The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise by Martin Prechtel
Living in a society that idolizes productivity and consumerism leaves a gaping hole in our collective chests, a sagging vacancy where ancestral wisdom used to reside. Martin Prechtel, a New Mexican Native American by birth and shaman of the Tzutujil Mayan tribe of Guatemala by study, crafts this beautiful written offering to help us reclaim our own indigenous wisdom and the central place of grief and praise within it. In his newest work, “The Smell of Rain on Dust”, Prechtel teaches us, the readers, as if we sit at the feet of our elders, absorbing the lessons hard-earned and gracefully passed on. Connecting us to our divine roots, imagining a world that supported and shaped one another in the tradition of indigenous villages, and reminding us through ritual and celebration how to mourn and grieve as we praise what we loved, Prechtel’s magic diffuses much-needed wisdom and wit through every page.
What would it look like to live in a world that valued grief and supported grievers? If we saw our grief as “a spiritual enzyme”? Would we collectively mourn and praise in the same breath? Would we come together, in community, to hold space for the expression of our losses and use the way we are changed by our grief to change our communities? Would our world have less violence, less hate, less isolation, less suffering?
This book is a must-read for death and grief workers, all those who take part in burying and honoring our dead, and any one of us who may feel like our grief is more than what is socially acceptable in our world today.
As Prechtel so eloquently offers: “Grief is a form of generosity, which praises life and the people and situations which we have lost. Grief that praises life shows the depth of our appreciation for having been given enough to begin with, to experience both love and loss and that with all the mistreatment we humans give to the earth, we still have this amazing unlikely opportunity to actually speak and bathe in the Divine.” -Martin Prechtel, “The Smell of Rain on Dust”
