EVERYDAY SACRED (viimane 13. osa)

Nagu Loesje postkaart ütleb - I hate when a book ends, so I start from the end.

Mulle endale on vaja seda raamatut siia. Võibolla kuskile mujale tõstmine tuleb tulevikus. Autor on Sue Bender ja ma alustan viimasest osast.

SMALL MIRACLES

Allow - For The Possibilities

"Maybe I wrote Everyday Sacred to learn more about miracles," I said in the prologue.

I wanted a big miracle, one that would last, but one of the characteristics of a big mirale, the kind I had hoped for, is "it's sudden appearance and disappearance within the natural order." Instead, to my surprise, I began to discover the power of small things.

A friend made a pilgrimage to India. She saw many holy places, but her favourite was a mound made up of little pebbles, not one of them beautiful or exotic. For hundreds of years pilgrims had come to this site and each placed a tiny stone offering on the mound. The accumulation of these little stones became a "sacred" place.

I saw those little stones as stepping stones.

Stepping stones toward a new way of seeing.


Small changes in behavior, attitude, feelings, can, like the little pebbles, add up to another kind of miracle. Small miracles do build up and they can last.

When I stopped waiting for something "significant" to happen, and instead began noticing what was happening, not what I wished was happening, a series of small miracles occurred.

When I first began to trust what I was doing even when it didn't seem to make sense, when I understood that what I was doing was seeking, then what I was seeking was shown to me.

People knocked on my door and said, "Would you like this?" Chance occurrences, unexpected meetings made me feel I was not alone.

When I trusted I was doing something of value, goals and timetables had a way of taking care of themselves.

Jung called them "meaningful coincidences." Peter, a Swiss friend, described the German word zufall, which roughly translates as "to fall into." "Something falls to you," he said, "not as something you caused, but a coincidence you are ready to accept and absorb in your life." I realized he was describing serendipity. I notice these moments come when I'm not demanding or insistent that they come.

Today, stapled on a telephone pole crowded with other posters, I saw:

"Allow - for the possibilities."



Sweat Lodge

I am a "fear type" who doesn't look afraid.

In the past, my strategy has been to avoid fear or other strong feelings that make me uncomfortable, using whatever strategy I can think of. Usually I just try to keep busy.

I was about to leave Berkeley for a month, when a friend asked if I wantd to come o a sweat lodge that saturday. The timing wasn't good and I didn't know much about the ceremony, but I had a romantic image of heat, American Indian wisdom, wholeness - and a chance to bless my journey.

My friend, who had participated in the sweat lodge ceremony many times, assured me the people were sympathetic. The rural Sonoma county setting had the spare vastness of a New Mexico landscape. The ceremony would be conducted by a Lakota Sioux woman.

One at a time, the twelve of us crouched to get through a small flap in the canvas door and entered a tepee-like structure. Where I sat cross-legged on the earthen floor, my head practically touched the ceiling of the tent. The twelve of us formed a circle around a large fire pit. Very slowly a woman began carrying in lava rocks on something that looked like an elongated pizza carrier, placing each one of them carefull in the center of the fire pit.

While she was ddoing this there was a bit of chanting and a few instructions, and then the leader told us that if we chose to leave at any point of the ceremony, we would not be allowed to return.

Feeling rather pleased with myself that at sixty I was willing, even eager, to take on an unexpected adventure, something quite foreign to anything I had ever done, I sat there, calm, anticipating an interesting "event". When the last of the twenty-eight coals was placed in the pit, the woman left, closing the flap of the door behind her.

Total darkness.

Water poured on the rocks created a whoosh of furious steam heat. Heat permeating every air space. I love steam baths, so I had looked forward to this part of the ritual. It took only four minutes for me to be afraid.

Very afraid.

My friend had suggested that if it got too hot, I could lie down on the earthen floor. I tried that but it made no difference. I tried poking my fingers under a tiny opening at the bottom of the tent, hoping that would relieve my growing anxiety, but nothing worked.

This fear wasn't attached to any thoughts exept how I was going to survive.

The last thought I had was that if I managed to get out I wouldn't be hard on myself. I had done the best I could. Then, no thoughts. Only fear. Raw, palpable, free-floating fear in every cell - and darkness.

Too paralyzed, or too civilized, to yell "let me out," I was half aware of people talking with great feeling, telling what had brought them here. Each asked for guidance and a blessing from the leader, and the power she represented.

My own civilized notion of why I was here was gone. I had thought it was to aska a blessing for my journe and for the book I was writing, but now, lying on the ground, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might explode. I didn't think I was even in a condition to speak. My friend, sitting next to me, spoke, in a firm voice I had never heard her use before.

When it was my turn I hear my self´, in a quiet, slow, tiny, soft, voice say,

"I am bery afraid. I'm not sure I can stay. I am very, very frightened."

"Come and sit next to me," said the leader, who was sitting next to the exit door. She spoke some wise words, none of which I can remember now, as I crawled halfway around the circle to where she ws, feeling at the time it was the most natural of things to be doing. I lay down very still, still needing the security of the cooler ground for support.

Someone put a steady hand on my leg - and that hand stayed there, not moving, for the rest of the ritual. In the darkness I never saw who that person was. That steady hand, of a man or a woman, I never learned who it was, was a freat help.

Time passed.

The enormity of the fear began to diminish.

More chanting, a long wooden pipe handed from person to person, prayers, and the ceremony was over. The fear began to be bearable. I stepped outside and the night air was cool and welcoming.

I felt calm.

Having no place to hide, I had felt my fear and the "fear cracked open."

A giant weight had lifted off my shoulders. A huge chunk of fear I had carried just below the surface for a long time had been dislodged. Whether this fear had anything to do with my harsh judge, I didn't know, but sudeenly I felt like I was travelling through life with a lighter knapsack.

Recently I read a description of a sweat lodge: "You will probably die during the ceremony," the Indian leader had said. "And today is, after all, a good day to die." That did not sound overly dramatic to me. If anyone had warned my about what might happen during the sweat lodge ceremony, I wouldn't have taken the risk.

I saw a curious relationship; the more I was able to stay with, not move away from, uncomfortable feelings, the more I was also able to feel happy and alive.

Remembering how calm I felt when I stepped out into the night air after being in the sweat lodge, I now know I don't have to wait for an exotic ceremony to turn toward, rather than away from, difficult feelings.

I have a chance almost any day.