Heat. . .

“Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now; it’s all that there is…”

-Leonard Cohen

The weather is brutal in the arbor this year; a hundred and two and high humidity.  The Dance Chief tells us that heat brings Ancient wisdom.   My breath blows gently through the whistle.  Gentleness is the lesson this time – the gentleness of Mother Bear cradling me like a cub; bearing her breast and nursing me for the journey.

A torrent of disconnected thoughts rushes through my head.  I open up to it; let it flow through the whistle.  It mingles with the breath of God, and suddenly, there is silence.  In that soft, whispery space, a solitary voice is heard.  “God doesn’t live to create,” it says, “God creates to live.  And you are simply an instrument of that.  Everything you create gives life to God.”

The Elders gather now at the edge of the circle; Grandmothers and Grandfathers who’ve crossed with noble faces and humble hearts into the upper world.  They stand in a circle of shadows behind each of us, chanting, clapping, spurring us on in our work.  A pair of slender hands brushes sage smoke on the path before me; behind me, another does the same.  I walk in beauty, to and from the center, where Great Spirit pours his healing light into the tree and out through all of us simply that the people might live.

And I am lifted.

As ego crumbles, and the cries of the people gather in intensity, my eyes are wet with gratitude.  I am carried from the tree to the edge of the arbor and back, a leaf in Grandfather’s breath.  It is a steady flow of energy, rippling through me and out across creation, exhaling with each new birth, inhaling whenever another crosses over.

My own breathing labors now.  In the unwavering sunlight I crawl to the center, spit on my hand and touch the tree one final time.  A song rises through dry lips.  I am of Spirit.  It is so…

Rattle…

By the side of the highway
vultures peck at the body of a fallen doe.

I think of my country,
its people, mired in poverty;
spiritually bankrupt,
enthralled by the headlights of the vehicle
that threatens to run them down
as they tear the few remaining scraps
from the corpse of the old ideals.

Oh, America, what have you become?
I turn my back on your government.
I turn my back on your flag
whose red is blood;
whose white,
imperialist oppression.
I turn my back on your greed.
I turn my back on your arbitrary
and artificially constructed web of lies.

America, how can we respect you
when you gorge yourself
on the bodies of the world’s children?
Quench your thirst
on the bitter tears of widows?
Your soul is sick, America.
You tend to your body
while your spirit festers and rots.

Turning my back on you, America,
I embrace instead, my brother,
his wild, savage heart,
the light of Spirit dancing naked
in the darkened  places of this world.
I embrace the light of the rising Sun
and the green grass that bends
but does not break beneath my feet.

How can we become mystics,
When we trap ourselves
in these boxes of slow, gray death?

Oh, my people,
I hear your cry.
And so I break this body
against the arbor’s hallowed ground
that you might live.
I pray for us all
that together we might one day stand
and feel the gentle breeze
against our faces.

From this sacred place
I cry out for a vision.
Cry out that Spirit might look upon this wanderer
and grant some measure of mercy
that his people might  come to understand
the joys of the cool green Earth.
Might turn away from the hard Black road
and walk instead the Red one.
Might press their feet softly
against the skin of the one that bore them.
Might know that they are not alone.
Might know that they are loved.

How can we become mystics,
when we trap ourselves
in these boxes of slow, gray death?

On the road…

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

 -Theodor Seuss Geisel

We are all children of the West, here in this place of the physical – ideas; expressions of God given clay for the briefest of times.  Our purpose then, is simply to open as manifestations of the creative force that is Spirit in all that is enacted through us.

 I woke up this morning after an evening of dinner and a movie with an old friend of nearly 30 years to the sound of Emmylou Harris on the radio.  Her voice was razor thin, beautiful and sad, and I thought about her responsibility of sharing it with the world, just as each of us must do with the individual talents Spirit has presented us.  We’ve no more choice in the matter than a peacock has in displaying its fan or a cheetah its velocity.

I thought of my own love of music, and the times I’d fumbled with guitar, bass and voice.  I also remembered the years of poetry readings and features, and how all that had fallen away.

And then I heard these words as clearly as if they were my own: “Other gifts would have taken you other places.”

And I realized the things I’d have missed had my pursuits been different: the company of elders with energy of men one-third their age, a life saved by a single dandelion, the fallen shaman and the one he dragged down with him, the unbridled compassion of the Divine Mother cradling my broken body as it collapsed into her arms in the arbor at the Sun Moon dance.

All these things and more make up this life.  All are simply notes in the symphony of Spirit. . .

7/21 . . .

Tomorrow afternoon I step into the arbor.  I open myself up to Wakan Tanka and dance for the healing of the waters of the Earth.  There are no words to describe the way I feel.

On Saturday afternoon, I heard the voices of a thousand Elder Trees welcome their little brother as we placed him at the center of the circle.  I, too, joined their song, merging with the younger one as the water of life splashed across our roots. 

Our voice was weak at first – unsure of its place in the symphony.  Then, as a hush fell around the fringes of the field, our song rang clear across the crowded circle, only to be rejoined by those who stood in loving awe at its edges – a gift from Pachamama.

As our roots settled deeply into freshly hewn soil, we felt ourselves synch with the grid of life.  Water up; sunlight down; silence in the center.  Flames of energy burst forth, stripping away our physical form, reworking us into a flaming beacon of silver.

And even the wind rushed in to join the dance. . .

Big wheel keep on turnin’. . .

“No regrets, Coyote. . .”
-Joni Mitchell

I recently received an e-mail confirming my reservation for this year’s Sun Moon Dance this coming July.  This will be my second year:  the direction of the South, the place of emotional healing and standing in our own shadow. 

Undoubtedly some would argue that I’m predisposing things by saying this, but lately I’ve been aware of the Mongrel Trickster making his way around the arbor with a swaggering gait and a playful gleam in his eye. 

“Come in,” he says, “there’s something I want to show you.”

My first Sun Moon Dance was almost two years ago, just two short weeks after burying my mother.  I found her waiting for me in the lean-to after I fell, and she and the spirits of her own mother and father greeted me with kind and loving words.

“I understand,” she said, finally coming to terms with my spiritual path – something she’d struggled with the last few years of her life, although her depression and ill health kept her from focusing on pretty much everything else.

“Thank you for taking care of our daughter,” my grandfather said, extending the rough and calloused hand I’d taken many times as a child.

With that, the three of them turned and walked off together into the light – and I was left with a profound sense of joy expressing itself as cleansing tears and laughter.

This, of course, is only part of my vision.  The rest is buried deep within, more a part of me than my own skin. 

The arbor calls.  Coyote smiles.   My feet continue to dance although for now the sacred drum is silent.   I can’t begin to fathom what this year’s Sun Moon Dance will have to teach me.  I place myself in Spirit’s care, and smile at the sound of the Trickster’s voice in the distance. . .