In the beginning

Where is the beginning?

Perhaps the best stories don’t always know where they are going.  I know I will have trouble telling this one in a straight line.

Let me trust the moon to illuminate all I cannot see as worthy of telling. 

I will let her lure this story with her glowing hands and swaying curves.  

I will let her cast her net, shine her light, pull the tides. 

In my darkness I will follow her.

This is a truth that is both broken and slant,

told from awkward angles, in places it catches the light. 

Other parts stay hidden.

I will tell this story in broken pieces. Bit by bit.

I will let these broken offerings reorder, re-pattern, realign. 

Fragments both remembered and dreamed. 

I will turn the memories over. 

Let them spin,

twist, turn,

rearrange into an unexpected constellations. 

I will follow the story where the light in the dark takes me. 

I will follow.

In the beginning…

(Where is the beginning?)

I’m not sure I can find it.

Is it in te pō?

Yes, of course! In all ways it is.

It is from the unknown darkness that all things emerge.

Everything begins in Te Pō.

Pō is the place of all beginnings – the darkness – the not-knowing.  It is the realm of night.  It is the realm of spirit.  It is the realm of the great mysteries that lie beyond our knowing.  When we enter a state of pō it is to surrender the mystery of what knows us, and which we cannot fully know. 

Pō is what is not seen; what is not formed; what is not yet shaped; what is not known. Its elemental emptiness makes it open to all possibilities. 

Pō.  In 1891, Edward Tregear described pō in English as: “The Cosmic Darkness out of which all forms of life and light were afterwards evolved or procreated”.

Pō is the beginning.  Of this, I am sure.

The paradox of pō is that it must be empty and unknown in order to be creative. Thus, it becomes a ripe generative darkness. 

It is the celestial darkness that holds all shapes possible - in its lack of shape. 

It gives birth to everything that is. Pō is pregnant with ‘what could be’. 

It is the alchemical night – every emergence possible.

[Image credit: Dr Johnson Witehira]

This too, is a journey from not-knowing, to knowing. 

As all journeys fundamentally are. 

Let us story our way through it.

In Rarotonga they say:

E uenua te pō.  E takaroronga te ao. 

Our true home is in the land of the spirits.  This world is a brief resting place. 

Let us rest here in the place of not-knowing.  We are right at the beginning of the story. Neither you, nor I, know what will emerge.

The Hawai’i kupuna say:

Na po’e o ka Po.  People of the night; the unseen who help people.

Let us open our ears to the darkness and see what emerges. Let us see what they will help us to see.

The Tongan ancestors say:

Po fakafitaa uli.  Steering or navigating at night. (Tonga)

Let us have courage then (especially me) as we navigate the unknown.  (Let us story our way through it.)

In Rarotonga they say:

Tangata mārama i te pō.  A wise person even in the night. 

Let us be wise in the night.