Trickster Coyote Makes the World

Tricksters are important figures in many mythologies around the world. They embody the ambiguity in the core of human experience and show us, over and over again, that life is a dynamic and often messy process, and that creation is ongoing.

Tricksters have many names and guises. In North America, many Native American groups call him Coyote. Trickster Coyote has a special relationship to human beings. Some say that he created us, or at least created and organized this world on our behalf. He's given us a perfectly imperfect home.

I love sitting with Coyote's stories because they are often funny and also puzzling. I also find them useful tools for meditating on the Judeo-Christian world view that I inherited, a world view and creation story that I've spent decades dismantling in an attempt to rejoin nature and come into communion with my fellow beings. I find more truth and joy living in the posture of "all my relatives" then notions of dominance and exploitation.

I know lots of people feel as I do, but honoring the longing to belong to the world again and figuring out how to live that desire takes more than well-articulated ideas and theories. Intellectual awareness must be married to feeling and heart wisdom, and the imaginal world must shift too. Stories activate us on all of these levels. They give us new ways to think and feel and imagine our reality.

This is why I tell Trickster Coyote stories. I don't pretend to own them or fully understand them or the traditions that birthed them. I come to them asking to be educated, to be opened up to a different way of being in the world.

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