Seven

We are ever walking to deep water

heavy with stones around our necks,

sunk by the heft of the legend that

we’re images of God, counterfeits

of the Cosmic Knowing.

 

Each of us, an upright man

struggling to stand in roiling eddys,

eroding then to the river bottom

sanding the banks with the grit of our souls,

a coterie of memory, of stories, of lives

we had dreamed we lived, before

planting ourselves into the marsh

waiting for purposeful grasses to grow

up from the jagged seams of our skulls,

while rapids rush just overhead where

we’ve created small turbulences,

but are no longer there to comment on them.

Thirty Pieces

Your lips were still fragrant with hyssop when

you descended into hell looking for me,

finding that even Satan would not

harbor a traitor.

And after the stone had rolled away,

you went into the world again

searching for the infidel.

 

I felt you coming, your footfall quaking,

heard you calling for me,  speaking a name

that had become  a sibilant curse.

With every age  you were closing in.

 

For centuries I have waited,  dreading

the encounter,  fashioning excuses,

justifying the hardest regret.

It was never about the money;

people give money away for the asking.

But approval, now this is a treasure

obtained only with some strategy.

You knew me better than I knew myself.

You knew that for all my talk about the cost of things,

I didn’t understand their worth.

 

I prayed that God would

shut my mouth, that if

I must blurt out the truth,

it would be for the sake of righteousness.

But in those days, and for lifetimes to come

my cursed mouth has been the ruiner of secrets.

 

At last, the day of reckoning dawns,

and there is nowhere else to hide.

So here we are, in this hour of the damned.

And in your loving, magnanimous way,

you have come all this way to cut me down from the tree

and release me from the weight of silver.

Sweat Lodge

I am transformed here, and stripped bare.

…now when I think of all the red inside me,

I understand that I don’t bleed; I burn.”

–Cindy St. Onge – “Poems From the Grotto”

I participated in my fourth Inipi cermony yesterday. The number 4 is important in Lakota ritual, and my life path number happens to be a 4.  I should have been prepared for something auspicious.

I hadn’t drunk enough water during the day. That probably partially accounted for how miserable I was into the second round. But as that round got underway, I thought to myself, “this is never as bad as people say it is. what is the big deal? I’m fine. I can handle this. It’s a piece of cake.”

I could hear the arrogance in my own thoughts. The Inyan Oyate , or Stone People in the center of the lodge glowed red hot, and I thought about their suffering, their sacrifice. I was humbled.

This isn’t about how tough I am,  I thought, or about how much pain I can endure for the sake of endurance. It’s about being vulnerable and open and flawed and ultimately purified. I thought that if creatures as sturdy as stones could suffer the sacrificial fire for the sake of my transformation, the least I could do was admit that I was uncomfortable.

And that was all it took. By the middle of the second round, I was nauseous, light-headed, and felt like I would pass out. How hot it was in the lodge wasn’t even an issue by this time. I was at my limit. I was on the verge of asking that the door be open so I could leave.  But this is the purpose of the Inipi ceremony, to inhabit these borders, to push beyond what the body can endure, and to challenge what your mind has always defined as possible and impossible.

When I closed my eyes to try to think of something besides how dizzy I felt, I wanted to go to sleep, but I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up. So I struggled against the heat, and wanting to throw up, and almost losing consciousness. This is where and  how the heat and the prayer transforms the pilgrim. The lodge was pitch black, but I kept looking in the direction of the door, a way out I couldn’t see, but knew was there.

The second round was mercifully divided into two mini-rounds because the heat was excruciating. After I had cooled down some, I realized that I had only experienced external discomfort in previous sweat lodges. This was the first time I had felt that misery on the inside, viscerally.

There were still two more rounds to go, each hotter than the last. At some point during the third round, which I’ve always called the  Skin Searing Round, ancestor spirits present in the lodge were sucking me into Lakota folklore as I envisioned the Great Mystery and Tunkasila playing tether ball with the planets.

This was the spiritual ass-kicking I had always believed the Inipi ceremony to be, but had never experienced until last night.

I am humbled and grateful.

Mitakue Oyasin

Volition

  

I don’t pray in my dreams.

 

The notion of God

isn’t even a dream

in my dreams, because

beyond the shoals

of heavy drowse

there—in the deeper, blacker waters

I’m in the moment

treading thoughts

thoughtlessly.

I’m in this moment

and this moment too,

like an animal

who doesn’t pray

but dies ok.

 

Morning claims me, reigns me in.

My silver cord is tensile

resilient, intact—

for now.

I open my eyes

in prayer

in need

desirous as always, resuming my petition:

 

Our Father, Mother may I?

Forgive me, and give me this.

Fill me up and top me off.

Make me whole; make me rich

and pretty and smart and

oh yes, pious.

Give me this, God,

and I shall flatter you

with grateful oblation.

 

I’ll have the whole world

begging you for scraps of grace,

for miracles and resolutions.

And for help finding lost things.

Just a word from me, God,

and all this could be yours.

You know what you have to do.

 

Moments?

Who can bother with moments

when there is only lack?

How can I be present

with pieces missing?

And even though I give God

excellent suggestions

on ways to make my life better,

he wakes me up inside my dream,

calling my name, convincing me

there are no other names.

–Cindy St. Onge