A Condolence Ceremony for Tim From John Brown Childs

A Condolence Ceremony for Tim
From John Brown Childs
Santa Cruz, California
20 January 2010

I had the good fortune of meeting Tim many years ago through our mutual friend Jeremy Brecher.  I was immediately (and continuously) struck by the way in Tim was a compassionate world worker with a sharp intelligence, humility, powerful drive for justice, and an overall conviviality that personified and exemplified how to do and be globalization from below.

The documentary by Tim, Jeremy, and Brendan Smith, “Global Village or Global Pillage?” about globalization from below, that I have shown many times to my students, always strikes home with its clarity and deep current of social justice.  My students are always riveted by Tim’s easy to understand analysis of complex problems in that documentary.  Several thousand of my students have comment on his presentation and have benefited from it.  Many of them are now out in the world doing good work for humankind.

As the Indigenous Na-Dene (“Navajo”) people of the U.S. southwest would say, he was “a valuable person.”

I feel great sadness at the loss of Tim as I know many others do.  I would like to offer some words of condolence from a ceremony of my mother’s maternal Indigenous Native American ancestors the Oneida people who were classically one of the Five Nations of the renown confederacy called the Great League of Peace or “League of the Iroquois”—in their own language “Hauenosaunee”—People of the Longhouse.

Condolence Ceremony for Tim Costello

We have now met in great sorrow to lament over the death of our brother.  We will sit together in grief and mingle our tears together.

We will wipe the tears from your eyes, so that you may have peace of mind.

Continue to hear us.

When people are in great grief their throats are blocked and they cannot speak.  We remove the obstruction from your throats so that you may speak good words.

Now hear us again.

When people are in great grief caused by death, their ears are closed up and they cannot hear.  We will therefore remove the obstruction of grief from your ears so that you may have perfect hearing again.

Continue to hear us.

When people are brought to grief by death they loose sight of the sun.  We therefore remove the mist so that you may see the sun rising over the trees in the east, and watch its course and when it arrives at midsky, it will shed forth its rays around you, and you shall begin to see your duties and perform the same as usual.

Now continue to listen.

When a person is brought to grief, the sticks of wood from the community’s hearth are scattered by death.  So we will gather up the sticks of wood and rekindle the fire, and the smoke shall rise and pierce the sky, so all the nations may see the smoke.

And when a person is in great grief the head is bowed down in deep sorrow.  We can therefore cause you to stand up again, surround the re-kindled council fire, and resume your duty.  This we say and do.

We now conclude our discourse.

[Adapted from The Haudenosaunee Condolence Ceremony by J.B. Childs (Brothertown-Oneida/ Madagascan descent).  The adaption is drawn from A.C. Parker, The Constitution of the Five Nations or The Iroquois Book of the Great Law. (1916, University of the State of New York, Albany).]

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