WAKAN, MANITOU...MANIDO
"In every Native American language, there is a word which refers to the mysterious, unknowable power of the universe: a power which, even when it manifests itself in ways that affect human beings, still remains a great mystery. Among the Lakota, that word is wakan, while among Algonquin-speakers, such as my own Abenaki people, it is manitou or manido. When great and powerful things occur which are beyond ordinary human power or understanding, when there are miracles such as the coming of the White Buffalo Woman, they are wakan."
(from: WITH VISIBLE BREATH: Miracles in Native American Traditions by Joseph Bruchac)
"With every breath I walk,
Toward the nation I walk,
With visible breath I walk,
Something holy, something
ancient
Something red I bring...
~ The Song of the
White Buffalo Calf Woman
At Home In The World
By Tracy Cochoran
The Christmas Eve after 9/11 I went with my family to a candlelight service at our local Episcopal church. I listened to the story of the Nativity. How right it seemed that God would appear in a humble setting and not in a cocktail party on the Upper East side of Manhattan. The sanctuary was made dark and the first candles were lit. People sang "Silent Night." As one candle tipped into another, I felt like I was watching the unveiling of a greath truth ~ that God does stand for Love and Peace and all qualities in us that seem too soft for this world. I thought of the cross, of the way the horizontal temporal intersects with the vertical and eternal. As the sanctuary filled with light, I realized that the presence of the highest in the lowest places wasn't a solitary event never to happen again. It was always happening.
I looked over At Alex. She was staring straight ahead. I wondered what she was experiencing. I loved her so much that I started to despair. But then I thought of Gandhi, who once said, "When I despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won." All through the horizontal pull that on its own takes us outside of ourselves, the vertical is an ever-present possibility. We can always come home to ourselves, come into alignment ~ body, heart, and mind. "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony," said Gandhi.
Since the attacks, I'd come to see that our true individuality does not consist in anything that seperates us from others but in our ability to open up and respond to life without fear or self consciousness.. In those moments when we are completely integrated and grounded, we can become a gateway for the divine. In the months after 9/11, I had taken to cooking, to lighting candles. Instinctively, I was returning to a role that woman have filled since the dawn of time, keeping the home fires burning. Intuitively, I knew that sharing meals is eternal and enduring, and that the softest things ~ love, the smell of banana bread ~ overcome the hardest. Now I realized that by these ordinary acts of nurturance, of connection, we can become a channel for the hightest vertical and horizontal in balance. I thought back to the day I took Alex to see a former president. I'd had the feeling I was taking her to the inner ring of the tribal fire, to see sombeody who I imagined had been transformed by his extraordinary experience to become a channel that could transmit to the rest of us a sense of greater possibility. I'd wanted her to make her home in the big world. Now I realized that every time we're fully present and respond to life fully, without thought or reservation, when we are at home in ourselves, baking banana bread, acting out all the ordinary little acts of our horizontal lives, we come home to our true selves, a channel for the higher.
"Home is where the Heart is..."
it's just me cb
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