Episode Sixty-Three: The Interview - Maria Benedetti

Maria is an ethnobotanist and journalist living in Puerto Rico where she gathers the oral histories of indigenous healers. Listen to her stories of plants and miracles in this longer episode, and how the smallest seed, the ones we plant in our gardens or even ourselves, are the greatest miracles of all.

Transcript

So I have to give a little context here to episode 63.

It really is quite remarkable how the universe brings people together.

One day I was on Amazon,

And you know how when you're about to check out they recommend other books?

On that day Amazon recommended Earth and Spirit,

Medicinal Plants and Healing Lore from Puerto Rico by Maria Benedetti.

There weren't any available at that time,

So I started doing a search online.

I quickly found a copy and purchased it and then realized,

To my chagrin,

That I had sent it to my old address in Portland,

Oregon.

Thankfully I knew the new owner of my house,

So I messaged him and he promised to send it straight away.

Three months later I realized I'd never received the book,

So I recontacted him.

He promised to send it that week,

And I got the book.

I opened it.

It was so powerful and enchanting,

I looked up the author online.

Maria Benedetti is an ethnobotanical researcher and journalist,

Among many other things.

She's so groovy I thought,

What the heck,

I'm going to ask her to be on the podcast.

So I reached out and emailed her.

Within 24 hours she had responded with a resounding yes.

Maria is passionate,

Intelligent,

And wise.

She also has the most incredible sense of humor.

Between our laughter and our conversation,

I hope you understand just why I find her so precious.

The two books that we discuss in this episode of Bite-Sized Blessings are the aforementioned book,

Earth and Spirit,

Which is an oral history of the healing and medicinal plants of Puerto Rico,

And Dolores y Malagros.

A beautiful fictional tale that weaves in and out of the lives of various Puerto Rico residents.

I strongly encourage you to buy both books.

Both,

No doubt,

Will one day become precious resources.

But make sure to send it to the correct address.

Some things are worth the wait,

And my conversation with Maria was just that.

I hope you find it as educational and hopeful as I did.

And now,

Episode 63 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

Some of the prayers that these people say before they touch you.

It's like,

I can do nothing.

This is all about our Christ coming and remember what he said about your faith,

If it's as big as a mustard seed.

And remember,

Last time it was dead,

And he was revived.

And it's all about putting the person at ease.

I'm not the healer here.

This is about your relationship to the divine.

So I'm going to leave you here,

And I'm going to do my work.

And remember,

My hands are representing the Christ.

I'm a daughter of Gaia.

I feel very,

Very connected to our planet.

And I hope that I can be representative of some of her divine intelligence and the beauty of who she is in us.

And when I speak of Gaia,

I don't only mean the planet in a physical sense.

I also mean the feminine principle as she expresses herself through the divine intelligence in nature.

I feel that that's my Godhead.

And I try to bring that sense of appreciation,

Wonder,

Mystery,

The true medicine which is all of that intelligence as it manifests through nature and also through the human heart.

And that's what the book is about.

That first book that I did,

Pretty much recording my first experience in Puerto Rico,

Which is where my mother's family is from,

Was all about true medicine.

What is true medicine?

Well,

It is deep healing through our connection with the divine and with our own human heart in its most full sense of loving and compassion and wisdom.

And that's what I found in Puerto Rico when I came for the first time in 1987.

I found a tradition that was rooted in divine intelligence and wisdom of very simple people.

There was no capitalism around.

There was no total money exchanged in this tradition.

Every time you get sick,

You're strengthening your community through exchange of information and plants,

Bringing the generations together.

And it's a holistic tradition that works body,

Mind and spirit.

And it's a tradition that's been around for thousands of years and has codified healing within Africa and Central America and in Europe for thousands of years.

And here we are in the 21st century,

You know,

Remembering,

Planting,

Bringing this medicine to our hearts and to our bodies and to our communities.

That's,

You know,

That's my life's work.

What is true medicine?

Well,

I decided to move.

I was working as a journalist in New York City and I was also doing performance art and I was studying Puerto Rican studies because I had been forced to move from the country where I was a happy herbalist in the 80s because of economic reasons when the Republican Party came into power with Reagan,

Ronald Reagan in the 80s.

You know,

They took the money out of all the social programs that we had been really enjoying and that was bringing to our communities,

You know,

Lots of light and communication and skills and it was a very beautiful time and all of a sudden all the money went to the military and I found myself in need of moving to New York City,

Which is where my Puerto Rican mother grew up.

