Waking in the half light of  a new day and into a new year, I go out into the frozen morning with a hummingbird feeder to hang it in the dogwood tree, a bare winter branch with spring buds waiting.  Walking down the long narrow lawn to fill the seed feeder I am moved deeply by the silence of the morning.  I savor the cold against my bare skin, the brittle crunch of heavily frosted grass under my feet disturbing the hush.  I am grateful for the perfection of this winter day, being alive to witness the dawning alone – no birds yet risen with song.

The abundance of my life is not lost on me.  The frigid morning was there to greet me.  I did not have to sleep outside in the cold.  I have a home.  It was a warm and comfortable bed I arose from.  There’ll be hot coffee with cream and breakfast to follow, clean clothes.

A few days ago I had the realization that in addition to the love and light I do my best to practice and live, that I still held judgment and anger for the transgressions of the past.  The past is behind me.  Unless I put it into my present.  And worse into my future.  My rightful concerns for the injustices and the inequalities that exist in the world today have been so clouded over by my conditioning.  No matter where my heart has been coming from, my mind still had control.  I don’t want to simply change my mind – change can equal little more than another word slipped in to replace anger.  A word with the matching emotion such as indignation, resentment, acrimony or bitterness.  Change isn’t benevolence or good will – transcendence is.

Anger is valid.  Anger though, must be put to good use.  Anger is my teacher shifting my perspective more fully towards forgiveness and embracing the light.  Injustice isn’t healed by anger alone, by recounting each outrage or prejudice, all the oppressions and breaches in dignity.  I cannot make the reparations in the outside world.  The trespasses of the past can only be healed inside my own head and heart.  I see how I need to stop ripping back the scab that makes the wounds bleed.  I am willing to transcend the mind, create a new pattern.   Connect the head and the heart.  This, says Chief Phil Lane, Jr. is the longest journey a human being will ever undergo.  I am tired of this walk – on a treadmill going nowhere – I am learning.

I will step anew onto a path of calm and kindness, contentment without complacency for a new dawn to rise within my heart each minute of the day.  As I transmute this old way of being, I create the possibility of a dawning of light, a healing elixir and salve that transcends anger into charity and peaceable forbearance.  Of a heart alleviated from the long-suffering anger of the past.  As another one of my teachers said this morning, “…when I go to do something, or manifest something, I always start with a prayer, put out the intent for things to manifest.  That is the teaching.  Sometimes we just forget to apply our tools and we have really good ones.”.

At the genesis of this new year, I put up this prayer – for gratitude, for peace of mind, of forgiveness, and for the manifestation of a new dawn and anger that lives in the past.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Since first posting this piece in 2014, my relationship to ceremony, to walking in a good way, and to myself have deepened tremendously. I have learned how even my most respectful intentions have loose edges. My apologies to anyone who I have inadvertently disrespected. I used the Lakota language, The Sacred Pipe, my source for the words I chose. Going to Standing Rock. Having recently quested. I am learning. Still. Humbly. August 2017

I dreamed… I was with the Star Nation, held in the vastness of sapphire blue, they glittered all around me.  I was filling – but not to full – rectangular paper boxes with light and releasing them into the darkness.  Ballast containers for the hanblecheyapi.

I’ve never vision quested myself however I have been invited to support the hanblecheya camp – once as an ally to a quester and today I go into camp as the camp cook for the fifth time.  It is an honor and a lot of hard work.

Six stops at various grocery stores to get all the provisions.  At one store I was asked if I “shop often?”  I was told at another that it seemed like the “healthiest camp food” he’d ever seen.  We will eat well.  Three squares a day plus a sweet thing or two.  The nourishment I serve up to the intercessor, the fire tenders, all those who support the camp is healthy and plentiful.  This abundance is also feeding those on the hill who are fasting and going without water for days – energetically they are fed, nourished in a good way by our eating and drinking.  With a lot of creativity I will get all the food packed into my car – she is not a pack mule but I treat her like one.

A Vision Cry or quest is an ancient tradition with the Lakota People.  In my community is it treated with deepest respect and reverence – the tradition is honored in ever way possible.  The preparations have taken many months – their sacred items in hand, the altar is set.  The Questers commitments are rooted in something I cannot begin to know – this time on the hill is their prayer to the Creator for their families and their path at this time.

