Dear Adele,
Wow. Life-Change, here I come.
Change for the Chang-Maker, I wrote in an email to a friend.
You are a beacon of resilience for me in this time of great
change in my life. Thank you for being you.
That gigantic change came just before my vacation, a
road-trip north with my Dad. So I had the pleasure of reading official
documents from the wifi hotspots outside of Tim Hortons and of calling lawyers
from inside my tent at Provincial Campgrounds.
A unique and unsimplitic situation.
The main purpose of my trip north was to visit my Mentors
from Banff, Mary and Martin. Here is a photo of Martin, me and my Dad.
Mary and Martin brought together Elders and knowledge keepers from across the north for a sacred teaching lodge, shake tent ceremonies, conversations about environmental issues and the power of Indigenous knowledge. Wow again. How amazing to truly bear witness and even participate in such a meaningful and ancient experience.
Mary and Martin brought together Elders and knowledge keepers from across the north for a sacred teaching lodge, shake tent ceremonies, conversations about environmental issues and the power of Indigenous knowledge. Wow again. How amazing to truly bear witness and even participate in such a meaningful and ancient experience.
In the foreground of this photo is the sweat lodge where we
smushed in almost 30 woman in the complete, womb-like dark. Each person got a
moment to offer their prayers. The whole group prayed with you. Many people
cried and spoke in different Indigenous languages. I asked for grace and
dignity as I face this separation and courage and joy as I walk forward on a
new path.
The building in the background is the teaching lodge. Each
day here we sang songs and did ceremony to honour the sacred pipes, the
feathers and the water. Each elder spoke everyday, sharing messages they had
received from the spirit world, sometimes sharing personal stories as
teachings, sometimes taking about the environment, something just saying
whatever was in their heart.
The head elder, whose role it was to hold the lodge, was
named Harry. My Dad and I happened to sit beside him. On the first day he tried
to sell my Dad his sacred pipe for 5 dollars, then is feather for 2 dollars. He
saw my Dad wasn’t wearing any socks so he offered him his own socks for 50
cents. Such items (except for the socks), are priceless of course and hold
great meaning. (Well maybe a head elder’s socks hold some meaning too I don’t
know.) My Dad asked for the price of the whole lot and they laughed. Instant
friends. When they handed round the scared healing sweet grass tea medicine, he
whispered to my Dad, “Not enough whisky in here. Too much water.” When they
handed round the food offering for the spirits, which was a handful of wild
blueberries and cooked rice, he said to my Dad, “What, no steak? No ribs?” At another
point when he was complaining about the ceremonial food he said, “They don’t even
have bologna,” so my Dad went out at lunch and came back with a pack of bologna
for him. I was glad my Dad had made such a friend. It was good to see my Dad
treated with respect like an elder of sorts too. That happens so infrequently in western
society.
A different elder who was sitting close to me told a story,
out of the blue, that didn’t seem much connected to anything at first. It
strikes me now that he was a person working deeply from his intuition and his
stories, though all together they seemed unconnected to a western-trained
brain, were likely important messages for different people in the room. At
least that is what I think now. He said at one time in his life he felt he had
insects inside of him because of something someone had done to him, he felt
wronged by someone. I understood what that felt like. He said he woke up one morning to find a very large frog sitting on
his pillow. Bigger than a bullfrog, he said. He sat up and then it disappeared.
He felt the frog magic help him and he gave us some teachings about Grandmother
Frog. When I heard the story I identified with that feeling of insects inside
me. Now I think he was talking to me, maybe directly to me. Later that day my
Dad and I started our journey home. When we stopped to take a pit-stop I
reached my bare feet down to the car floor to slip on my shoes, but recoiled
with a yelp. Sitting on the car floor was a real frog. She stared up on me, wise
and quiet. I suspect she had taken a ride on our bag of firewood that morning when
we put it in the backseat. My Dad released her to a swampy patch of land off of
the road. I said prayers for Grandmother Frog magic.
I believe in the power of collective prayer. It was so good
to experience that from an Indigenous perspective. And so kind to experience
that at a time of great transition in my life. This prayer is not always about
fixing or changing things. It’s not about getting what you want or even
sometimes what you need. It is about coming together, feeling something
together, believing something together, reaching together, holding something in
your hearts together. I believe in that magic.
Keeping you in my prayers
Love from
Nicole
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