Sunday Sweat Lodge

A low entry, we crawl into roundness. The sweat lodge inner dome is ringed round with garlands of fresh cedar, juniper and sage, bent saplings curving over us. Prayer bundles hanging.

Glowing stones are brought one at a time on hay fork tines, and drawn in with paired deer antlers to the fire pit, to the womb of mother earth.

We smell the wild herbal fragrance of high plains and mountains, as the entry flap falls to silence, and a complete absence of outer light.

I have come to my Native American neighbor's "sweat" directly from singing Anglican chanting of psalms, and an anthem set to the old Welsh melody, "The Ash Grove." In its evocative original: 

Down yonder green valley
Where streamlets meander,
When twilight is fading,
I pensively roam...

Deep in the lodge, my shift of the sacred thrums into drumbeat and turtle rattle, rhythmic chant.

My neighbor scatters western sage on the glowing rocks; tosses a gourd-full of water.  Pungent steam billows into the darkness.

Am sweating profusely. I drink salted water from a bear-engraved gourd.

My neighbor and his wife pray for the Indian Nations and all peoples. We take turns singing gratitude, Algonquin, English, French, Beethoven's German "Ode to Joy." We sit and sprawl, muse and sweat.

I ask my neighbor about Saturday's solidarity protest in our small Rocky Mt. town, in resonance with the global outrage against Wall Street and corporate greed-mongers--Only Anglos showed up. 

(Not exactly "plain vanilla" demographics here... Land Grant descendants of colonial Spain, plus adventurers of various European kingdoms, Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition, Pueblo and Apache peoples, more recent Hispanic immigrants, 1970's hippies, and Anglos with 2nd homes, retirees.)

My native friend explains:

"We showed up to protest at Wounded Knee. Our grievance is older, deeper. We pray in sweat lodges for all people to walk the good road.

"We live ancient understanding of cycles and time. We doubt white promises. Some of us still live old ways, keeping tradition, watching and waiting."