This post started with my writing about a dream but then it became connected, I think, with our ceremony.
1st part of the "dream";
Picture the earth from a satellite in its orbit. Next picture a circle 4 or 5 times the circumference of the earth and locate it next to the earth, close enough so that one side of the circle will pass through the earths magnetic poles. Now draw many circles side by side each other, all acting like that first circle, equadistant apart and intensely vibrating aglow, pulsating with a seeming universal life energy. All colors united into one brilliance which gave off a magnificent high to low pitch in a ringing hummm as the rings colors changed in hue again and again. Inside of me I felt like exploding yet my mind sensatiions were tranquil and almost all-reaching. It was actually a little dizzying in its energy.
2nd part of the "dream";
My sister and I were galloping on horses, dragging these large and long grey bags which were giving off a glowing dust which immediately turned into lines which rose into the sky. We were riding across a desert and drawing these lines in perfectly straight rows which formed arcs into the air and then vanished as they turned the sky into all these colors. It all was totally breath-taking with colors I have not seen before and sounds like I've never heard but cannot describe now. The horses were very large and grey and puffed their breath which echoed and vibrated in a sound like, "Yow, Yow, Yow.", over and over. The horses' muscles under me made me feel larger then myself and very strong and young. Sis and I never looked at each other but were almost out of breath with glee, laughing and crying. When I tried to look around it made me feel sick so I just rode off into the endless sand with my sister as the sounds of the rising lines and horses continued on.
I woke up feeling very cold and alone. Whenever I tried to think of the dream vision I would get dizzy, so I just quieted my mind. I got up a few minutes later because my back really hurt and I almost fell from that same strange dizzyness. All day long (yesterday) until right now, I have this acute clearness of mind, fully energized, alert and not wanting to eat so, since then, I have just lightly snacked.
Saturday night (the night before last) we went to a street dance and I couldn't get over how all the other folk there were numb and hollow, except for one man who was leaning against this old pickup truck, watching the crowd intensely. When he saw me staring at him, he shook his head quickly and walked away into the semi-darkness where he was joined by this short woman in an old, long grey dress that was too big for her. I suddenly felt totally out of place and asked the WJ if we could leave because the rock music really wasn't something we liked to dance to. She said she was chilly, anyway, so we left.
I can't really describe clearly how I feel now. Just different. I don't know if this "dream" was brought to me by our fire but it is important for us here to remember to remember that a ceremony, in and of itself, is a point of return. It takes us toward a specific place of balance, our place in the community of all things. It is an event to, once again, set us upright. It is never a finished thing. Our real ceremony begins where the formal one ends, when we take up a new way, our minds and hearts filled with the vision of earth and fire that holds us within them, in compassionate relationship to and with our world.
I spoke. I sang. I beat my drum. I swallowed water and breathed smoke for over 48 hours. When I walked away from my circle of power, it was as if my skin contained the wind and rain, the birds and trees which were around me in my small little back yard world for that brief time out of time.
Something alive moved in my body, maybe a lot like the sun and how it moves through the seasons. The solitude and nurturing I received was a silent relationship with myself and clan members, but also a part of something much, much bigger and older than all of us.
My fire is quiet now as the last remnants of ember and smoke curl away into the spring Iowa breezes. I have started packing up my bowls and baskets, my caches and shields and will leave my prayer ties for a good strong wind to scatter them from the trees. I went back to work yesterday afternoon and everyting in my life returns again to the best form of "normal" which I can muster until another of our fires this Fall.
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And a loon sits off in the distance from my lodge right now, as I type this, and longingly calls another nght home.
Two Feathers
