So after that, they have a boy, he's healthy, the mother's healthy,
everyone is happy, and the mother then spends several days in quiet connection
to her newborn child. In the meantime,
word goes out to the entire village, because everybody's interested because
each child born is a gift to the village.
Then they're told now it's time, several days later, to come and see the
mother and the newborn child and be present for the naming ceremony. Everybody comes, and they choose a name for
this child Poder, which means luck; Poder, which means fortune; Poder which
means ability; Poder which means strength.
They give that name to this boy.
Then everyone celebrates. Both the woman becoming a mother, because
that used to be a point of initiation, and the child that has entered the
world. And they didn't see the gifts of the
child, but they know each child is gifted, and people used to wait to receive
the gifts of their children; so children weren't a burden that cost you so much
to raise and even more to educate, they were actually little gift-givers coming
into the world.
So all that happens, and once that's over, the
midwife takes the gifts, the cloak and the gourd, and she leaves the village
and heads out into what they call the holy hills, and out in the holy hills she
gives those gifts to some people out there.
She comes back. Life goes
on. The boy goes through the ups and
downs of boyhood and childhood, and he has good days and he has bad days, he is
loved, and he is abandoned as well - like everybody else.
But one day he begins to question. He enters the period we call adolescence or
the beginning of youth. And with youth,
it's not just hormones that increase, but also the dream life of people
increases, and their sense that they need a quest, or that they have burning
questions happens. His questions
are "Do I have something to give to this
world, and does this world have something to give to me?" Well, he can't answer the questions, and he
thinks of the midwife that everybody says is so wise. And so he goes to her and asks her, "What do
I do with these burning questions? Do I
have something to give to the world, and does the world have something to do to
me?" And she says, rather than "Go see a
therapist," or "Pick a career," or "Join the revolution," she says, "It's time
for you to leave the village, and go out to the Holy Hills and carry your
questions out there to the world." So he
takes his leave of his parents and heads out to the hills.
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