“But perhaps the most important reason to “lament” is that it helps us to realize our oneness with all things, to know that all things are our relatives; and then in behalf of all things we pray to Wakan-Tanka that He may give to us knowledge of Him who is the source of all things, yet greater than all things.”  Black Elk, excerpts from The Sacred Pipe.

There is a line in the Sacred Pipe that also says in our sleep the most powerful visions come to us; they are not merely dreams, for they are more real and powerful and do not come from ourselves, but from Wakan-Tanka.  In my dream there is ballast, light that will surround and support my friends who will cry for a vision so all the people will live.  And then we will feast in celebration – traditional foods – buffalo stew, wojapi and fry bread, salmon to honor the local River People.

My own prayer ties complete.  They are for all the hands who have brought this food forward, for the land that is has come from, for the food itself – the various Nations who have offered themselves for us to eat, for our protection and safety and harmonious kitchen, the heart of camp.  For those who support.  For those who will quest.

Wakan-Tanka onshimala ye oyate wani wachin cha!

O Great Spirit  be merciful to me that my people may live!

I received a Constellations class as a giveaway in late July from one of my current teachers.  First we were taught to use our body’s physical sensations as a barometer with exploratory exercises to familiarize.  Then our group, 20 of us, were contained tightly (or so it seemed to me) in the corner of a room.  We were to imagine ourselves as our Ancestors onboard a ship, the vessel coming to America – the New Land of promise.  The melting pot where we all belonged.

The interesting experience I had is a tell-tale of what my ancestors felt.  It is a in my own DNA patterning.  It is the ceremonies in my life that allow me to be present with this in a way that doesn’t have any quality of shrinkage – instead I feel humble and bold.  I am carrying my own weight and that of all the others.   Yet it doesn’t feel a burden.  I turn to it, open.  What will it show me of myself, of those who came before me?  Frankly, it wasn’t a pleasant experience on the boat.  Not until many had already disembarked, their own promises in hand, giving me some personal space was I able to breathe.  For me the New Land didn’t feel promising or remotely inviting.  I forced myself to get off the boat, find my way.  I did not feel I belonged.  Nor did I feel welcomed.  The New Land gave me a headache, leaving me nauseated.  The word sequestered keeps coming to mind.  I’ll look at that later.  Now I feel compelled to feel this as a new way of knowing myself and my life – the everyday stuff.  How will that large overview of self lead to discovery  of my walk in the world?  In the places where I bloom and shine or where I drag my feet and cling to the banks of the river, speak up or go mum, demand personal space or offer freely of my time and energies?

A fantastic synchronicity – I was generously gifted with having my DNA analyzed by 23andme at the same time of this Constellations class.  Thank you Lo’ and R3.

A curiosity, we are currently in Leo which is empty in my personal astrological chart.  The 5th house, how do I express myself creatively?  This feels like I’ve drawn the Blank Rune.  The patterns have been delivered.  It is up to me.  What will I do with it?  Like Leo with the Sun as it’s symbol, I am standing at the center.  I am standing at the center of my lineage.  Many generations have come before who now stand behind me.  What will I create with these patterns for the generations to come?

Constellations can be practiced at any time – in our home lives with partners and children, our family of origin interactions, in the work place, at the grocery store.  What the body senses is a barometric touchstone at every moment.  Does it feel inviting?  Does it repelled?  Am I nonplused?   This leaves me to think of the seemingly endless war and the violence we perpetrate on one another.  The teaching is straightforward and elemental, easy to catch onto.  It could be a game changer I feel.  Yet, the patterns are so dangerously ingrained and for so many the act of survival in their current life situation all they can focus on.  Kill or be killed, it’s been happening for centuries, violence is in our DNA.  With this awareness and without a gun or a bomb pointed towards a person – in the Middle East or the streets of Any-City USA, anywhere – could we ALL learn to get along?  Would we understand the patterns and create something new?

It is also true, that in my DNA patterning there is a prayer for peace.  I too, have a dream.   Aho Mitakuye Oyasin!  All My Relations!