Rite Of Harmony - Isutobek

The Isutobek Nation practices the Rite of Harmony at the start of each season on their calendar. The script for the Rite is memorized by Speakers -- folks who study the Present Word, which is the Isutobek version of time, where past and present and future are all summarized in the Present Word. To understand one's past is to be harmonize with the Present Word. The following is the current (as of 977 E) version of the Rite of Harmony:   Speaker 1: The sea carries us to our home, the center of our hope. The islands rise like Waizok among the sea's unpredictable wrath and sudden quiet surrenders. Our minds grow connected like roots of the esilo trees, tangled and thrust through the red-crusted dirt. Hard, clay dirt mixes with rich volcanic pebbles and crushed dust; the rains over a millennia churns the ingredients into nutrient rich soil. Here our farms are built into the foothills, tiers of tubers and stubborn zupita fruit and luscious telula leaves. The sea provides our water-farms with much protein and leafy-greens.   Speaker 2: The first Queen raises the guardian towers from the rich dirt and forms the city of Biret. Canals are built for our in-land farms, and great storage-homes are erected for our present-future needs. The harmony of our land depends on all of us giving back in another form what we take for our survival. To build and unite with our islands in harmony. Of this land we are sustained, so we, in turn, sustain the land, and so it is.   Speaker 1: From the Eli Dola, our needs are met.   All: We are one with the Eli Dola.   Speaker 2: To the Eli Dola, we will sustain.   All: We learn how to be Eli Dola.   [Water and Dirt is mixed in a large ceramic bowl till it is almost clay. The brick is formed and placed in the central firepit to back. During the baking process, the story and call and answer chant is performed. Next, the speakers and the witnesses march to the designated regeneration areas. There the seeds of new plants are planted in the regeneration areas. The clay bricks are carved with symbols of harmony by one of the harmony-tenders, and the speakers 'plant' the brick near the newly planted foliage to mark them as sacred space. This sacred space can only be entered by harmony-tenders until the plant/foliage is fully grown (approximately 1 to 10 qaesa depending on species of foliage). During the growth time, harmony-tenders care for the regeneration areas. There is a rotating schedule of harmony-tenders, and everyone in the Isutobek nation must spend at least two years (up to 20 in total) of their lives as a harmony-tender. Once the plants/foliage is full grown, the bricks are removed in a short "Bricking of the clay" ritual.]   Bricking of the Clay Ritual:   Harmony-Tender: It is grown, Eli Dola. Our pact upheld.   Speaker: Clay be broken, Return to Earth.   All: Eli Dola sustained. Eli Dola rebirthed. Eli Dola in us.   Bricks are smashed into dust and sprinkled across the ground of the former regeneration area.