Building Medicine

Generations have lived inside my house, prayed here.  When a family member was in trouble, every evening my mother and I retreated to my bedroom and prayed.  We were unrelenting and did this for hours and weeks.  I worked the medicine, tended the altars, went to the woods.  This is an old-fashioned kind of faith, a way of living. 

I can see my father praying as he comes toward the house from the wood-shed, hear my mother’s glad cry when she saw the angels.  I know exactly where my grandchild stood when we claimed him. 

I have things from my grandmother’s land, pictures of my great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War.  There are shields I made when I lived in the desert.  Some things hanging on the walls I never move.  In this way my teacher taught me to bring life to my house, to awaken it.  She said that if I do this I should be able when I arrive home to know if someone has been here, and who.  

What lives here takes care of me against what I don’t see as well as what I do.  But more than this, spirit explains things to me, brings the gift I need.  I am sure this is why old people used to sit in their homes in the silent dark and listen.  

If I do this, if I watch the crows and the deer, if I have faith in what I am, what I come from, quiet joy fills my heart.  I need nothing else.   This is enough.