As most of you know I had a teacher who taught me the spiritual use of plants, the basics of which extended over many years. What she taught was not casual or to be altered for convenience. What she taught was a strict and demanding discipline. When I use one of these medicines, I do not look for a way to fit it into my day. Instead, on the days that I use the plants in this way, those days are about only that plant, that relationship. Even if there are six children and two dogs in the house, I stay inside the envelope of medicine. Or, as I sometimes put it, I sit back inside myself. |
Before I begin, I prepare the container that is used only for the medicine plants. I attune my awareness for what is coming. The plant and I are in alignment. We are one. We are enmeshed. She talks to me and I hear. She opens my eyes even before I begin. I never doubt what comes.
And in this long relationship, sometimes a plant will come of its own accord to take care of a problem, or open a means. Medicine can be subtle, but she can also rattle the house. She brought me to this home in which I live, and told me how to take care of the land. She gave me my last job before retirement, and told me when to leave.
There are those who know the plants in ways far different than I do. They are deeply engaged in knowledge about which I know only a little, but the medicine I understand is what the Divine sent to me. When the offer came, I was so amazed and grateful I leapt at the opportunity. I worked in the early morning, at noon, at dusk and midnight. I sat in the rain with the barest cover. I dipped in winter’s water.
I find no contradiction between this medicine and Sundance, Longhouse or Christianity. The Creator is large enough to hold all these. But each has its own strictness and if we throw away this or that of the teaching, we cut away the root, the possibility of deepening intimacy. Sometimes it is much later that we understand why a tiny bit of the discipline is as it is.
The plants are powerful. As some of you know I enjoyed Joseph Campbell, but was dismayed to hear him say one day that cultures focused on the plants did not have the depth and range as those focused on the animals. I remember smiling, thinking that even Joseph had his limits. Anthropologists and mythologists were not told everything, and, even when they were, they had no reference for understanding some of what was said.
There are times when I return to what I know as if I was new to it, to humility and love and gratitude. I renew my commitment, recall all the times my life was saved, my family pulled from the brink, the visions and visitations, the dreaming.
When I do this, the light shifts, the floor of some places becomes covered with lapping waves. I am not pulled into fear and dismay and confusion. I am not diverted from the Divine.
I have been given great gifts from my bloodline, my childhood teachings, the spiritual path of plants, the presence of drums and songs. Because these are alive in me something is expected in return – to hear, to see, to be quiet and know in the presence of profound gratitude.