A story in honor of Steve
Kambara of the Heart
by Columbine
Family, friends, honored guests. I will sing to you of a wondrous warrior, Kambara of the Heart.
In the Change Time, there came a sickness over the warriors, a sickness of fear, not of anything real, but of no longer being able to protect the ones they loved. Having nothing to protect people from that could be seen, touched, or known drove the warriors into a frenzy of attacking whatever they might, so that they might still know that they were warriors and not something without a name. Their fear spread among the people, and their need to protect was turned into a need to destroy, even the Old Ones from whom they had learned their urge to protect.
Kambara saw this, and he too yearned to protect, but saw that the danger was the fear, not the Old Ones; that the Old Ones, and courage itself, were in danger. So he talked to the Clever Ones who could make his voice big, the Fast Ones who could make his body big, the New Ones who could help him build a bridge for the old courage to cross over into the new life.
Kambara then talked to the Old Ones, saying, "This is the Change Time, and you must live in the sacred places, not those defiled, in the beautiful places, not the ruins. I will take you there." The Old Ones were angry, because the whole world had once been a sacred place, and the ruins were not of their making. They fought Kambara and shed his blood, but he subdued them and took them away to the places that were still alive and good.
The Clever Ones took Kambara's warrior stories and gave them to people, even those who didn't speak as he did, and the stories became songs that flowed down the family branches. The Fast Ones showed Kambara's dance to the children, and they marveled at the Old Ones and how beautiful they were. The New Ones made a web of dawn light and hung on it the keys to nurturing the sacred, the whole, the real, and people everywhere took the keys with them everywhere, to the market, to their homes, and gave them to their little ones.
But the Old Ones were uneasy in the shrinking sacred places, and their amazement at Kambara's great heart drove them to wonder why he lived among the ruins, which were surely not of his making. His courage was so intense, they could not bear to see it contained in one man. "His great heart is not of only one," they sang. "His great heart is of all the world. " It made no sense to the Old Ones that this courage be in only one warrior. Umpara, who was shy and wished for more courage, volunteered to take Kambara's brave heart and put it back into the great dance.
The humans, who live one for one and sometimes forget the great dance, were grieved horribly. No more Kambara stories! No more Kambara dances! Who would hang the keys on the web?
But Kambara's heart was now a wild, deep drum in the great dance, and his courage found its way into stories that would never have taken that path before. Children quietly captured toads and spiders and put them outdoors, rather than fearing and hurting them, dancing to the wild, deep drum. And every time a story was told of true courage, rather than fear in a backward mask, a key was hung on the web. Every time a gun was put aside and a camera taken up, a key was hung on the web. Every time a child asked to see the Old Ones' dance rather than a dance of fear, a key was hung on the web. It was the Change Time, and nobody knows how the story goes from here, but we must remember that Kambara's heart is always with us.