Speaker 1: those mean? Do you? How do you separate those two things? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess one feels like, you know, you picture the
Speaker 1: grass coming up through the cement sidewalk crack, you know
Speaker 1: that life will out. There's that amazing book about the
Speaker 1: abandoned land at Chernobyl, which had that terrible nuclear accident
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. Now no humans live there, but it's
Speaker 1: just a vibrating with life because humans have kept their
Speaker 1: hands off at all this time. And then the stubborn
Speaker 1: will to live feels like it's a very human thing,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's just a sentient being thing that there
Speaker 1: is inside of animals and people and maybe the planet itself.
Speaker 1: There is this will towards life. So the one seems
Speaker 1: like a force that is completely mysterious, and the other
Speaker 1: seems like more of an emotional response to that force.
Speaker 1: The last story in the surrender section is this really
Speaker 1: sweet story from the Sukumba people of Tanzania about these
Speaker 1: three little, tiny animals. Once again, you this theme of
Speaker 1: you need to be small to get through the crack,
Speaker 1: to get to the other side where their son is.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's not a theft. It's the three
Speaker 1: little animals working together in order to outwit the sky
Speaker 1: people who are refusing to give away their light. In particular,
Speaker 1: Fly very reluctantly agrees to work with Spider, at first
Speaker 1: saying like, no, I'm not working with Spider polic you know,
Speaker 1: Spider will eat me, and then being reminded like, you know,
Speaker 1: the overarching theme here is we have to work together,
Speaker 1: and so Fly surrenders to that bigger call, the Harambi
Speaker 1: call of we have to work together, we have to
Speaker 1: pull together here, and thus manages to work with his
Speaker 1: enemy to get light, and after surrender comes grace. We
Speaker 1: all know that sometimes something just comes to us that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with our will. We may have
Speaker 1: asked for help. That's part of the surrender of like okay,
Speaker 1: I need help, but we get more than we asked for.
Speaker 1: We get held in a way that we couldn't have imagined.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the smallest ways. There's this sense that
Speaker 1: there is a way that we're taken care of that
Speaker 1: is bigger than anything that we can plan. That first
Speaker 1: one is from the Kung Sun people in the Kalahari Desert.
Speaker 1: The Kung Sun call everybody like dog people and people
Speaker 1: be people mongoose people, because they recognize the relational nous
Speaker 1: of all of us to each other. In this one,
Speaker 1: Grandfather Mantus starts off trying to solve the cold and
Speaker 1: dark problem. It's Grandfather Manis who tells them to go
Speaker 1: to sun Man, who's fallen asleep. He's heaved into the
Speaker 1: air and hot, beautiful light cores from his armpits. Any
Speaker 1: person keep me trying, No, sir, you don't do what
Speaker 1: I do. One stay dry. Sun Man, mon Goose shouted,
Speaker 1: you must go up high in the sky. You must
Speaker 1: make heat and life for us, so we will no
Speaker 1: longer be cold, and so the whole earth will have day.
Speaker 1: Sun Man heard, He let himself, so there's that grace
Speaker 1: moment for all of us. He let himself grow hottest
Speaker 1: fire and let his tumbling turn him round as a ball.
Speaker 1: That day, sun Man became a bright circle of heat
Speaker 1: up high in the sky. Grandfather Mantis was proud. He
Speaker 1: tapped his old brown tooth. Look man is equal to me,
Speaker 1: who but I have them magic thin legs, shuffling in
Speaker 1: the dust and head nodding. He began a gay and
Speaker 1: boastful dance. And then you have the girl who married
Speaker 1: the son from the Luya people of Kenya and Uganda.
Speaker 1: The Sun lives on the other side of the sky
Speaker 1: and gets very interested in this beautiful young woman who
Speaker 1: is lost in the woods. She's runaway, she doesn't want
Speaker 1: to marry, and this rope descends from heaven and she
Speaker 1: doesn't even notice it at first, but it's just dangling there,
Speaker 1: and she grasps it. She's lifted up into the land
Speaker 1: of the Sun. He, in order to woo her, gives
Speaker 1: her his rays shut up in a vessel, and she
Speaker 1: ends up taking the lid off that vessel so that
Speaker 1: it pours down to her people below. Sometimes the most
Speaker 1: gracious gift of all is an empty box. Let us
Speaker 1: borrow empty vessels, said Master chart century German mystic. And
Speaker 1: the et reat box, which in the next story is
Speaker 1: called the light Keeper's box, could be such a vessel,
Speaker 1: pouring out the spaciousness into which the new can flow.
