Owning Our Story * Mindfulness Garden Games

Owning Our Story – this week’s mindful focus, inspired by amaranth

Every plant has a story. Amaranth is ancient. It came back into our modern awareness about twenty years ago as a healthy, high protein, grain-like choice. I will get to the story in a moment, but one reason I’ve been thinking of amaranth is that I planted the Hopi Red Dye variety this year. The tiny seeds require some work to harvest and so I’m not sure I’ll be doing that. But the plant has lots of other attributes. The leaves are great in salads or as a cooked green. And we’ll be using the flowers to dye paper (in a project with grandchildren.) Plus, the plants are beautiful, pollinator friendly, and drought tolerant.

Amaranth was cultivated over 6,000 years ago by the Aztecs in what is now Mexico. Many websites will tell you the plant was sacred. Well of course! Think of a time before grocery stores, when you had a plant that was super nutritious, withstood drought, and tolerated temperature extremes. This is a plant that you could count on to keep you alive. This would be a sacred plant. And for that reason, amaranth was intertwined with the Aztec religious ceremonies. Amaranth seeds and honey were formed into sculptures of the deities and then broken into pieces for worshipers to consume during festivities.

When the Spanish invaders arrived, they outlawed the Aztec’s religion. This was a common practice of conquerors. But, the Spanish must have been particularly horrified to discover the use of the honey and amaranth cakes. It was so close to their own religious ceremony of communion it must have seemed a mockery. And so, the amaranth plant was outlawed as well as the religion. They tried their best to eradicate it. Fortunately, it is a hardy plant and it continues to flourish around the world.

But there is a bit more to the story. Some sources note that the recipe for the deity sculpture was amaranth plus honey plus the blood from human sacrifice. That does not excuse the invaders behavior, but it does change the story somewhat. What I find interesting is that in the re-telling, the blood sacrifice is often left out.

Seed catalogs will tell you that amaranth has a long history and may even mention that it was used by the Aztecs in religious ceremonies. Many online resources about amaranth will tell you about the honey and amaranth cakes, and some have recipes for making the cakes/sculptures (no blood included.)

I’ve been wondering how it changes things when we don’t tell the whole story. What do we lose when we pretend that things were different than they really were or leave out a few key pieces?

Amaranth history reminds me that we each have a story. And parts of it may be complicated or confusing and include pieces we don’t really want to share with others. We don’t need to share with others, however it seems like we should at least be honest with ourselves because whatever our history, it’s how we got to now.

This week’s mindfulness focus is owning our story. Being mindful about the parts of our stories we are willing to share and those we are not. We don’t have to change anything, but we can bring into focus the parts that are messy, complex, and hard to look at. We can sit with them a while and cultivate acceptance.

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