Sundance Images

That sweet, sacred space that was created over those four days where I felt as if my life had meaning, that I was in right relation with the world. Most of what happened for me was within the four walls of the kitchen. Elders and others sitting in the wooden table, eating meals, laughing, sharing stories. Getting the job done, transporting coffee and dozens of sandwiches down to the sacred grounds for elders and fire keepers at all hours. Getting up at four to the smell of coffee brewing, wiping the sleep from my eyes and diving in to cracking 16 dozen eggs with minimal "shell dropping." Laughing. So much laughing and amazement of the cooks who came out of the woodwork. There was never a fight. It is hard to imagine when you are cooking for over 100. Just breathing and getting the job done. And hiking up to the Moon Lodge in the rain with hot water, chocolate and a blanket for those staying there, mud on my shoes, remembering helping to make the path up the rocky chamisa in the weeks before. Happy as can be, unexplainable in the cold wetness of early morning and standing at the point on top of the world, surrounded by blue mountains, watching the geometry of life, the sounds, the images, colors and a tree swaying and prayers being answered on the spot and me seeing with my third eye just for a split second the merkibah image of ascended grace. This is what evolution looks like.  

It was necessary for me to be in the kitchen. For so many ways, and I couldn't have been happier. It was all perfect. And I am beyond grateful to spirit for persisting, sometimes like a needle poking....keep in touch, raise your hand, volunteer, be available. Beyond all my laziness and insecurity, there is this knowing now. That intuition and spirit will guide me and my job is to listen. And when I went down to the sacred tree on the first day with B and D, and put my hand on the prayer ties wrapped around its white bark, tears of joy and pain, grief and loss overcame me. It was for me about coming home. It was about finally making right something that had been silenced, hidden underground, now rising to the surface. I felt the prayers of a multitude, the stories, the emotions, inside each colored cloth, a tiny papoose of faith and tears, dreaming, waiting to be born.