Speaker 1: So there's that grace again of being willing to give
Speaker 1: away without any promise of return, and there is no promise. Really,
Speaker 1: you might give away and not get grace. But there's
Speaker 1: something in the giving away that moistens I love. That
Speaker 1: line moistens the spirits of all beings with generosity and cooperation.
Speaker 1: The Lightkeeper's Box, which is from the Wadau people in Venezuela,
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful story about gift culture, giving things away
Speaker 1: rather than selling things, what anthropologist called commodity culture. That
Speaker 1: basically is a story about this chief sending each of
Speaker 1: his daughter's out to find the light keeper. The first
Speaker 1: one stays with deer, and the second one finds the
Speaker 1: light keeper, but there's arrows in both of them, which
Speaker 1: is again grace. Take the romance part out of it.
Speaker 1: It's about love and connection. Finally, the et red box
Speaker 1: and it's light get hurled into the sky, but it's
Speaker 1: moving too fast, and so the chief sends turtle up
Speaker 1: to befriend the light and because turtle moves slowly, Sun
Speaker 1: has to slow down and wait for turtle. This is
Speaker 1: of course from an equatorial region that moves at turtles pace,
Speaker 1: as the end of the story says, so that the
Speaker 1: day lasts just long enough until the night comes to
Speaker 1: the world by the Orinoco River on this war empty dream.
Speaker 1: And then Labe Fauna and the Royal Child of Light.
Speaker 1: So Italy has the counterpart to Santa Claus, an old
Speaker 1: witchy woman who rides a broom called labe Fauna, and
Speaker 1: she rides around each year looking for the child of Light.
Speaker 1: And she leaves sweeps at every house in case the
Speaker 1: child inside is the child who will light up the world.
Speaker 1: That's again that kind of grace, like it isn't just
Speaker 1: one child stick around after the break to hear Caroline
Speaker 1: read a couple of selections from her book. Can I
Speaker 1: read you a paragraph? You can read me anything, alright,
Speaker 1: you can read me the whole book. Collected here, one
Speaker 1: for each of the twelve days that, for so long
Speaker 1: bridged one light cycle with another. Are my retellings of
Speaker 1: twelve traditional stories about light from all over the world.
Speaker 1: Not all these tales are literally about the winter solstice,
Speaker 1: though some are, but each illuminates our fundamental connection to
Speaker 1: light and its cycles of birth, death, and regeneration. Each
Speaker 1: crystallizes the significance of light's return each year. Like vessels,
Speaker 1: the stories carry us across the stormy, flotsamy slippery edge
Speaker 1: of night. We cross over in three different ways, by theft,
Speaker 1: by surrender, through grace. There are four stories for each
Speaker 1: kind of crossing. When our personalities clutch their old habits,
Speaker 1: the thief may have to grab what we otherwise won't
Speaker 1: let go. When are so functional egos find their orders
Speaker 1: scuttled some other deeper self finally surrenders to the new.
Speaker 1: And then there are those miraculous gifts, those blessings that
Speaker 1: shower down upon us. Read the stories aloud in company
Speaker 1: by candlelight, play the games, make the rights sing, the songs,
Speaker 1: revel together with the animals and the villagers snuggle in
Speaker 1: the egg of the dark. You published and never wanted
Speaker 1: you to do an audiobook of this book on tape.
