October’s Worship Theme is about life’s curveballs – times when we suddenly find ourselves confronted with a total change in plans that we never saw coming, and we have to figure out a way to cope. It’s a very human experience, and I’m sure that your life has included some of these frustrating, surprising, and trying episodes. In these moments in my own experience, I think of the character trickster, from indigenous cultures around the world, who comes along and “upsets the apple cart,” so to speak.
In common parlance, a trickster is someone who deceives or cheats others to get money or something of value. In native cultures, trickster characters are often supernatural creatures that take the form of an animal (i.e., coyote, raven, spider) to spread uncertainty, mischief, and chaos. Sometimes trickster uses unconventional behavior to teach an important lesson, such as social norms. At other times, the point is to remind us of the uncertain nature of life.
Here is a trickster tale from the Nez Perce tradition:
A long, long time ago, people did not yet inhabit the earth. A monster walked upon the land, eating all the animals–except Coyote. Coyote was angry that his friends were gone. He climbed the tallest mountain and attached himself to the top.
Coyote called upon the monster, challenging it to try to eat him. The monster sucked in the air, hoping to pull in Coyote with its powerful breath, but the ropes were too strong. The monster tried many other ways to blow Coyote off the mountain, but it was no use.
Realizing that Coyote was sly and clever, the monster thought of a new plan. It would befriend Coyote and invite him to stay in its home. Before the visit began, Coyote said that he wanted to visit his friends and asked if he could enter the monster‘s stomach to see them. The monster allowed this, and Coyote cut out its heart and set fire to its insides. His friends were freed.
Then Coyote decided to make a new animal. He flung pieces of the monster in the four directions; wherever the pieces landed, a new tribe of Indians emerged. He ran out of body parts before he could create a new human animal on the site where the monster had lain. He used the monster‘s blood, which was still on his hands, to create the Nez Percé, who would be strong and good.
This story explains how and why things are the way they are in life, and it also highlights the trickster’s use of cunning and stealth to change the status quo. That energy enters our lives, too, when circumstances and situations change and we are faced with a different reality than we thought was at play.
While we are in the midst of dealing with a changed situation in our lives, we may experience chaos, upset, confusion, and disbelief. It’s hard to feel like we are still in control of a situation, or that we have good options for moving forward. Our sense of self, our understanding of our life or reality, and our self-confidence may be disturbed, leaving us feeling angry, afraid, or disillusioned.
And while these experiences of sudden change are completely normal, they don’t have to be how we experience these changed realities in the long run – because life’s curveballs offer us an opportunity for new insights, new perspectives, new options, and new possibilities than we may have been able to see before. Life’s curveballs and “aha moments” can lead to changes in self-knowledge or beliefs. They may lead us to make even greater changes – to choose to travel or move, to pursue a new hobby or career, to end relationships or take a chance on new ones, for example.
It is said that the Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters – one meaning “danger” and the other meaning “opportunity.” When trickster brings what we might perceive to be a crisis into our lives, when the apple cart gets upset, it pays to breathe deeply and remember that it doesn’t have to be all negative. Certainly, there are dangers and challenges and things that need to be done as you face the situation and make the needed changes. And, there are new possibilities in every choice, ones that may produce outcomes we’ve never considered and wouldn’t have embraced without getting our lives a little shaken up.
Light and Love,
Victoria