I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to take,

You know,

Start taking Puerto Rican studies while I was doing my work as a journalist and I was dancing and I was,

You know,

I was living a New York City life and I was really enjoying it and it seemed natural for me to study Puerto Rican history,

Language,

Literature,

Folklore,

Culture,

Everything that I could possibly learn because I had such great professors and I was really committed to being bilingual at that time and I didn't feel that my,

You know,

Living in New York was enough even though I lived with a Colombian guy and we spoke Spanish all the time and then later on with Puerto Rican we spoke Spanish all the time.

It isn't the same when you're speaking with one person.

So when I came to Puerto Rico in 87 it was sort of like,

Okay,

Well I'm an herbalist and I feel like a fish out of water here in New York City,

I'm going to go to Puerto Rico and see what I can discover.

It was so big and I also felt that I was able to see what people who lived on the island maybe could not see by just proximity.

We don't see our reality.

A fish doesn't see the water,

It's swimming in.

We don't see when we're living somewhere,

You know,

Really what our context is and I could see,

I was able to see and I just felt like that my life in New York City,

Although it was very colorful and fun,

Did not have the depth of meaning for me that I could see in the other life in Puerto Rico where I would be,

You know,

Closer to the tradition that just rolled me over,

Closer to that tradition,

Closer to the people who were holding that tradition and participating in a society whose culture I just adored even though I didn't feel,

You know,

Part of it yet.

Yes,

I did grow up in a religious household,

Catholic.

You know,

My mother's family is Puerto Ricans and my father's family Irish Hungarian and my father's mother was Irish and she always lived with priests.

She was after her husband died,

Which was in,

I think,

1960.

Her husband died and after that she always kept house for priests and,

You know,

Prayer was a part of our everyday life,

Prayer as a family.

I'll never forget once our dog ran away and we said,

You know,

We said three rows of rows every day,

So I go,

Oh,

I should just grab two of them.

That was just part of my family culture.

But I went to an amazing Catholic high school and I remember our senior project in religion class was to create our own religion and we had a whole semester to do it and my father had been a nature boy always and I always felt deeply connected to nature and all of a sudden I was going to have a chance to make a religion and it made sense to me to create this religion,

Which I had no idea.

There was already a context for what I was creating.

I had no idea,

You know,

But I did that and then shortly after I went to college at a place where,

You know,

Paganism,

Animism,

Shamanism were common words and I was part of,

I became part of the feminist movement in the 70s and part of that movement for me was recognizing the female as a consciousness.

You know,

My teacher,

Susan Reed,

My first herbal medicine teacher in the 70s was a,

You know,

She was a ground-gracing shaman who coined the phrase,

The wise woman tradition and through her great ability to communicate with the other side,

You know,

Not the everyday consciousness but the other side,

You know,

She was able to channel so much wisdom that,

You know,

That became,

You know,

My connection to the natural world,

The wise woman tradition of using plants,

Of seeing the world,

Of seeing illness and wellness and the whole spiral of,

You know,

Life.

You know,

I had a partner who was my first pagan,

You know,

She was truly,

She was an animist who made offerings to the woodland spirits and to the water spirits and,

You know,

I lived with her for three years but I remember one time she had a very deep theological discussion with my mother,

The Roman Catholic,

About the goddess and after that discussion my mother,

Who was,

You know,

She was very,

You know,

She was rigid about things a little bit and I remember she started praying to father,

Mother,

God,

My mother.

And that for me was like a crack in the cosmic egg.

I was like,

Oh my god,

Everything's possible here.

I can,

You know,

I can worship,

I can imagine the values that I want my godhood to represent and that's where I can put my loyalty and that's where I can put my trust and that's where I can put my prayers.

So I did.

And I do.

So the first book,

Urban Spirit,

When a very,

The decision came because as I was in Puerto Rico the first time and discovering this amazing tradition,

I was also seeing that the people of Puerto Rico were kind of ashamed of it and,

You know,

There was a clear message,

As you know,

Perhaps we can see today,

You know,

The same message comes true,

The only real medicine is pharmaceutical medicine.

In Puerto Rico people were telling me,

Don't interview that lady,

She's illiterate.

We have a new clinic down the road.