Speaker 1: It would be fun, wouldn't it. I was looking for
Speaker 1: when I came across your book, I was like, this
Speaker 1: gotta it's gotta be. But that's a great idea. If
Speaker 1: you were going to read a story, I have to
Speaker 1: that that I would that I would ask you to
Speaker 1: just choose which one you'd like to do. I don't know,
Speaker 1: if I don't know, if there's all be surprises to
Speaker 1: you or not. But the two that that I would
Speaker 1: be happy with with either one of are The Sun
Speaker 1: Coow and the Thief or the Pull Together Morning. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I would love to read The Sun Cow
Speaker 1: and the Thief because it's sort of told in almost
Speaker 1: like an intantery way, like almost like a chant. Is
Speaker 1: there anything context wise about that story that we need
Speaker 1: to set up, like any terms or anything. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: Cow has a particular significance in India. It is even
Speaker 1: though it is a tribal story and so thus it's
Speaker 1: not part of Hinduism, it does borrow from the Hindu
Speaker 1: neighbors in that the Hindu tell the story of Surya,
Speaker 1: the on god born from the heavenly cow a d t.
Speaker 1: And so there is this cultural overlap and borrowing they're
Speaker 1: implied in the story. The Orisa have the largest variety
Speaker 1: of tribal communities on the ethnographic map of India. The
Speaker 1: Kutia cond arc farmers who specialize in the soulful craft
Speaker 1: of wood carving. Like other Oresa. They have at the
Speaker 1: core of their communal strength the village council and the dormitory.
Speaker 1: The dormitory is the largest hut three sided, open in front,
Speaker 1: hung with musical instruments and decorated with symbols of the
Speaker 1: animal spirits. When the workday is done, it is the
Speaker 1: site for the gathering of everyone in the village for
Speaker 1: the dance. It functions as a kind of school of
Speaker 1: dance for youngsters growing into tribal traditions, and it is
Speaker 1: the meeting place where the elders of the village council,
Speaker 1: who make decisions affecting every social, economic, and religious part
Speaker 1: of life. The Arisa borrow from their Hindu neighbors, and
Speaker 1: their neighbors borrow from them. The Hindu tell the story
Speaker 1: of Surya, the sun god, born from the heavenly cow Aditi.
Speaker 1: The Hindi word for cow go also means ray of
Speaker 1: dawn or ray of spiritual illumination. The sun cow and
Speaker 1: the thief. Back at the beginning, the village was like
Speaker 1: a hinged box with many sides. A lonely man stood
Speaker 1: on the outside. Looking in through the cracks. He could
Speaker 1: see rightly colored crisscross lines everywhere. People walked to and
Speaker 1: fro along the lines, carving shapes and painting shimmering colors
Speaker 1: as they went. The man saw an order so neat
Speaker 1: and easy. It seemed he should have been able to
Speaker 1: slide right in, the very blood in his body, singing.
Speaker 1: But something was wrong with him, with the way things were,
Speaker 1: he could not get in. It was as if the
Speaker 1: village had no doors, only cracks. He could only look,
Speaker 1: never touch. He would always be on the outside, looking in.
Speaker 1: Round the edges of the box, the sun cow walked
Speaker 1: round and round its perfect side. She walked, milking out
Speaker 1: her light in the day, filling the village box with
Speaker 1: color and warmth. At she chewed her cut her black sides,
Speaker 1: giving quiet warmth but no light. The man stood between
Speaker 1: sun cow in the village. The only warmth that the
Speaker 1: man could touch was sun cow herself. Whenever those inside
Speaker 1: the village looked out, they saw only their son cow,
Speaker 1: that lovely black heat that night tour, that daymaker. They
Speaker 1: smacked their lips with the cream of it. They did
Speaker 1: not say, look at that nice man standing outside looking in.
Speaker 1: How silly that he stands alone at the edge, when
Speaker 1: we could simply make a place for him in our
Speaker 1: village of carvings, of shapes and colors. Come, sir, you
Speaker 1: are welcome. They didn't say that. They didn't even see him,
Speaker 1: And so The man waited for the sun cow every day,
Speaker 1: waited for her her to pass him by. He smelled
Speaker 1: her musky flanks, saw her soft eyes, and touched her
Speaker 1: velvet hot muzzle. By some mysterious pressure, her light honey
Speaker 1: milk poured out from her utter. The man could feel
Speaker 1: the pressure of his own sadness inside him all at once.
