40 Days of Peace Day Twenty Two
Gratitude and Giving
Today we begin a week of Gratitude and Giving.
For the next 7 days of our 40 days of peace, I ask you to join me in prayer and love for our Indigenous relatives. I ask you to humbly join me for a journey that may shift how you see “Thanksgiving” and open your hearts to a more beautiful vision of “Thanks” and “Giving, and what it means to be relatives.
May we join our heart and minds as one, in love and gratitude,
to understand and listen to the call to Protect the Sacred.
Mitakuye oyasin ~ All my relations ~ We are all related
September 3, 2016
Monet and I hear the call from Spirit to travel to Standing Rock in solidarity with our brothers and sisters.
We follow several Indigenous news outlets and earlier that summer we heard about that a group of Lakota youth took a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline and we’re camping on treaty land to protect their water and land from a big oil company. On September 3rd, both Monet and I had dreams… Spirit was clearly calling us to the Dakotas… and we listened.
Many people supported our hearts call, many thought we we’re insane. But when you allow the Spirit to lead your path, the direction is always clear, and your needs are always provided for. So… we began to prepare for the journey. Over the next week 2 of my sisters and their children, and 3 more friends would answer the call and join us. Eleven of us traveled from Charleston to Cannon Ball North Dakota.
International Day of Peace
September 21, 2016 International Day of Peace
We arrive at camp Sicangu, on the Cannon Ball river, Standing Rock reservation. No, we did not plan to arrive on this day, but the synchronicity is a sign of Spirits grace and guidance in our journey. We knew we were exactly where we were called to be.
We were greeted by a kind man, named Curly, who welcomed us to camp and thanked us for coming. We were immediately invited into a birthday party for a Lakota girl named Bella ( the name of my ancestor grandmother). We jumped right in to help decorate before setting up camp for the night.
Going to bed our first night at camp, we could hear the drums and songs. Tears streamed down my face…. I cannot describe the feeling in words.. some things of the heart have no spoken language. Only the heart understands. We would soon realized, we were home.
“Peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their oneness with the Universe, when they realize it is really everywhere, it is within each one of us.”
Home
Three days after we arrived at camp Monet and I laid in our tent crying tears of gratitude. A deep sense of peace filled our hearts. For the first time in years, we felt an overwhelming feeling of home. Our crew had made plans to stay for 2 weeks, but the land and water were calling Monet and I to stay. The decision was easy to make. I called my parents and told them. I let them know that everything in my life had led me here. I needed to stay.
For 3 years, we had been living a nomadic life in Charleston. Several experiences in our journey had led us to live with friends. Two nights in our friends spare bedroom, 2 nights on our friends couch, a couple nights on another friends couch, and sometimes a drive out to my moms for a slumber party. What was suppose to be a few months of “getting on my feet”, turned months into years. We followed our heart song and getting rich wasn’t a tune on the jukebox. My jukebox was playin’ tunes for healing a wounded heart and changing the world.
Gratefully, we have a community of friends that are our family, they have generously shared their gifts with us and supported us along the way. And gratefully, I have the gift of a daughter who sings a similar heart song, one of freedom, protecting the earth and traveling where the wind blows.
I remember one day when she was 12 or 13, during a rather difficult period in our journey. She had come to work with me, (when I had gone back to waiting tables at Surf Bar on Folly Beach). It was really late, maybe 11 or 12. I had forgotten to let any of our host homes know we would be staying with them and I knew they would be in bed now. Looking back, I’m sure I could have texted or called and they would have happily unlocked the door for us, but I was tired and feeling less that proud to wear my mom hat that night. I pulled the car over, not knowing where we were going and let it all out. A mom is suppose to provide security and shelter for her child. What a failure I felt like in that moment. I let all the negative thoughts flood in.
Monet stopped me instantly. “Mom it’s ok, we’ll go to Mimi’s. Stop crying.” (Mimi’s was an hour drive from folly and it was already so late). I got my breath and started towards moms. Down the road, Monet speaks up, “Mom, you’re pretty lucky”. I said, “yeah, how’s that?” She says, “cause I’m a go with the flow kinda girl.” Yes. Yes. This is truth. I wouldn’t call it luck. I would call it blessed.
Over the next few weeks, we began to understand how our journey had led us to this time and place. Everything we had gone through had prepared us for this moment. Everything that we thought we “lost” had simply been “moved out of our way” to make room for the Spirit to lead us towards our souls purpose. Our deep connection to the earth, our curiosity to understand Indigenous culture, our deep compassion for Indigenous people… we soon realized we were not only here to stand in solidarity, we were here to learn and evolve.
Water protectors showed up every day, from all different cultures and places around the globe. Our family multiplied in ways that I can only describe as magical. Have you ever met someone and you just had this feeling like you knew them from somewhere? … you hug for a while and it feels like you’ve just been reunited after a long time living in cities across the country… Yep, that’s how it felt, over and over and over.
Gratitude filled our hearts as the web of relatives just continued to weave a warm blanket of peace around us. Home never felt like this before. No internet, no doors to close ourselves off from each other, no distractions or deadlines. Grab a spoon and help with supper. Grab a hatchet and help build shelters. Sit a spell and listen to grandmothers stories. Share in prayer around the fire. This was our introduction to camp.
Imagine a place where everywhere you walk you see people smiling and co-creating.. people who are just meeting joining together in a good way… human beings gratefully sharing their gifts with no expectation on money or reward… no competition, no need for perfection. Imagine working and someone walks up to you with cookies and water and a smile. How does this feel?
Blessed. Grateful. Peaceful.
These are words that come to mind.
We came to stand in solidarity. We came to protect the water… it is life, the water is our brother, our sister. We come from water. We are made of water. Water is our medicine and our relative.
We began to learn about the language of the Lakota. For one, water is not an it, but a he or she. This language shifts everything. One of the first phrases we learned was Mitakuye oyasin which is translated all my relations or we are all related. You can feel the words when you hear them. Curly is my brother. Unci Theresa, my grandmother. Egypt, my niece. There are no “second cousins” or great grandmothers… your grandmother is your grandmother (unci) and her sisters are your grandmothers. And we soon found ourselves honored to be daughters of our Lakota relatives. A woman may have many, many girls she calls daughter, she did not give birth to them, but she sees them, loves them and cares for them, as daughters. I felt connected deeply to this language and grateful for the teachings. To be called Auntie Sarah makes my heart sing.
Tiospaye means “the making of relatives” or “extended family”.
This place in time we call Standing Rock was foretold many years before. Our Indigenous relatives were told of the time when the black snake would come… we were called together in this moment for a great purpose.
I had always been an eternal optimist, but this moment in my life gave me an overwhelming peace that has healed my heart and carries me to allow Spirit to lead me. We met peace keepers, earth guardians, love ambassadors, protectors of the planet.. from all over the globe. WOW!
Let me tell you this truth… Turn off the tell-lie-vision, every news station had an agenda. The rEVOLution is happening. Love is spreading like a wildfire that cannot and will not be stopped. The rEVOLution won’t be televised. Millions of people around the world are waking up to realize our sacred connection to the earth, to the water, to the birds and bugs and each other. There’s lots of good ways to jump in and co-create! There’s no room for fear.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The time is now.
Love rules the kingdom without a sword.
The Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world; a world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separations; a world longing for light again.
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.
In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.”
Shams of Tabriz’s 40 Rules of Love