And they were startled and confused by the fact that this gringa lady was coming to their town to interview Dona Liberada or Dona Mariana who,

You know,

Was obviously very poor and in the honoree,

You know,

I've memorized the Bible,

In the honoree,

And that made me feel like I had something important to do because I could see what the value of the tradition was.

So as a journalist and as a,

You know,

Returning Puerto Rican,

You know,

Like I said,

I knew I was going to live there because the work that was presented to me had more meaning than the work that I was doing in New York City,

Which was very well paid.

In fact,

I used to make $200 a day in New York City and I started making $5 an hour when I moved to Puerto Rico,

Working at the college,

Working at the university,

Just to give an idea.

So,

You know,

Very different situations,

But I was totally committed.

I never thought about the money at all.

I was just like,

Oh,

My rent was under $50 a month so I couldn't afford to,

You know,

Make any money at all in Puerto Rico.

I just wanted to be here.

The decision was made for me.

I just knew that I had to do something and I had to do it in a way that honored the tradition,

That was beautiful,

That was uplifting,

That was of a high vibration.

I wasn't going to do a pamphlet.

I was going to do something beautiful.

It was a statement of my own heritage and,

You know,

My own love for Puerto Rican music and food and my whole mother's family,

You know,

Their way of looking at the world,

Their way of partying,

Their way of breaking the generation gap.

There was no generation gap in my family.

Dolores and Milagros,

That was a different situation.

It's a very personal story.

It's very deeply personal.

It's about the context of the culture,

The cultural context in which the medicinal plant tradition is born.

From what context,

From what community relationships,

From what relationships with nature,

From what relationship is divine.

That's kind of the backdrop of our medicine tradition,

So I wanted to explore that and explore what happens when we leave it behind to one of the main characters and then I introduced myself as another main character,

Kind of coming into this society and try to bring things together.

So I just had to do that because what am I going to do with all these stories?

They're not for me,

They're for Puerto Rico and people who love Puerto Rico,

People who love Puerto Rican people.

These stories are for everybody.

The one thing that I also really appreciated about Earth and Spirit,

The first book we talked about,

Is I really thought to myself while I was reading it,

She is capturing a world that is disappearing and I thought one day this book is going to be essential for people as far as healing,

As far as how to reconnect with the natural world.

I also think it's,

You know,

You're telling me this story about people being kind of confused,

That you want to interview people who are poor or who are illiterate and I think those are the people that have all the answers.

Yeah,

Truly those are the people who know about community support,

Those are the people who have the resources,

At least the people that I interviewed,

Not every person,

You know,

Of low income or something is going to be a healer,

But these are people who were pointed out to me by their neighbors because of their integrity and their knowledge and their wisdom and their experience.

So I had no trouble,

In your neighborhood everyone knows who you really are,

You know,

You can't sell a bad horse in your neighborhood,

You have to go somewhere to sell a bad horse.

So I didn't have trouble,

I knew that if they were recommended they were recommended because they were sincerely working,

You know,

As channels for divine intervention and they were doing beautiful work.

Some of their prayers,

In earthen spirit I didn't have the time,

You know,

I just came to Puerto Rico for five weeks to do the interview through oral history,

But you know,

The second book that I did,

Cembrando y Salando,

Puerto Rico,

I was already living in Puerto Rico,

I was doing the interviews and go back and go back again and go back again and get deeper.

And you know,

Some of the prayers that these people say before they touch you,

It's like I can do nothing,

This is all about,

You know,

Our Christ,

You know,

Cunning and remember what he said about,

You know,

That your faith,

If it's as big as a mustard seed,

And remember last time it was dead and he was revived and it's all about putting the person at ease,

I'm not the healer here,

You know,

This is about your relationship to the divine,

So I'm going to leave you here and I'm going to do my work,

But remember,

My hands are representing the Christ,

You know,

His hands and you know,

My heart is representing our holy mother's heart,

A virgin's heart.

That kind of thing would be said before touching you and I think to myself,

My God,

What respect and also what humility.

You know,

These days,

People who do healing,

You know,

They're asked to say,

Oh I have level four of this and I have level three of this and I've been healing for,

And this they're doing it,

You know,

And we know that,

You know,

We're not healing,

But we tend to get confused because people call us healers if we're doing that sort of work,

So you know,

We lose the humility and that was one of the things that just made me fall in love with these people.

They have no sense of I'm doing this for you and I'm the big healer.

