The Great Mystery contacts me and teaches me through the dream time. For a guy that doesn’t see, hear, smell, or any of the other tactile senses this is a wonderful thing. It’s also very interesting at night.
The Creator gives me an incredible dreamtime that gives me information that I definitely need. What a great gift.
So to help you understand the dream I will share with you a bit of the background. Last year at this time several of my friends and I took a rather spontaneous trip to Peru. While we were there looking at rocks I was fortunate to participate in a South American Inipi Ceremony. We call it a sweat lodge but it’s really a Purification Ceremony.
I explained to the Shaman that it was very similar to the ceremonies of the Lakota peoples, of which I was partially trained. In his infinite grace he asked me to share some of my songs and teachings; offering his drum to use. Much to my embarrassment I couldn’t recall the songs and didn’t speak the language to tell some of the stories. I truly hope that I do not fall short again. I wish to honor my teachers.
Now I will tell you of the dreamtime story...
In the dream I am again in the sweat lodge with the Shaman and a group of people. The invitation is extended to me again.
I swallow my pride and decide to take up the drum and as in many lodges that I have participated in the awake time I start to beat the drum and sing in a language that I feel through my heart even though in my mind I am making up the language as I go. This time I state that the words are made up but if anyone understands the words and can translate them for the rest of us it would be greatly appreciated.
Someone in the ceremony says that he recognizes the words and believes that it is in the ancient language of the Lakota. I state that I am overjoyed and greatly humbled to sing in the language of my people. It is not a language that I speak nor have I studied. I say to the people and feel from the bottom of my heart that I am deeply honored. I then bring out my medicine pipe to share with my relatives in the lodge. In Peru I had carried the bowl with me just to bring it into the Andean energy.
The Andean people are so respectful of another nation’s path. I had given the fire keeper and the medicine man a small amount of tobacco wrapped in red cloth, which is the traditional way of the lodge. Later I was told that the fire keeper had treated the tobacco with such respect that it was truly a thing of beauty to see.
I show them how to fill the pipe and offer the pipe to the four directions and to all my relations. We pass the pipe to each other while I show them how to hold it and tell them that the smoke carries their prayers to the Creator. It is a powerful ceremony for me.
The lodge is now over and I begin to walk along a fence. There are posts and wire filled with the summers grass. It feels so familiar. I have spent much of my lifetime walking in pastures such as this.
As I head to the end of the fencerow I pass a mother buffalo and her calf sleeping at the edge of the fence and decide that it would not be a good thing to disturb them at this time. I quietly slip past them and keep walking to my destination. I’m being drawn to place a sacred object at the base of the last fence post in the pasture. I do not know what this is but I am being pulled forward.
No more than thirty feet from the corner I see it. Newly placed the hole that the post rests in is not totally filled with dirt. I kneel down at its base and unroll the red cloth that I have carried since the lodge. It contains my pipe and tobacco or so I thought. As the red cloth reveals its contents I see that the pipe is not there but a strange looking root and several handfuls of tobacco are hidden in its folds.. The tobacco spills out into the hole and I reach down to grab a handful and make an offering on the right side of the post.
I stand up and look back at the buffalo and its calf and say to them that I will return as soon as possible to keep my promise of feeding them hay when I return from my journey. It seems to be a sacred obligation. I then continue on my journey across the pasture and start to climb downward into a ditch.
As I enter the lower part of the ditch I see a few feathers scattered about below me and I wonder if this is not a gift for me from the Creator.
I reach down to retrieve them and find myself underneath an arbor with even more feathers all about me. They are everywhere is look. Are some of these for others or just for me? They have beautiful, black bodies with dark brown tips with rich earth tones about them. I see a feather fan similar to the ones that the pow-wow dancers use in their ceremonies and I retrieve that. I look again and there are items of clothing in the same colors. A beautiful jacket of the same color pattern appears to hang from the arbor decorated with the faces of the creatures of the plains. The wolf is the most prevalent.
Suddenly a young man appears dressed in full pow-wow regalia. He is wearing the feathers that I have seen scattered about on the arbor floor. He states that because of what I have done I have been invited into the hawk clan and his people are delighted that we are now brothers. Just then the air is filled with these incredibly beautiful songs. He smiles at me and then disappears.
From outside the arbor I can see the white hair and weathered face of a very wise and ancient medicine man that is coming forward to greet me. He is very pleased to see me and has many things to share. I am overwhelmed with joy and gratitude, what could I possibly have done to deserve all this.
I wake up and get out of bed; it is in the wee hours of the morning. What has transpired is a very sacred gift and I feel that I must honor the message and the messengers. Dragging myself to my chair I reach for something familiar that I had not had as deep of a connection as I would have liked.
I reach under the red cloth that covers my sacred objects and retrieve one of my favorite gifts. It is a smudge fan made for me by a very gifted and dear friend. It has black feathers with dark brown tips held together with a quartz crystal. They are the very same colors and feathers that I had been gifted in the dream.
The hawk clan has contacted and honored me for some reason and I shall honor that gift with a prayer.
So I offer tobacco to the four directions, Pachumama, and Father Sky (the Great Mystery) and then taking the fan in my hand I light some sage and sing and smudge to all my relations giving thanks to the hawk clan for this great message.
Mitakuye’ Oyasin
All my relations
Written by: Roger
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