The Woman Named Dreams Awake

I believe one of my legs lives fully in the Mohawk Valley, with all its intended desire and capability to lead my body forward in a sprint. Part of me still moves in this past. My leg's slightly twisted weakness is apparent to my body, but it refuses to listen fully. Does Spirit hold it there by force? It is as if it has been numbed in the cold water of the ancestral Great River. But I want to learn if this theory could be Truth: What holds me?

Is this rigid way in which I move and think in the Modern world any different than my refusing spiritual grounding in a past I'm regretting? No warrior now. I am slow; instead, planning and thinking like a council mother. I admit I am impatient living in this new way. Slow to rise up and defend, and thus, blasphemous to all Spirits.

In this new time, I am not among the people and no one teaches the old ways of honoring Nature's gifts. It is no wonder I am a walking bird here. Flight is given by the Wind Spirit, and I am like old and silent bedrock, drowned beneath the river's current. Water fills my mouth with each attempt to shout the name of the Wind.

I once learned French readily among the traders. As many more of the men-from-outside-the-Nations came, I saw how little favor speaking the outsider language gave. I laugh at the irony of it now. I placed myself in a dark room to learn the words of overseas men, and places I would never walk. I was to send myself to the classroom yet again, in another time, only to experience the same betrayal. The lands which I travel now, or the time traveled on the river are life-bound. Some days, the knowledge that my spirit has traversed such great distances is uplifting. Other times, in this world, I can think only on what has been lost. I relive my death; worse than the overturned tortoise's end. Why now, drawn to it again? Finally, I am removed from the blood-steeped ground of the battlefields made on my native land, and having blood pulp for eyes, the last living memories in that life are filled with the stench of death and the feasting births of maggots on my own flesh.

Why can't my empathy act to free me from this parallel path? The threads of Mother Spider's web criss-cross my past and present connections to knowledge. But it is that felt connection that makes me the communicator I am today, and once was. I feel for the message in my many moments. So often, I continue to allow other people to inhabit my open plain, or my hidden forest hunting grounds, and I realize in this moment, I miss my own story.

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It is the Twenty-first Century; nearly a decade into it, and I am afraid to speak openly of my dreams. Has this always been true, century after century? The female, an outspoken Yin, beaten to silence; the male, a brooding Yang, forced to shout out the courage-building battle cry. This body still holds a memory of recurrent death shadows. I step into the neighboring Buddhist temple's meditation garden each Thursday after work to force clarity upon my splintered mind. The foliage is too minimal for my tastes, but it does not matter, for I always close my eyes.

I am drawn to the sacred grove of trees within my imagination. Sunlight sinks in only so far — the color of the ground and the trunks is altered by the patchiness of moisture, from tawny brown in any spot of sun to almost black. If I had no language beyond my beliefs, these trees would be my people and I could not call them trees. In experience alone, I would choose to call them sunstretchers. They worship in an eternal awakening stretch upward. Today, I will stand and stretch forward my thanks to God in their presence.

The beginning is rocky, for I know that part of me is not yet at peace. What connection do I really want to make? I am a Caucasian woman at mid-life in a modern world. As I sort through sensations and waking dreams that feel both like a spiritual calling and a nervous breakdown, I also believe that I have been another being in another time. Failing to conceive has also wracked my present thoughts with emotion. I am here to meditate. But there are too many suggestions of who I might be in this moment.

I am drawn to call upon Spirit as I am told the "Native American Indians" would; calling outward to the G-r-e-a-t Spirit. I carry doubt and cynicism about this Hollywood-made heritage and Southwest semi-philosophy which I am assuredly mixing into my psyche and my search. In truth, I want to know this nearly forgotten part of me more completely. So, the medicine of my healing progresses on this thought.

I am, through thought, traveling time. Along the paths which Thoreau made his contemplations, in centuries before, the people live with certain faith in the guiding principles of the very spirit of the living land. God, I wish you to be the icy river and the smooth, silty riverbed in my life as it is now.

Holding this place of serenity in my own heart is like living as the essence of the land. It is natural to me, and I embrace this small finger of Truth curling about my own finger. The feeling of life within me is both here, so close, and yet being ripped away from possibility in another reality. The masculine warrior body that rants in frustration is held. It is not very different from the emotional feminine wanting to cry out to an uncertain past and cloudy future. I need to be back at present and must choose.

The nature of serenity is a quiet place, but for the man and woman with children, it is also a garden where their children play, yet it remains serene. I accept these truths for myself and I also know they solace all the women and their mates who have never brought forth their family. God of supply and Great Father of the seasons, we are attentive to you. All is made available through the magnificence of Spirit co-creating every life and the land.

Peace of mind is a certainty. By accepting the infinite bounty of creation, and by staying true to an ever-expanding faith in providence, what result could be made except perfect clarity that the peace of Spirit is our peace also? I am drawing myself close to nature and declaring, that always returning to Source allows the essence of serenity to be a well of infinite depth. Knowing the way at all times to this center, I have marked the path for all seeking to be with child. The icy water drawn up from the depths of Mother is suddenly a comfort. This is not the warrior's touch of terror that so recently came upon me.

The thirsting man is expected to be thankful upon discovering the wellspring. I give thanks in this moment for all seekers. On the journey, cause for doubt can be eradicated by this prayerful presence. The mechanism of prayer can direct all back to the path of certainty.

I release my vision to an invisible Law, present not only in the sacred grove of my imagination, but in all creation. This intention exists eternally in the mind of God. All avenues of clear, peaceful thought exist right in this moment.

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I am surprised to hear the public garden's massive wooden and bamboo adorned gate rattle closed. The meditation deepened to a place I did not imagine possible before. There is some true peace as I rise up quickly in the twilight and make hurried apologies to the monks trying to secure the exit.