Speaker 1: One day, the man decided to take the sun cow
Speaker 1: for himself. When all the pretty village people could not
Speaker 1: have her anymore, then finally everything might be fair. So
Speaker 1: he waited for her, not even bothering to hide. The
Speaker 1: village people could not see him after all, and she
Speaker 1: had walked sweetly near him, nonchalant, every day of his life.
Speaker 1: The day he stole sun Cow, he simply tossed a
Speaker 1: noose over her head and pulled her away away over
Speaker 1: the edge of the world, away from the box, away
Speaker 1: from all the can't get in. Away alone to the edge,
Speaker 1: the lights and colors in the village plunged into darkness.
Speaker 1: Without sun Cow's milk, there was only night. The people
Speaker 1: could not see. Babies cried, unfound and unfed by their mothers.
Speaker 1: No one knew when to wake up, when to work.
Speaker 1: All the order lay like unswept wood scraps in a
Speaker 1: dark room. The tidy lines were lumped and smudged, The
Speaker 1: colors disappeared. Where had their sun Cow gone? What had
Speaker 1: become of her? They waited in sorrow and fear. The
Speaker 1: thief was having his own problems. At the beginning, he
Speaker 1: luxuriated in the warmth of sun Cow's solidity, in her rhythmical,
Speaker 1: grassy breath. But away from her circling walk around the
Speaker 1: little box world, away from her habits, no light came
Speaker 1: from her utter, And because she would not let him
Speaker 1: milk her, it was night for him too. No one
Speaker 1: else had her, But now he didn't have her either.
Speaker 1: When the thief, in desperation, tried to set beneath her
Speaker 1: a pail and squeeze her teeths, she kicked the pail
Speaker 1: away with such certain force that he feared that she
Speaker 1: would kick him too, should he persist. She was only
Speaker 1: trying to save his life, of course, for just think
Speaker 1: what would happen to a single person who tried to
Speaker 1: milk the sun. The thief held his head in his
Speaker 1: hands for ever so long he sat, hoping for her
Speaker 1: light again, longing for a sign that he might milk her.
Speaker 1: Finally he knew he could not keep her anymore. He
Speaker 1: leaned against her for goodbye, for a final giving in
Speaker 1: to going back to the endless looking in and never having.
Speaker 1: Then he slipped the noose from its steak and from
Speaker 1: over her head, and set the sun cow free. But
Speaker 1: she did not return to her circling walk around the village. Instead,
Speaker 1: she leapt up high, joyously high up over the moon.
Speaker 1: Now she walks not just around one village, but in
Speaker 1: a vast sky circle, around all the villages, around the
Speaker 1: circle of the whole world, so that no one now
Speaker 1: needs simply look in without being part, without being seen.
Speaker 1: Everywhere there are doors, carved intersections, lines criss crossing that
Speaker 1: can be walked in and about, shivering and shining with color.
Speaker 1: Everywhere there is light. You know, it's so interesting. There's
Speaker 1: a theft, obviously, the theft of the cow, and then
Speaker 1: the thief surrenders the cow. Eventually he realizes that it's fruitless.
Speaker 1: And then there's a grace of the cow not going
Speaker 1: back into the pen, but going into the sky and
Speaker 1: giving that sort of profound gift, like something that you
Speaker 1: couldn't have even known to ask for. Yes, you picked
Speaker 1: exactly the story that has all three in it, didn't you.
Speaker 1: I just got lucky. I think we'll call that another
Speaker 1: little bit of gracer serendipity. Yeah. This episode of Ephemeral
Speaker 1: was written and assembled by Alex Williams, with producers Max
Speaker 1: Williams and Trevor Young. The book we discussed today is
Speaker 1: The Return of the Light, twelve tales from around the
Speaker 1: world for the winter Solstice. Caroline has also authored the
Speaker 1: collections Sun Story In the Light of the Moon and
Speaker 1: The Storyteller's Goddess. Find them wherever books are sold and
Speaker 1: learn more at Caroline mc vickar edwards dot com. Links
Speaker 1: and more at our website Ephemeral dot Show. And however
Speaker 1: you celebrate, I hope your Solstice is full of warmth,
Speaker 1: light and grace