No,

They're serving just as,

You know,

The person who's giving you your food in a restaurant is serving,

They're serving,

They're just,

Oh they have this gift,

They've been initiated,

They have the prayers and you come to my house and you're my neighbor and you know,

I'll do my work,

Which is the gift that I have.

Yeah,

I was really struck by the humility in the stories that I read and also really struck by their acceptance that they're kind of just a conduit.

They're just there to facilitate the healing.

I thought that was incredibly beautiful.

Yeah,

The last interview,

Which is definitely the most complete,

I'm looking at their pictures on my main altar right now,

Dona Maria and Don Cenio,

And you know,

He says,

Oh yeah,

You know,

We used to walk,

We used to leave the house in the morning and come back the next day,

You know,

And we never got any money for that.

So we didn't even have to bring anything because all the plants,

They grew around the people that were sick.

I mean,

We found everything we needed right there.

You know,

For me,

One of the tragedies of our time is,

You know,

The poisoning of our natural world and here in Puerto Rico,

I don't know how they've done it,

But they've gotten our people to poison our own soil and our own water and our own,

You know,

Seeds and our own plants ourselves with,

You know,

All these pesticides that we use,

The herbicides.

In the time of,

You know,

When these people were walking here and doing their ministry,

Which was,

You know,

Helping people heal using plants,

You know,

They found everything exactly where the people were because that's part of our relationship with plants,

You know,

And we need one,

It'll be there.

I thought it was really,

Really interesting that I can't remember who it was said this healing,

This ability to heal is a gift.

And I kind of thought that what I heard was it's also a bit genetic that it might run in families.

And so not everybody has the ability to heal.

It's a gift from,

You know,

The universe,

From Gaia,

From spirit,

And you don't turn it down because you can be of service to your neighbors and your community.

Yeah,

It's interesting.

Most of the people I spoke with,

You know,

In order to do their work,

They were initiated.

They received training and they received prayers and they were told in no uncertain terms,

You can only give this to three people in your life.

And so these people would be observing from their own children,

Neighbor children,

Other people with integrity,

Children with integrity,

Children that were service oriented,

Children that were honest,

Children that were earnestly,

You know,

Helpful.

But,

You know,

What you're saying,

You wouldn't turn it down.

Of course,

Many people,

Most people turned it down,

Turned the opportunity down because it's a sacrificed life of,

You know,

There's no money.

People aren't paying you money for these things.

And in the novel,

I think,

You know,

I think it's the last chapter Valeria's sister makes fun of her.

You want to be a what?

You want to be a curandera?

What are you going to live on?

A piece of cheese if someone brings you a bowl of cheese?

I mean,

What are you going to live on?

A candle?

They're going to bring you a candle?

Hahahaha!

They're making fun of it.

Because,

Of course,

The rising of the capitalist mentality and the colonizing mentality that we're all,

All of us are under at this moment.

One that looks down upon this,

This solidarity,

This community building,

This connection with our ecology and our ecosystems because it all gets in the way.

I mean,

It gets in the way of our profits.

So,

You know,

You better just tone that stuff down or forget about it altogether and start buying our products because they're the real medicine.

And,

You know,

That message came through so loud and clear in Puerto Rico,

So loud and clear,

That even the public service movies that were made in the 50s to orient Puerto Ricans about how to work together and how to,

You know,

How to plan things and do things for the family and do things for the community,

Many of those movies,

None of them puts,

You know,

A local healer in a good life.

And usually they're ridiculed or maybe they're drunk or maybe they're,

You know,

Ugly and maybe they're just totally made unattractive to,

You know,

The generations that are watching these films.

So,

You know,

That's one way that the media,

You know,

Controls our mind and controls our culture.

We're told what is valuable and what's not.

So guess what?

You know,

There were not a lot of people eager to take on this tradition,

A tradition that's a thousand years old.

So,

You know,

A longitudinal study in science is the highest,

Is the most highly prized because you want to see how things work from generation to generation,

Right?

So we use mice that we produce quickly so we can see,

You know,

Third generation,

That didn't go very well.

And here we are with traditions that are thousands of years old.

I mean,

You know that if it lasted more than a hundred years,

It's because it worked.

Because if it didn't work,

There were no emergency rooms or,

You know,

Antibiotics or surgery.

There's nothing,

There's no alternative.

If this crime does not heal my son,

I'm going to lose him.

If this crime does not heal my mother,

I'm going to lose her.

