2006-09-20 - 10:36 PM

i spent several weeks researching and pondering fawn's ceremony. and one of the odd things is how i felt myself react in the actual ceremony to the reading of my lineage.... i kept tearing up, each name being more difficult to speak without emotion. i kept having to pause and take a deep breath. it was as though in speaking and honoring the names something blessed was taking place. though i had created the ceremony from many cultures ... i felt my own beloved Indian connection in honoring "all my relations" as the lokota say mitakuye oyas'in.

in the lokota sweats it is a phrase said as you enter the sweat and as you leave the sweat. it translates all my relations.. but it means so much more.. it is like a blessing on them.. and at the same time sort of like asking their permission to leave or enter..and there is something else to the meaning too.representing the interconnectedness of all things.

i felt that honoring deep in my soul sunday night. something that has lingered in me all week. i want to create a wall hanging with the names of the mothers going back.

i have evoked something old in myself.

remembering as i came out of the last sweat... my skin all bright pink and glistening .. standing before the medicine man that had followed a dream to that sweat lodge, being lead there without knowing any of us before.. this man of a sacred lineage of lakota medicine men....putting his hands on both my shoulders and telling me i was a powerful woman. feeling it like some sort of blessing on me.

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