Europe haunts me. What my mind would deny, my soul cannot.

Looking out thru the café window, cracked with brown vines, I glimpse the trail of my soul, out in the cold spring drizzle over grey streets. My soul travels just above the cars, arching down to touch small points where my eyes guide it. Thru my body, thru my bike, my soul feels the street like a massaging hand on a spine. When I dismount, energy pulsates to my fingertips.

The streets, the city's veins, are choked with the plaque of cars. Walking and cycling free the bloodflow of these arteries as much as the human body's. A walkable neighborhood with its own shops and cafés, as in Europe, has the cleansing effect on a city that a vegetarian diet has on human arteries, creating a sustainable system of health. Within our urban civilization, which lost its connection to mother earth millennia ago, this local living-by-foot is a natural lifestyle. Unfortunately, in America, few neighborhoods are set up to be self-contained.

The health of the local environment affects the health of its inhabiting organisms, whether that environment is natural or artificial. When a city has heart disease, so do its residents, as they have higher stress and must drive everywhere instead of actually moving. People grow fatter and consume more food as their cars grow larger and burn more fuel, clogging the streets, the air, and themselves. The cities of Europe work in a natural way, having grown up organically from tribal villages. The cultures there have ancient roots under their own feet, whereas European-Americans were quickly transplanted into intentionally designed cities.

While I feel so connected to my European ancestry and to café culture, I long to connect back to the true source of life, the earth. Between me and that connection stand phallic stone ruins, marble sculptures of god-men, and geometric temples to wine and war. The legacy of Rome. Perhaps the greatest force of evil in history also gave birth to the sublime and beautiful European civilization, thus explaining a constant battle within me. When I drink wine, I drink tradition. I taste all that I respect about my people's love of life. But along with it comes the bitter and ever-present aftertaste of Rome's blasphemies, the greatest of these being the deification of men. The choice seems clear, especially considering alcohol's tendency to draw forth our darker energies: to abstain completely from these Bacchan/Catholic rites. With each sip we drink the blood of the final and everlasting Roman emperor-god, Jesus Christ, crowned in black ritual, posthumously and most certainly against his will.

The choice seems clear, yet I cannot easily escape this civilization in which alcohol has such an important social function, especially at family gatherings. Most of our daily lives are so devoid of meaning, that the transcendence we achieve thru substances seems a just reward. Compared to— in the extreme case— hunting & gathering, most of us work daily to complete a role that has no connection to our life on earth. In addition, by the nature of our fragmented society, we are alienated from people as close as our parents and neighbors. Used responsibly by those who are able, alcohol is a highly effective social lubricant that can help bridge these socially-constructed chasms. Drinking can make us feel good, which is especially important in soulless industrial societies. We are searching for deep feeling. *

In an indigenous culture, in a small tribal group, we would have common traditions and elders living among us to teach us the ways of the people. We would have a spiritual center and spiritual guidance that would focus on living in harmony with the universe. Europeans and Euro-Americans have little living remnant of indigenous wisdom from our own culture. The ancient Roman empire destroyed it and nearly erased its memory.

So, what can we do to reconnect to natural ways? Trace all cultures back far enough and you will find common spiritual practices, such as the sweat bath. Therefore, any living culture still practicing their ancient traditions will, in some form, be practicing your traditions. We honor the lifeforce in whichever way we feel comfortable, but in order to do so properly, one needs traditions, the wisdom of our ancestors. There is only one god/great spirit/chaos/lifeforce (whatever you choose to call it); religions only differ for cultural and geographic reasons. Forced conversion always yields disastrous results.

As I strive to forge my own connections to this lost harmony with the universe, I wonder where to turn. I have my appreciation for the magic of nature I found as a boy, and the guiding spirit of chaos that has always kept me in tune with the universe. But as far as spiritual traditions and ceremonies, my upbringing was devoid. Since I was born in America, should I seek the traditions of this land?

On the morning of the spring equinox I began the year with an offering and a promise. I prayed hard by the willow by the spring in thanks and in earnest, begging for a scrap of will to become strong this year. Right above the spring (our most sacred place), and for the entire duration of our stay, a red cardinal sat, singing out for love to return and for nature to continue. Without the pipe, we could not honor the spring enough to drink water, but from the earth we wrenched a devil's signpost that said the water was poison.

I have been fortunate enough to have been invited to several native spiritual gatherings, and I have found the sweat lodge to be the most potent and devout form of prayer I have ever experienced. In this communal womb, a part of the people since their impetus, one suffers for the spirit, for the earth, for everyone. By comparison, how emotionally and spiritually empty reading along in the church bulletin seems! The native groups I have been a part of have been totally open and welcoming. However, although I will continue to seek their wisdom as much as possible, I have not yet lost the feeling that theirs is not my culture.

I long to find the common ground between the still-living native American traditions and the long-forgotten, pre-Roman, European ones. Until then, I have my own personal spiritual practices. My main ritual to connect with god is walking alone, in the woods or the city, and simply being aware of everything.

On the first of April, all the earth and the tips of the branches were frosted with green, but the excitement this usually brings was absent for me this year. More than ever, I had savored the winter, and driven by everyone else's constant complaints, my love of the season was strengthened by cold and solidified like a lake. I could never tire of the sight of bare branches and the subtle palette of greys. The phenomena I witnessed will haunt me forever. Others' disdain for the cold, and their absence from it, attracted me to the outdoors like a bee to honey. I also consciously savor things that are in danger of melting away.

On the first of April I saw something I had never before seen: the new buds on a willow tree look like little green cobs of corn. Then all I wanted to do was walk home thru the rain to change back into the shirt I had slept in. .

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(*) The negative side-effects of drinking point toward the intentionally self-perpetuating structure of our oligarchic society. If pay was fairly proportionate to work, everyone’s optimum level of will and energy would be spent on worshipping life, and there would be far less depression. Is there a connection here?