Climate crisis…or communication?
Is it “climate crisis”…or communication?
“What you people call your natural resources, we call our relatives.”
Is the Weather getting your attention? Are weather extremes a crisis or a form of communication?
“How can we deal with the ‘climate crisis’?” is a question we hear often. As weather workers in the Nahua tradition, we are blessed with the task of leading community weather ceremonies and other events bringing people in our Asheville, NC area together. Everyone who participates interacts with the natural forces that we call Weather. Instead of rushing to fix a crisis, we nourish important and rewarding relationship. We “make friends” with the living world around us.
When our original teacher, don Lucio Campos, led our seasonal ceremonies in Mexico, the clouds and rain actually moved in response to his emotional prayers. This man had such a profound influence on Weather. His prayers were grounded in a lifetime of dedication and personal sacrifice to his calling. The love and respect he shared with the Clouds, Sun, Rain, Lightning and Wind was tangible.
The Weather’s response to don Lucio’s prayers is just one example illustrating that the world around us is alive, in a way both like and unlike how we humans are living and aware. Don Lucio had a special kinship with Weather. And, like all human beings, each of us also has inherent relationship with these forces and the cycles of seasons that affect human life.
Through initiation into don Lucio’s lineage, Adam and I have been given a tangible way to work with the vital forces of Weather. But, weather worker or not, we all share concerns about weather extremes. They indicate a call to communion with the living world, a desire for balance that is embedded in our souls. That desire can be shaped, focused and satisfied through community interaction and traditional ceremonies.
Sharing and expressing our feelings in a space with others helps us to reflect each other and become more unified, more human. We discover that our prayers together make an impact and give form and vitality to our need for balance and our care and concern for this beautiful world that created us and is our home.
Do you feel a sense of relationship with the world around us? Do you long to experience that, or to live in it more? So do we! Come join us in Making Friends with Weather, a free/donation gathering around the fire and with the Ivy River.
More stories about these generations-old, living and time-tested ways of working with weather can be discovered on our websites, both international — https://weatherwork.org — and local — https://ashevilleweatherworkers.org
Our Making Friends with Weather 2-hour workshop takes place at the Sacred Fire Council House in Weaverville, NC and other locations. Please click the button below for event dates/venues and to register for this free event.
Initiated as tradition-holders in the Nahua/Mexican weather worker lineage in May 2003 by don Lucio Campos de Elizalde of Nepopualco, Morelos, Mexico, Adam Laufer and Erin Everett are weather workers, life counselors, ceremonial leaders, and tepahtiani traditional healers. Adam is known in Nahuatl as a quiapaquiz (male weather worker), and Erin is known as a quiatlzques (female weather worker). In Spanish, they are known as tiemperos or graniceros. Residing in western North Carolina, they and their colleagues work with weather in the Asheville, NC geographical region. More information about their work, tradition, and elders can be found at throughout this website, especially on the Our Story page.