The Smell of Rain on Dust

The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise

Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise—how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, “Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing. According to Prechtel, “When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost, the grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren.” These “ghosts,” he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors, which the Maya refer to as “solidified tears,” or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collected unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself and illuminates the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering.

At base, this “little book,” as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts that inhabit us all.

“Like smooth water-polished pebbles, set like jewels in a bracelet at the bottom of the river of the collective human soul, there are noble and profound human beings whose radiance and value are unknown even to their closest neighbors. People whose depth and nobility of soul live unexpressed inside situations that are for them so unnatural, oppressive, and beyond their control, that as individuals they intentionally obscure their own spiritual majesty with a theatrical veneer of the same banal drivel that surrounds them every day to avoid the pain of being mocked or trivialized if discovered by the heartless and uncomprehending.

By doing this they inadvertently subsidize the mentality that oppresses them, adding further still to their own false belief that they are alone and that there are no others like them….” — excerpt from The Smell of Rain on Dust

Listen in to Martín being interviewed by Stephanie Potter on KBOO (Portland, OR)
about his book The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise
June 24th, 2015

Catch Martín talking The Smell of Rain on Dust in these two Interviews with Tiokasin Ghosthorse On ‘First Voices Indigenous Radio’
Sept. 9, 2015 (Interview starts at min 14:55)| Oct. 15, 2015