My husband,

I'm going to lose him.

So it better work.

And if it works,

It's going to survive.

And if it has survived for thousands of years or hundreds of years,

You better believe that's a good longitudinal study.

And that should be valued by scientists everywhere around the world,

As it once was.

Well,

Every day there's miracles in my life.

And,

You know,

The miracle of connection,

The miracle of how you found me,

The miracle of how we're speaking right now,

You know,

In New Mexico and I'm in Westport,

Puerto Rico.

The miracle that brought me to Puerto Rico and that has allowed me to live,

You know,

This particular calling,

That's totally miraculous to me.

You know,

I sit in front of my altar every day and I'm like,

Oh my God,

This is amazing,

You know.

It's the miracle of courage,

The miracle that you can actually stand up and be courageous in a life right now where courage is not really something that's rewarded.

The miracle of our nourishment,

The miracle of seeds that,

You know,

Become grains,

That become bread,

That become,

Oh my God,

I mean,

Life is totally miraculous.

There's nothing in my life right now that I could say is not a miracle except,

I don't know.

I can't think of anything that's not miraculous.

There's an ant crawling toward me on my,

You know,

On my floor.

God,

What an amazing thing.

This ant got into my house and it's crawling toward me right now.

Life to me is totally miraculous.

So I live in a world of miracles and I'm totally awed by life.

And when I forget how miraculous it is,

I get very,

Very small.

But I live in a miraculous world and everything is a miracle to me.

Plants are considered,

You know,

Spiritual beings and they're the heart chakra of our world,

Of our planet.

They're the green,

You know.

So to see a plant,

I tried that once.

I once tried to have a garden,

A botanical garden,

Organized by what the plants were good for.

And it was just a total,

It was a trachete from the beginning because I had the kidney plants here and then I needed the same plants in another place and I needed the same plants in another place and I just gave up.

I didn't know,

I didn't want to be together anyway the way I wanted them to be.

So the first thing is that it's about complexity but it's also about relationship.

In shamanic terms,

When you take the time to become friends with a plant,

You can ask it for almost anything.

And if you have a strong friendship,

Some shamans just work with one plant.

You know,

They don't have to use a whole apothecary.

They live near one plant,

It does very well with them,

They dream about that plant,

That plant comes to them and dreams children,

They have a real relationship with the plant and they can ask that plant to hear almost anything.

My teacher Susan Reed told me once that one of the great initiations in one of the caves of the Asclepion Caves,

Which was to create healers,

That were in the cave in the total darkness for days and taking different grooves and preparing themselves for the great mystery and the great mystery that they were offered at the end of their travail and their terrible sacrifices like a vision quest we would call it today,

They were given a seed.

And the impact was so great when they saw,

When they could really see the seed,

What is a seed,

They could actually see the vitality and the miracle that is every single seed of our botanical world.

Thank you so much for listening to episode 63 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I need to thank my passionate and hopeful guest Maria Benedetti for being so generous with her time and for taking a chance on someone that she absolutely did not know to agree to be a guest on the podcast.

You can find a link to her website botanicacultura.

Com in the show notes for episode 63.

On her website,

You can find links to purchase her books,

Find a few pages of a graphic novel titled My People Free of Herbicide,

As well as more details about Maria's life,

Her journey,

Her other talents,

And more of her very wise words.

I need to thank the creators of the music used for this episode as well,

Chilled Music and Sasha End.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to other inspirational people.

Books,

Art,

And music,

I think will lift and brighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

This week,

I'm going to read a quotation from Maria's website.

Maria states when talking about plants,

We have been family since the beginning of our human existence.

And of course,

Over those millennia,

Humans have learned to talk to plants,

Plants have talked to humans,

And in many communities all over the world,

People have created healing modalities with the plants they find around them.

Far safer and less toxic than what big pharma has to offer us.

So I guess I do have a request.

Talk to your houseplants.

Talk to the plants you have in your garden.

Find a tree and talk to it.

Plants know far more than we ever will.

They're patient,

Wise,

And waiting for us to catch up to treat them as equals.

So that's my request.

As wacky as it is,

Go out and make friends with a plant.

Do I sound okay now with you?

Oh yeah,

You sound perfect.

You sound completely perfect.

So thank you.

Huzzah!

And there was- I want you to know that I'm not completely perfect.

Oh my god.

Reviews

I love the background sound of coquis blessing this lovely interview!