October 2006

Maintain Your Magic!

I was born a high-spirited child, rich in history and deep in spirit. I learned very quickly to curb this energy and follow instructions. The old ones understood and enforced rigid demands upon the young as we learned to honor and follow the old medicine ways. The Elders would say,"The Mother Earth is your heart. You must stay connected to the natural laws to value her gifts. This honored relationship will fill your voice with a sweetness of your most sensitive expressions, translating your every feeling, idea, and belief into the values of how you must live a good life."

For those who know me, it could be said my philosophical realities are skeptical, sometimes stubborn, yet with reasoning. My natural traits were developed from my environment, culture, education, family and DNA, which created my future thinking, behavior and abilities. I built a good life for myself, filling it with excitement and creative projects. But, like you, I too have wrestled with a life of confusion, baffled with an array of bad and good judgments yet always facing my demons with strength. Many times I have been overwhelmed with my bad choices, sometimes feeling a negative force demanding I give up on myself! NOOO! I will never do that! I have fought too many dark battles with a haunting terrorized silence walking by my side. No, Hell No! I will never walk away from me!

I sat down in my favorite chair, declining another invitation to attend a 2006 New Year's Eve celebration. I bid my dear friends good night and closed the door, feeling physically weak and mentally scattered. Silence reigned throughout the house as I made a pot of herb tea, hoping it would stave off the on-going chills and break my fever. I undressed and forced myself through a hot shower before retiring. I crawled into bed, head throbbing and throat hot, dry and scratchy. I was beyond exhaustion and too tired to even care. You know that feeling, when you give up knowing you cannot fight another damn day? All I wanted to do was lie down on the bed and never open my eyes again. As my head touched the pillow, the room began to spin as if everything was crashing down like a meteorite hitting me with one helluva blow. I was starving for oxygen and HAD TROUBLE BREATHING. I frantically called a friend and, within an hour, the kitchen cabinets were filled with vegetables, soups, juices, teas, herbs, vitamins, and minerals along with my grandmother's pine tree remedies prepared for my use.

Within an hour, my body began raging with sweats, fever and chills. Every bone and muscle in my body ached. I could not recognize the changes in day or night. They seemed to turn into weeks as linear time and space left my logical thinking. At the moment, I believed I was losing my mind, having no clue whether I was sane or insane. My emotions continued to run wild, mostly living in two worlds at the same time, fearing if I had enough time to complete my life's work on Mother Earth. After these terrifying sieges I would wake up with a clear head, feeling fine and within a split second I would become listless and depressed as I recalled the experiences. At other times, I would remember nothing. Days and weeks passed with fevers and spasms along with on-going coughing spells. I would sleep intermittently and, within seconds, I would be reliving a childhood trauma. I saw my grandmother's old wood-burning stove in the kitchen with my Father placing chunks of pine sap into one pot, letting it slowly melt until the water became oily. The second pot was filled with long pine needles and parts of a pine root to be made into a tea. I watched them take turns in dipping small towels into the melted sap, covering my body and head with hot towels. Another mixture of burning herbs were applied by them, inhaling the smoke into THEIR lungs, then placing their mouth over mine, forcing the smoke into my lungs until I vomited up the mucus. This vision treatment begins to act out in my physical world.

I felt the loving presence of my Grandmother and Father giving me intervals of peaceful sleep. I began to reflect heavily on a long ago dreaded dream I saw as a child. The day will come when Mother Earth will fight back and will speak strong to the winds and the waters. Wakinyan, the Thunderbird, will hear Mother Earth's plea and will roar in mocking laughter at the stupidity of humankind. He will send lightning bolts raging across Mother Earth's body, ravaging all that is left with fire. The world will become an inferno as the air ignites and sears the lungs of the two legs and the four legs who will find it impossible to breathe as hysteria rules the land. I witnessed this vision when I was fifteen years old.

I remember going to the Elders for guidance and understanding. These were their words: "Slowly, and far too late, the people will see their powers are leaking away. Honor and integrity will no longer hold value. The streets will run rampant with thieves, killers, rapists, and child molesters for a mere thrill of a dollar or a piece of bread. The children will turn on their parents." I remember my forefathers raging against these powerful fraudulent leaders. In those earlier days the downtrodden Indian cried out to Wakan Tanka and stood up as one people against government corruption to take back their land. We have not lost that battle. I have seen the horrible pollution of our water and air. The Indigenous people have always known "What we do to our Mother Earth will be done to us. We are living in those times; the old predictions are coming to pass. For decades we have heard of the human birth explosion, leaving no room for life. If we listen with our heart, we can hear the cries coming from the empty cradles of a loveless life. Have we run out of time?

I have seen long ago worlds. I have dreamed and traveled through time to comprehend these ancient ways. I have drifted through many hidden caves, touching the secret markings left from the ancient people. I felt the chaos of the land as it will someday heave, rise and fall again, all the while renewing the strengths of evolution within the minds of the human race.

I have seen the lost people of our future, desperately struggling to dig themselves free from the contamination of another world's destruction. I have smelled the rotting flesh as the odor rose from the huge mounds of people stacked in piles of screaming hallowed voices...life dissipated into a stillness of sorrow. I cried out when I saw the sky slowly fill with graying darkness as skeletal figures huddled in shattered temples and holy places, as blinded eyes searched desperately into the darkness to find a fragment of a piece of pottery scattered across the barren soil to prove I once had a life on Mother Earth.

I heard the ever howling winds constantly whip away the senseless baskets of woven colors that once kept the records of the human's spiritual growth in tact. A dimmed light floated close to the surface of Mother Earth, seemingly to be riding upon a faded torn ribbon of energy, constantly vanishing into the dark shadows of the bones that lay at the feet of the dead.

Overhead a canvas of stars rose high above our highest of mountains as continued shadows grew in strength of ancient raging...yet silence. I heard sacred prays, reaching out to all that is sacred: the pipe, the rituals, the songs, the flutes, the dances and the heart beat of the drum as the people fought to maintain their contact with Mother Earth and Father Sky during the evolutionary steps to the spiritual growth of the human race. If the symbols of all life are the rhythm of the same heartbeat of Mother Earth, then where is the harmonic rhythmic heart beat of the earthly human?

I celebrated my 76th birthday, September 16, 2006, with good friends, good food, good gossip, lots of jokes and laughter. The Fire counsel had given me a wonderful surprise. They had invited many of my old friends and Sundance brothers and sisters who helped make the June 2006 Sun Dance a powerful ceremony. What a wonderful gift for my birthday. We each agreed we must apply the knowledge we represent. We must demonstrate the measure of our thoughts before we can value our action.

A Soul is never bored; it yearns to know what is on the other side. I agreed it was a necessity to be able to create a devilish smile and a childlike giggle. A free spirit is a dreamer of tomorrow. I liked the psychological and physical of my being during my sick time in bed. Therefore, my recovery became my discovery. The sun was setting as everyone said their good-byes and left. Sha-Tonga and I sat quietly on the patio, watching the sun move along the horizon bringing dancing shadows onto the patio. A chilly wind created goose bumps on my skin. I must say, it is time for two tired souls to head inside for a well deserved night's sleep.

Thank you for your wonderful emails during my illness. I appreciate the patience you have shown in the past few months. I am happy to say I am back at work. Thank you for your prayers.

And, surely, you all must know I have a sick sense of humor. So, HERE GOES! I send each of you a belated wish...

Happy New Year!

All My Relations

Mahinto and Sha-Tonga
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