Monday, January 16, 2012

Teens, Sweat Lodges, and more...

Hi friends,
I already forgot my resolution to write this every Sunday - so here I am, playing catch-up again. How quickly I get distracted! I have a good excuse, though. I was out in Williams, Oregon yesterday, putting on a sweat lodge for my daughter's boyfriend's 21st birthday. He asked me to do this for him... something I consider to be a minor - no a major - miracle. And typically, our 10 am departure time quickly became 11:40 am; there was no additional fire-tender, so many of the kids had to step up and help in new ways, which took explaining time; we returned home, exhausted, around 6:30 pm, and then there were burritos to build and eat. Truth is, you really can't rush teenagers who have been up half the previous night to get anywhere on a schedule, even if it is something they want to do.

Amazingly, going to sweat lodge is just that - something they want to do.

OK, to backtrack a bit, I have been studying with a teacher for the past five years, and just recently (last winter) received the blessing to begin 'pouring water' as they say: which means running or facilitating a sweat lodge. I have had the incredible good fortune to have been given a piece of land to use - for a year - as the site of my sweat lodge altar. The land couldn't be more beautiful. It sits in a clearing with a bordering creek, with no close neighbors, out in the country where the air is fresh and the human-made noise is minimal.

The model of this lodge comes from the Fuego Sagrado Vision Quest camp. It is much like a traditional Lakota (northern Native American) sweat lodge in many ways - with some very distinct differences. This is not the forum to go into all that, but if anyone interested wants to know more, give me a call. Or come out to Williams to a sweat!

Switching to a separate track of my life, my passion for the past decade has been to find an authentic way to work with teens, to help them in the difficult transition from kid to adult. To give them a safe space, a sacred space, in which to be themselves. I got my Master's Degree in Education and became a public school teacher, thinking this was a way to accomplish this. Not true. The public school system is a lot of things, but a proponent of the authentic self? Not even close.

My daughter, bless her heart, has been brought up around ceremonies, and continues to choose to participate in them. Last year, she asked for an all night prayer meeting, which we scheduled for her 17th birthday in November (11/11/11!) and in order to prepare, asked for me to run a lodge for her and nine of her friends. This was this past October. Since then we have had four teen sweats, most of them attended solely by teens (the one we did right before the solstice was an exception, with many adults in attendance).

Which brings me to say that my two worlds have met, finally, and good things are stirring... Sacred ceremony is a perfect vehicle for connecting with the authentic self. The sweat lodge is, on the surface, a simple purification ceremony. But there is so much more to it that that.

And so, my daughter and her teenaged friends are coming to the sweat lodge, and I am unbelievably grateful and overwhelmed... and aware of the incredible amount of angst they are carrying and wanting to do something to help and doing something to help but not sure it is enough and wondering what the F@#*! is going on in our society where the teens feel just so shitty and alienated and depressed. Ok yes I remember as a teen I was stressed and angsty and tried my best to make myself numb by partying all the time. But the 'future' was something that people still believed in back then. Now? 2012? Everyone's waiting for the end of the world! The teens are so afraid that everything they know is going to disappear, and that they are not safe. They feel so disconnected from everything. There are no jobs; kids are dropping out of high school, making money however they can (illegally, most of the time), and, the way it seems to me, helping each other cope through the worst of it; basically raising each other. We need connection! We need the village! We need our elders! Other adults who are not their parents who can be there as positive examples.

I know this is raw. I am out of time (that would be a good trick if it were literally true, don't you think?). Send some prayers our way, or to your local teens, wherever you are. If you have some time, or can make the time, become a mentor. Take a teen to a sweat lodge, or put one on for them. Relate instead of react! Remember how it was when you were a teen. What, if anything, do you wish had been different? Make that your offering.

Thank you , Creator, for preserving the sweat lodge ceremony until this day. We SO need these ceremonies to remember what is really important, what is truly sacred in this life.

Aho Mitakue Oyasin.
Harmony

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