Feel Your Prayer
I sit in blackness, hugging my knees with face buried in my arms as the steam swirls and burns my exposed neck.
I am instructed to pray as the Water Pourer sings a healing song in the Lakota tongue. I can hear the other hushed words from those tightly packed in around me … just a few recognizable words from the darkness … "Great Spirit be with them …." -- "Oh Tunkasila bring us..." -- "Grandmother-Grandfather please help our…."
And so I pray, too. In a whisper I say, "Grandmother-Grandfather please give me strength. Please help me to be more … more … " and I cannot think of the word. I sit for a minute and try to remember the right word… not quite "humble" … not quite "giving" …
Then something happens. I suddenly forget words and language altogether and sink into the feeling of who I wish to be in order to define it to Spirit and myself. I let that feeling flow and define my prayer in its entirety. I stop praying out loud, while the others continue, because my prayer has transformed into something more clear and more relevant and more pure and more quiet.
At this point I begin to hear … no -- feel … the prayer coming through the song of the Water Pourer. I can understand completely the Lakota words he sings. The words have become real feelings and real beings because they are each prayers in and of themselves.
I add my prayer to those he sings and it fits and it is welcomed.
And then without speaking, I FEEL the prayer that would normally be spoken as the words "Thank You" and "Pilamaye" .
This is my Journey.
--Owl
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