Where it's from
Joy Harjo's "Remember" emerges from her Mvskoke/Creek, offering wisdom that deeply resonates with mettamancy's commitment to universal love and ecological awareness. As a former U.S. Poet Laureate and Indigenous voice, Harjo's work presents a worldview that challenges the notion of separate individualism and reconnects us with the web of life. This perspective aligns profoundly with our practice of extending metta to all beings without discrimination.
The poem serves as both meditation and resistance - resistance against disconnection, against the forgetting of our place within nature's web, against systems that separate us from our inherent interconnectedness. Through its gentle yet powerful remembrances, it invites us into a practice of decolonial love and ecological awakening.
Remember
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
“Remember.” Copyright © 1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo.
Reflection Guide
Here are some prompts you can reflect on to deepen your practice. Feel free to note down your reflections in a journal, Book of Shadows and/or any other repositories that you keep.
These prompts are also suitable for group discussion. You could perhaps start with a collective reading followed by a short moment of silence before jumping into deep sharing.
Cosmic Connections
- How does remembering "the sky that you were born under" expand your understanding of belonging beyond the personal self?
- When you contemplate being "this universe," how does it transform your practice of universal love?
- What shifts in your heart when you recognise stars not as distant objects, but as relations with "stories"?
Earth relations
- How does acknowledging yourself as earth's skin ("red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth, brown earth") challenge colonial narratives of separation from nature?
- What emerges when you extend metta to the earth not as resource, but as relative?
- How might remembering our shared earthen nature dissolve artificial boundaries between beings?
Ancestral wisdom
- As you remember "how your mother struggled", what arises in you as you contemplate intergenerational journeys of all mothers?
- Acknowledging yourself as "evidence of her life, and her mother's, and hers", how can you heal as a collective of ancestors?
- Are you disconnected from your ancestral stories? How can you move towards reconciliation with metta?
- How does recognising that all beings have "their tribes, their families, their histories" transform your approach to ecological justice?
- What suffering do you recognise in the colonial forgetting of these connections?
- How might remembering serve as medicine for both personal and collective wounds?
The Dance of Life
- How does remembering your connection to "the sun's birth at dawn" awaken appreciation for life's daily ceremonies?
- Where do you find delight in belonging to the greater family of beings?
- How does the wind's ancient knowing help you rest in mystery?
- What emerges when you remember that you are "all people and all people are you"?
- How does recognizing life as a dance help you maintain upekkha amid systemic injustice?
