I was inspired early one morning to tell you about some of the mystical people I have spent time with. That early morning sunlight began to illuminate the tops of trees just as clouds gently passed behind in the upper winds. The trees along the still beaver pond were just beginning to leaf out in a tender green. The clouds looked like pink, mauve, and purple cotton candy. The sky in which the clouds traveled was the bluest of infinite sky blue. The beauty of that moment shifted my consciousness to the realm between body and spirit. I thought of the elders, now in the spirit world, whom I had known when they walked the earth. Those extraordinary individuals moved freely between body and soul. They lived with the Mystery.
Lewis Sawaquat was a full-blood Odawa raised by his Christianized Native parents in Northern Michigan. After his service in the Korean War, he was compelled to discover his Native traditions, which Christianity and assimilation had stripped from his childhood. By the time I met Lewis, he had gained much of his native heritage and was a practicing spiritual leader in Peshawbestown, Michigan. He had rediscovered those teachings, allowing him to articulate the processes and meaning of ceremony. He was kind and encouraged the participation and learning of others, myself included. He invited me to his Sweat Lodge Ceremony for my first sweat fifty-five years ago. He taught me how to observe beyond named things to see patterns of relationship and spirit that are always present to those who seek. I assisted him in healing work with families grieving recent deaths.
Loren Cruden was a Celtic spiritualist, herbalist, midwife, ceremonialist, and a friend of fifty years. For many of those years, Loren conducted a variety of workshops in the States and Europe using the natural world of plants and animals as teachers and healers. She taught neurosurgeons and psychiatrists in Germany how to increase their perceptions of patients, clients, and the world around them. She was also a talented writer who published books on spiritual topics. Her use of language to describe the world through sacred vision is breathtakingly beautiful. Her books are available at lorenbooks.com and various book sellers online. I highly recommend A Spirit of Place, Compass of the Heart, Walking the Maze, and Coyote’s Council Fire.
Tony Mandan was a Mandan elder raised and instructed by his grandparents, so he had older Native wisdom. He also attended a Catholic boarding school. He was quite articulate in comparing his Native understandings with Catholic teachings. He was a member of the Mandan Waterbuster Clan. As a Waterbuster, he had a direct connection to the spirits that influence the weather. My science background was dumbfounded when I watched a small, humble man pray with his pipe for mercy on our Sun Dance encampment. Several times, I watched stormy rain advancing from the west split apart to leave our ceremony dry. The bifurcated storms would reform to the east over the Missouri River at New Town, North Dakota. Nothing in my academic education nor Christian teachings could explain what Tony could do in speaking to the Thunder Beings. Tony taught me how to pray deeply with the weather and while working with sacred fire. Humility and gratitude for the power of natural elements are key to those relationships. The historic derecho of July 4, 1999, that devastated the Boundary Waters, passed through our Sun Dance encampment the night before. We experienced explosive lightning, terrifying winds, and rain flowing ankle deep over the prairie. Tony stood upright next to withering firelight, asking the Thunders for mercy. His extended prayer pipe almost touched the clouds as they bent closer to hear his humble requests. I was trying to keep the ceremonial fire embers alive as I witnessed Tony’s selfless, sacrificial act in service to his community.
Jim Miller was Lakota and German in ancestry. His horrific experiences in the Vietnam War led him to a sacred path. With a psychologist, Jim established a healing sweat lodge retreat center for veterans in Rapid City, S. Dakota. He received a dream that led to establishing the Reconciliation Ride, a horse ride from South Dakota to Mankato that takes place every December. (Dakota 38+2 Documentary). Jim and his wife, Alberta, presented workshops and talking circles about reconciliation and forgiveness to Native and non-Native groups all over the US and Canada. Jim was our Sun Dance leader and became my close friend.
Jim would be irritated with me for calling him a holy man, but he was capable of remarkable things when asked or dream-inspired. I asked him one time how he did what he did. He didn’t have any words to explain it. It seemed to me his capacity to engage the Mystery didn’t reside in his brain or vocabulary. We asked him for a healing ceremony for an adult family member who had been told by multiple doctors he would die soon from a blood disorder. Jim instructed my wife and me on how to perform the ceremony with our brother-in-law and his family in their Shoreview, MN home while Jim’s family simultaneously conducted a healing sweat in Pine Ridge, SD. When we were done in Shoreview, two eagles repeatedly circled low on opposite sides of the house and talked to each other over the rooftop. Jim would later tell us that when they came out of their sweat lodge, three eagles were circling, and one flew off to the east towards Minnesota. A messenger of healing, Jim said. My relative’s doctors were dumbfounded because they could not replicate the testing that had revealed his illness. Years later, he continues to live a productive life.
Morris Little Wolf is a senior Blackfoot elder of Piikani First Nation (Piegan) in southern Alberta, Canada. He carries many traditional ceremonies for the healing of individuals and the community. He represented his Nation to the Canadian government in Ottawa as a senior Royal Mounted Police officer. As an elder, he actively shares his knowledge and skills with younger people as future leaders in continuing Blackfoot culture.
I am sharing this with you to illustrate that there is Mystery in the world beyond what we individually experience and think we know. Science expects to eventually name and understand what I keep referring to as the Mystery. And yet the more we know, the more we don’t know. The astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson refers to this as the “frontier of the perimeter of ignorance.” He says we should be humbled every day in what we think we know. He suggests we be open to new ideas beyond what we already know. At 70, I enrolled in the Earl E Bakkin Center for Spirituality and Healing at UMN. It was a great experience and disappointing also. Even with that title, their intellectual training keeps learned people locked in the physical realm and distanced from what I experienced with the people I listed above. Only Loren was published, and none of the above were academically trained, which prevents the University from acknowledging or learning their skills. Their ability to engage the Mystery, to move between body and soul, remains just beyond the reach of the grasping human brain. An open heart and a quiet mind are the entry points to engage the Mystery. Humble questing leads to unexpected places and extraordinary experiences.
