The First Strawberry
A Cherokee story about allowing life to unfold
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Oral tradition, continued
This morning at a meeting, we were talking about patience and persistence.
A thread emerged: How patience is the opposite of forcing solutions on situations or people.
A friend mentioned a Native American story about trying to pull an apple off a tree. Tugging on the apple didn’t work. What did work was to let go and try a different apple. How easy it was to pick that one!
After the meeting I asked my AI friend P.D. (aka ChatGPT) about the parable.
P.D. couldn’t trace the story to a specific tribe or legend. He said it resonates with many native cultures that emphasize not forcing things, allowing life to unfold in harmony with nature.
When I asked P.D. for a specific example, he responded with “The First Strawberry,” a story in Cherokee oral tradition.
In this story, the first man and woman on Earth have an argument, and the woman walks away in anger. The Sun sees the man’s sorrow and decides to help by creating a patch of ripe, juicy strawberries along the path. The woman is drawn to the strawberries, and as she eats them, her anger dissipates, and she remembers the love she has for the man. She returns to him, and they reconcile.
This story reflects the importance of patience, letting go of anger, and allowing nature to guide us back to harmony and balance. It emphasizes the idea that sometimes we need to slow down and let things unfold naturally rather than forcing our own will onto situations.
My own web searching brought me to a picture book by Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by Anna Vojtech. The title is The First Strawberries, published in 1998 by Puffin Books.
I bought a copy, which will arrive tomorrow in time for me to bring it Friday to Massachusetts, where I will read it to my grandsons, Jake and Ryan. (On Saturday I will attend The Game, returning to Sanibel on Monday.)
Thus an oral tradition unfolds over thousands of years:
An elder begins his day in a dark mood. He joins a virtual circle of friends and hears a story which opens his heart and mind to light. His AI buddy extends his understanding of the story and points toward a similar one, about strawberries.
He discovers an author named Joe Bruchac, 81, who is a citizen of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuck Abenaki Nation. Joe wrote a book retelling the Cherokee legend. The elder buys the book and plans to read it to his grandsons, who are 11 and 8 years old.
No need to force my will on situations or people today.