Calling the Spirit Back

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet

-Reprinted from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo. Publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark. 

There are poems that ask to be admired, and then there are poems that ask to be obeyed. Joy Harjo’s For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet does not sit politely on the page. It reaches out, takes you by the collar of your distracted life, and says: come home. Not to a house. Not to a country. To yourself.

The first instruction feels almost mischievous in its simplicity. Put down the chips. Turn off the noise. Close the door behind you. It is not a metaphor yet. It is a physical interruption. Harjo understands something urgent about modern living: our spirits do not leave us in dramatic exits. They drift. They slip out quietly while we are scrolling, snacking, numbing, obeying routines that never ask who we are. The poem is a rescue mission disguised as common sense.

Then the winds arrive. Not as romance, but as medicine. Air that has traveled, gathered plant essences, cleaned itself on the way to you. Breathing becomes ceremony. Gratitude becomes movement. Singing becomes propulsion. Suddenly survival is not about endurance anymore. It is about participation. You are no longer stuck in the body. You are traveling with it.

What moves me most is how Harjo speaks of belonging before identity. The earth knew you when you were only a dream planting itself in your parents’ desire. Before history, before damage, before stories hardened around you. There is tenderness there. A reminder that we existed before we were wounded. Before we were afraid. Before we learned how to disappear inside ourselves.

She tells us to walk toward the guardians, toward the fire that has been burning without time. That image feels ancient and electric at once. It says your life is not a solo act. It never was. You come from circles. From keepers. From memory older than shame. And the earth itself steadies our jittery, colonized, anxious bodies. Not by explaining us, but by holding us.

The poem does not avoid harm. It names insects, birds, animal people, and asks us to apologize. That matters. Healing is not selfish in Harjo’s world. It is relational. You cannot call your spirit back without acknowledging what humans have broken along the way. Restoration is a conversation, not a conquest.

And then comes one of the most important lines: the heart knows the way. Even through highways, checkpoints, soldiers, wars, hatred. Even through systems built to confuse us. Even through trauma that rewires the nervous system. The mind might scatter, but the heart remembers direction. That is radical. It says you are not lost in your essence. You are only delayed.

Harjo warns us gently about the mind running off to the feast set by the thieves of time. That phrase feels painfully accurate. Productivity, fear, comparison, consumption, urgency. They eat hours. They eat souls. They convince us we are too busy to belong to ourselves. The poem answers with refusal. Do not hold regrets. Do not stay imprisoned by failure. Cut the ties. Clean yourself. Let pain move out of your shoulders, your heart, your feet. Let ancestral sorrow loosen its grip so the future can breathe.

Then comes the most intimate instruction of all: call your spirit the way you would call a beloved child. Not with discipline. Not with shame. With tenderness that makes returning safe.

Your spirit might come back in pieces. In tatters. In quiet fragments you barely recognize. But they will be happy to be found. That line alone feels like a small resurrection. It tells every survivor, every artist, every exhausted human: nothing in you is beyond gathering. Nothing is too damaged to be welcomed.

And when the spirit rests, Harjo does something brilliant. She throws a party. Not a solemn ending. Not isolation. Community. Invitation. Food. Laughter. Space for the ones who have nowhere else to go. Healing is not a private luxury. It becomes hospitality.

And finally, responsibility.

After you come back, you go back out.
You light the path for someone else.

That is where the poem turns from beautiful to necessary. We are not healed just to feel better. We are healed so the dark has fewer places to hide. So fewer spirits wander unnamed. So fewer people think they are alone in the wreckage of being human.

Joy Harjo’s poem is not comfort. It is courage. It says your life is a ceremony. Your breath is an offering. Your return is possible. And once you find your way back to yourself, the real work begins.

You become a guide.