A Remarkable Meeting

Kituwah

A Remarkable Meeting

        Shortly after arriving in Sedona last year I joined the Sedona Visual Artists' Coalition, a vibrant and inclusive community of creative souls, nice folks, talented artists. The group's annual show in November featured a theme of "Who Am I?" and as you might imagine, there was great creativity and joie de vivre displayed by the artists whose interpretive artworks were shown. One in particular caught my eye and apparently a lot of other eyes too. The People's Choice Award went to  sculptor Tom Gebler for his bronze Kituwah, a Cherokee Native American. And though the sculpture itself is stunning, the really amazing story is why Gebler chose this piece to answer the question "Who Am I?"

 
A Timeless Tale
         I talked to Tom at the show and got the feeling I'd encountered a man on a mission, a sense reinforced when I heard the remarkable story of how this sculpture was created. The prize winning bronze represents Gebler's dogged determination to find the answer to a mystery that has haunted him for years. Tom's story is an inspiring tale of awakening, enlightenment and reparations, a story he describes as a journey to make peace with what he believes is a lost-and-found part of his own personal history as well as a quest to offer insights in to peacemaking among cultures. But the story that you're about to hear is probably not not what you may think.

Kituwah and sculptor Tom Gebler

The Story
          Tom says it all started when he was an art student back in 1981. Sitting in his dorm room one day minding his own business, he experienced an intense visual experience of a Native American man accompanied by a feeling of  visceral 'knowing.' He couldn't describe or explain what it was but the artist in him knew enough to quickly fashion a clay image of the bust of a young Cherokee man who Tom would one day know as Kituwah. Just before completing the piece, he had the compelling feeling that he could no longer work on it. He didn't know why but somehow it felt wrong to touch it. So he put it away and that was the end of it until 1993. He was working on a guided visualization with a healer which turned out to be an experience that provided further revelations for Tom and his relationship with the mysterious Indian he had encountered 12 years before. Tom describes it this way:
         "During that session she asked me to go to a place where I felt safe, I saw and described the apple orchard across the creek from my  (boyhood) cabin. Then she asked me where I felt powerful. In my mind I went from the apple orchard to the nearby rocky wash and described how it felt as I ascended the massive boulders. She then simply asked 'Who is there at the top?'  At that moment I saw the image of this Native American man and said the word 'Kituwah.'"  Tom recognized the image but again didn't follow up with any real intent to connect the dots. It was only when as a middle aged man in his mid-fifties, after he'd returned to live permanently in what had been his boyhood vacation cabin in Sedona's Oak Creek Canyon, that he felt a pull to revisit the other connections made all those years before. His story took a sharp twist when an event involving a potential life and death drama set him on the path he's now following. It turns out that the cliff above Oak Creek Canyon by his cabin  where he'd encountered Kituwah in his long ago guided visualization turned out to be the very same spot where he ended up initiating a rescue for a stranded hiker at serious risk. The grateful hiker later provided financial support for Tom to finish the original clay bust of Kituwah and to cast it in bronze. With the sculpture finished after languishing all those years, Tom began a serious investigation into who and what Kituwah might mean, for him and perhaps for others someday.

Site of Kituwah Mound near Bryson City, North Carolina

 A Sacred Site
        Through research Tom learned of a sacred site, the Kituwah Mound, nestled in the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina near a fork in the Tuckasegee river.  At one time the site held a structure which housed the sacred flame of the Cherokee,  kept burning at all times by a specially appointed leader who lived there. This flame was very much symbolic of the life of the Cherokee, and people from nearby villages routinely visited to light ceremonial fires with it. Today the site is seen as a reminder of unity amongst the Cherokee People. Ceremonies are being conducted at the mound, people are returning to pray and reconnect with their roots even as a debate rages about whether the site should be developed. Some say yes, while traditionalists say the site is off limits. The remainder of the mound is about nine miles from the Eastern Cherokee reservation, once as large as 36,000, now a population of around 12,000. The Kituwah site was almost  completely destroyed during the carnage wrought by Griffith Rutherford, a militia General who led an expedition against the Cherokee in 1776 at Kituwah Mound. The twist in this story is that Tom's personal ancestral lineage research uncovered the fact that he was related not to the Cherokee nation, but to General Rutherford himself. The knowledge that he was the eighth generation removed from the man who'd perpetrated a genocidal crime, shocked and bewildered him and made it even more difficult for him to let go of the story. What he chose to do was remarkable.

Lessons Learned

Cherokee Peace Flag

       Last year Tom bundled up a new casting of his sculpture and set off to meet with Cherokee leaders in North Carolina. He says he saw it as a way to offer what might be seen as reparations, apologies, amends. He presented his story along with his sculpture Kituwah to Cherokee leaders who politely accepted but told Tom that in Cherokee tradition "I'm sorry" was not the accepted protocol. Better to simply say "This is what happened and here is what I have learned." A rather humbling experience, one that's brought him full circle. What happens now, I asked Tom. He said he doesn't know, that he's not attached to whatever the outcome may be to the story of Kituwah, but he hopes his story will somehow bring inspiration to others learning to make peace.  

 Signs & Symbols
          Tom's travels with Kituwah reflect his growing belief that spiritual seekers have an expanded field of opportunities open to them if they can cultivate the detachment necessary for paying true attention to the signs, symbols, messages and wonders that are out there for everyone, available for discovery everywhere. "We simply have to learn to be open enough and clear enough and able to pay attention to and receive the lessons life brings, and then let go of any expectations around those lessons,' Tom says. "These are the two key things I've learned from this experience with Kituwah." Tom's put together a youtube video to help make sense of his journey...I think it's worth watching: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx3gH1rl-Ak)