Det ljusnar ute.

Natten var lugn och oron släppte.

Vill leva kvar i morgonbubblan, nyheterna får vänta.

Morgonyogar i rofyllt tillstånd.

Vinden viner där ute.

Reflekterar, ser sammanhang, tar mig tid.

Indraget seminarium om social hållbarhet i Malmö, symptomatiskt på något sätt.

Barnen går till skolan genom stormen, i Danmark ska skolorna stänga.

Barnbarnets glada närvarande röst i telefonen är lugnande.

Regnet knattrar mot rutan, vinden tilltar, stormen Laura är på väg.

Jag går ut i henne, det är folktomt i butiken.

Killen i kassan ler och önskar mig en bra dag.

I apoteket pratar man om andningsskydden som inte finns, om viruset och den söndriga kölappsapparaten och hur man lagar eget handsprit.

Tar trappan upp till tredje våningen, tänker på Lasse Pöysti och hissvägraren.

Från tredje våningen har jag utsikt över gården och höghusen.

Lekparken är tom, hängbjörkarna vajar i vinden.

De snabba grå molnen skingrar sig och blottar den klarblå himlen.

Påskkaktusen har fått en blomma, jag ger den vatten.

Läser Braiding Sweetgrass – Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants.

Broderar ett råddjur och två tvinnade grässtrån.

Det latinska ordet för corona – korōnē – betyder krans eller girlang.

Gräset kallas wiingaashk eller Skywoman’s hair av folket i Potowami Nation i Nord Amerika.

Enligt Potowami folket var Skywoman den första människan på jorden och sweetgrass den första plantan.

She fell like a maple seed, pirouetting on an autumn breeze. A column of light streamed from a hole in the Skyworld, marking her path where only darkness had been before. It took her a long time to fall….

…Like any good guest, Skywoman had not come empty-handed. The bundle was still clutched in her hand, when she toppled from the hole in the sky world she had reached out to grab onto the Tree of Life that grew there. In her grasp were branches – fruits – and seeds of all kinds of plants. These she scattered onto the new ground and carefully tended each one until the world turned from brown to green. Sunlight streaming through the hole from the sky world, allowing the seeds to flourish. Wild grasses flowers, trees and medicines spread everywhere and now that the animals, too, had plenty to eat, many came to live with her….

…Our stories say that of all the plants, wiingaashk, or sweetgrass, was the 1st to grow on the earth, its fragments a sweet memory of Skywoman’s hand …. Breath in its scent and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten. Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we “remember to remember”, and so sweetgrass is a powerful ceremonial plant cherished by many indigenous nations. it is also used to make beautiful baskets. Both medicine and a relative, its value is both material and spiritual.

There is such tenderness in braiding the hair of someone you love. Kindness and something more flow between the braider and braided, the two connected by the cord of the plait… When we braid sweetgrass, we are braiding the hair of Mother Earth, showing her our loving attention, our care for her beauty and well-being, in gratitude for all she has given us. Children hearing the Skywoman’s story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth…

…On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with the garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged behind her. That mother of men was made to wonder in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdued to the wilderness into which she was cast.

Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are the source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home for her descendants. The other was in exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.

And then they met – the offspring of Skywoman and children of Eve – and the land around them bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories…

I Ryssland heter Sweetgrass Marias gräs…

Broderar en fläta av Moder jords hår.

Denna inspirerande, illustrativa text har som ingen annan text fått mig att inse det författaren Robin Wall Kimmerer beskriver så väl i detta citat: I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywomen: “Sister you got the short end of the stick…” och jag undrar i hurdant tillstånd vår jord skulle vara om Evas öde mer liknat Skywomans och vi som barn blivit matade med andra berättelser…

Braiding Sweetgrass – Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants