“Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.”
Dr. Wayne Dyer

There’s been much confusion over my lifetime over which tribes are my ancestors. Word of mouth over the generations has it that I’m Cherokee both maternally and paternally. I identify most with the Cherokee woman who married a French Canadian in the 1700’s. In my heart, I know her.

The other bloodlines, I’m told, are Shawnee, Blackfoot and maybe others. These are my mom’s side. It’s obvious that Native American blood runs on the maternal side of my family tree, as so many of my relatives and ancestors look “Indian”. According to my mother and aunt, who have searched for years to find a paper trail to a tribe, it was custom to destroy records of Native Americans by the Christian Church. My personal history has been erased.

Long before I heard that, I was angry. Interestingly, I have a son who is also angry. Whenever one of us hears of injustice to Native Americans, we grieve. When he learns American history in school, he comes home with questions that come from an emotional place.

You don’t have to be a full blooded Native American to connect with them on a Soul level. I’ve had visions and experiences that prove to me that I am related. But they are mine and I know that most people can not believe me; including some Native Americans who insist on being full blooded to “count” as one of them.

This story, New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge, in the news recently, caught my eye because it points to an issue long held by many Native Americans. They feel as though, and in my opinion rightly so, that everything has been taken from them. Their land, their customs, their way of life, their ancestors, and now their most sacred practices such as the sweat lodge.

So-called “New Agers” have conducted sweat lodges for years. They use it for purification purposes. Some are taught and guided by someone from a tribe but many are simply done incorrectly. Such was the case of the one in Sedona in which two people died.

The article brought up some interesting points.

First of all, there’s the question of the relationship of Indian religion to American culture. Non-Indians have been making a lucrative business out of the appropriation of Native ceremonies for years. Ray’s weeklong event in Sedona cost each participant more than $9,000. A search of any number of Web sites advertising these “Indian ceremonies” will turn up sweat lodges that average over $100 per event, and four-day “vision quests” going for around five hundred dollars, “all meals included” and “Visa and MasterCard accepted.”

Indians all across the country are upset, saying white people stole the land, killed the buffalo, and now want to steal the religion. The trouble is that most indigenous people in the Americas identify as Christian. Even the Native American Church, that features peyote as a “sacrament,” is incorporated as a church and uses the Bible as part of the altar display.

I’ve never known a sweat lodge that wasn’t free of charge. The same goes for dancing, drumming and practicing any number of traditions. There was always a tremendous humility that we felt and for me, trying to reconcile who I am today with who I feel I am as Soul.

I have friends who devote themselves to providing provisions for reservations and assisting wherever they are needed. It’s hard for me to have sympathy for “wealth creation guru James Arthur Ray”, who exploits Native American ceremony.

It is said that many Native Americans are angry at those who would rob them, imitate them and otherwise dishonor their culture. I understand and feel this with you. My hope is that some of them remember that some of us Remember and want peace. We reach out for what is familiar and true to us. We no longer look like full blooded tribe members, but should that matter?

Did you not learn from what was done to you?

When President Obama won the Nobel Peace prize, I was just as confused as everybody else. But, it didn’t take long for my confusion to turn to anger over the remarks made throughout the United States. So many people felt he didn’t deserve the honor.

I struggled to listen to certain people, most of whom I know to be Republicans, vent fury and fire. Some felt the choice of Obama was strictly politics. I don’t agree with that at all. Many want the “war President”, Mr. Bush, back and any President who hesitates to go to war is not President material.

Again, I strongly disagree. One way to peace is by breaking down barriers. This is what President Obama has been doing. The very fact that he is not a white man is blasting to hell the white male ego dominance stance. Finally, we voted in someone who looks like the other part of the US population. Women are still blocked from the office of the President. I think its because men feel a woman will not go to war.

My Republican friends were furious that someone who had not performed any act of peace could win the Nobel Peace prize. They refuse to see what Obama has been doing by negotiating with other leaders and coming to agreements that result in the laying down of weapons. Even Cuba and Russia are listening and not balking at the USA.

President Bush scared the hell out of me. His mission was to invade any country that was not like ours, change their culture to be like us and in the name of protecting our country, put up barriers against old allies. The man loved nothing more than to bully world leaders. He lied to us about the reasons we went to Iran. He had no communication skills. Anyone who is good at detecting bull shit had trouble tolerating him.

My fear now is that those who live and breathe hatred and war will attempt to kill President Obama. He stands out as the agent for change. We need to be country that is respected by other countries rather than hated. Obama can do this. He thinks before sending anyone to fight. Life is something he obviously values, whereas I never had the sense that President Bush valued anything but his own skin.

It may be the Nobel Peace prize was given at an odd time. Perhaps there was nobody else with any vision and goals for world peace. It hurts to know that those who believe he didn’t deserve it will not support his efforts towards peace. For them, it is more important to rant and rave about everything he is doing wrong. These people, in my opinion, don’t wish for peace. They don’t know how to work towards it. They don’t want it.

I can’t understand why.

I sat on the back deck this evening, listening to the sounds of the crickets singing, feeling the soft breeze fragrant with the magnolia blossoms of the tree I planted a few years ago, seeing the stars peeking through wide holes in the drifting clouds, and seeing reflections of lightning way off in the distance… All of it put me into a bit of an altered state…

I wish everyone could Know the God I Know.. How I wish everyone could feel the way IT ruffles my hair with the wind, and breezes into my ear, “I am IN LOVE with you!” I wish everyone could see the magnificent love that I see in the stars and fireflies twinkling at each other, the munificent smile in the soft roundness of the rising moon, how my God wraps ITS arms around me and kisses my face with the great golden warmth of the sun…

I see my God reflected in every pair of eyes, ablaze in every heart, radiant in every smile… In the voices of mothers kissing their babies goodnight, the soft voices of lovers talking in bed in the darkness before sleep, the way the light lays across the land… I hear IT in the songs of crickets, running water, the shouting of the sea and thunder and music…

This is the God that I know… All loving, all forgiving, supremely detached and at once, deeply personal and reflected in every atom and molecule of the universes! God speaks!! Everywhere! In everything!! In me! In you!

Love and longing and eternity and distance and death and birth… That voice, the Logos, is in every sound, that love reflected in every love. So far beyond mere words and great hymns and the greatest feats of architecture and art and beauty, and reflected in all of it and shining and shouting and whispering and speaking from everywhere!

This God that I know… So far beyond religions and denominations and systems and techniques… The very spark that animates every living creature. It all grows pale with the clumsiness of mere words. It is Knowing.

And IT is far beyond my paltry skills of articulation, but I was inspired to try, just the same. I recognize and respect that this may not be the God that anyone else believes in, and that peoples’ theologies and systems differ, and that a lot of people simply don’t believe in God at all. For me, this is something that supersedes belief. I am a born skeptic. But this Knowing… I can’t remember a time when I didn’t Know this.

So… This is my attempt at supplying some kind of introduction to this God that I Know, however wholly inadequate, tho’ it may be…

The moon dropped her clothes into
the garden pond, and utterly enchanted with
love for her
I swallowed the sky.
It tasted like rain
and wine
and dandelions
and babies
and made my heart
smile like the sun.