The Womb of Creation

Who knew that the place where this world emerged into being was a few miles away at the site of what the Spaniards named "Montezuma's Well." ???????

That is the place I visited with a couple of friends yesterday. It was a lovely sunny fall afternoon in Red Rock country. We drove up Oak Creek canyon and then down Interstate 17 to the exit south of Sedona that let us off onto the country road that led to Montezuma's Well.

There, we visited ancient ruins of long gone Native American people. We saw the remains of pit houses, pueblos, and cave dwellings built into the side of stone cliffs that surround a small lake fed by springs and formed by a sink hole in the limestone that makes up much of the land.

The lake is very deep, and a constant 75 degrees throughout the year. The land around it is beautiful high desert country, and it is far enough away from the highway and any towns that one can bask in a profound and beautiful silence. It is not difficult to imagine why the creation stories of the Hopi and Yavapai people would imagine this place as one of the emergence of this world.

Near the lake, down a steep slope, runs Beaver Creek, and an ancient irrigation ditch next to it, still running with clear water from the same underground source as Montezuma's well. It is easy to feel and imagine the presence of the ancient people who once lived here. I can see them, in my mind's eye, sitting around the fire at night, telling their creation story. The creation story of the Garden of Eden may have started the same way, and so would many other creation stories of many other spiritual traditions the world over. It seems to be a universal human need to tell the story of their beginnings ages ago, and to draw certain lessons from those stories to guide the life of each generation. The Hopi creation story tells us that the Creator gave certain instructions to the people (which they did not always follow) that included the instruction to migrate from here to as far north, south, east, and west, as they could possibly go, and not to settle anywhere until this was done. This command, it is said, was to train the people through the generations this great migration would last, to depend on one another and the Creator in a spirit of trust and faithfulness. It would also train the people to live simply and lightly on the earth.

This ancient pattern of migration certainly seems to be continuing, especially in American culture, in which it is said that the average American moves every three to five years.

Of course, our mobility is a lot easier now, although we are burdened with many more possessions than the Original Peoples could carry with them as they walked the length and breadth of this continent. We could use a good dose of their simplicity.

All this made me ponder many things, including the stories in my mind of my own beginnings, the pattern of the places I have lived, the migrations of my life, and what they might mean. One pattern that seems significant is that I have lived in four continents, and my migrations have spanned the globe. I am not unusual anymore in that regard. The world today is filled with global nomads like me. We are more and more a global society in which the old boundaries between tribes, religions, and cultures are increasingly blurred. And we are more and more interdependent. Perhaps we are still learning the ancient lesson of the Creator: to gratefully and faithfully depend on others and on God, and in turn to be faithful and dependable people, as part of the Divine Design of world wide unity and peace.

I chose the above pictures because they depict ancient waters and reflections; an ancient tree; and an ancient instrument being played. I am sure when the ancient creation stories were told by the Original Peoples, that they were often set to music and played, sung, and drummed so that they would thus make their way into the souls of the listeners, and shape their lives, as creation stories most surely do.