A Quality of Light (32 page)

“A
nd at that time you didn’t know where he was getting any of this, did you?” Nettles was asking. “You didn’t know where the Indian angle was comin’ from. Seems like pretty heady stuff for some small-town kid to know,” he said, pouring us another cup of coffee.

“I know now, of course. It was from the books, and from Staatz. But then? Then, I guess, I wanted to believe we were still the kids we were when we met. No one likes to think that growing up means you have to grow out of the friendships that made childhood special.”

“That’s what you felt? Like the friendship was maxing out, as my kids would say? Kaput? Finito?”

“Intuitively. I knew that we were on separate journeys. I was already feeling the emotional nudges which became a calling to the church, and Johnny, well, Johnny was feeling a lot of everything like he always did. A lot of unspoken things. I don’t think I believed our friendship was
over
, per se, but I felt that it had moved to different ground. Evolving. Changing. Like us. That’s one of the things that Jacqueline was able to cement into my spiritual foundation back then.”

“What’s that, Reverend?”

“That relationships never
end
, they just
change,”
I said quietly, feeling tears building behind my eyes. “We’re in a constant position of relationship with everything. Jacqueline taught me that when the Creator gave life to the universe, he did so with one breath. One breath — the breath of life. Everything carries within it the breath of life from the Creator. Animate and inanimate are all
born of the same breath. Because of that, we’re all related, we’re all spiritual kin. Nothing ever breaks that kinship. Our lives and circumstances may change but our state of relationship never does. We’re always in relationship, so once you’ve put footprints across someone’s life, they’re always there. You can be legally divorced from someone, emotionally estranged from friends and family, or someone may die. No matter what, though, you’re still in relationship because they don’t end, they just change.”

“That’s deep,” Nettles said, nodding.

“Yeah. It’s deep.”

“So you went to the sweat, obviously. What happened then?”

“For us? Johnny and me?”

“Yeah.”

“At first, nothing. He worked at the store and I worked on the farm.”

“Real country mouse, city mouse kinda thing.”

“Yes,” I said, grinning.

“But something happened. Something bigger than the petty little nit-picking he was doing.”

I closed my eyes. I could still see us skimming over the curves and stretches of Highway 9 in that cherry-red convertible, his long hair whipping in the wind. I’d be drumming clumsily, hopelessly, on the dashboard while we sang along to the Kinks’ “Lola” or an a cappella “Midnight Special.” Nothing in the world could have convinced me that it wouldn’t be that way forever, that the edges of my life would hold and we would be framed, all of us, in a circle of light, expandable, resilient and eternal.

I
n the time before man, the Creator called a great meeting of the Animal People. In those days the Animal People could speak with one mind and they shared the earth and its riches without conflict. There was harmony and there was peace. No one knew what the purpose of the meeting
was. Speculation was rampant as the animals gathered in a clearing at the foot of a great mountain. When they had all arrived and were settled, the Creator spoke.

“I am going to send a strange new creature to live among you,” the Creator said. “He is to be called Man and he will be your brother.

“This new creature will be born without fur or feathers on his body. He will walk on two legs and speak a strange language. And he will need your help. You will be his teachers and you will show him how to live rightly in the world. Because he will not be like you. He will not be born knowing who and what he is. He will need to search for that, and you will be his guides.

“Man will come into the world bearing a marvelous gift. He will have the ability to dream. And because of this ability to dream he will create many wonderful things. He will populate every corner of the world. But his inventions will take him away from you, keep him separate, and he will lose his way. So I am going to give Man a second marvelous gift. I am going to give him the gift of Knowledge and of Truth.

“But I want him to have to search for it. Because if he found it too easily he would take it for granted. So I need your help. No one knows the world better than you, and I need to know where to hide this gift. Where to place it so Man must search long and hard for Knowledge and Truth. Some place where it will not be an easy search.”

The Animal People were surprised and honored by the Creator’s request. They were thrilled to hear of the arrival of a new creature, a new brother, and they were anxious to be his teachers and to help the Creator find a place to hide the gift of Knowledge and of Truth.

“Give it to me, My Creator,” said Buffalo, “and I will put it on my hump and carry it to the very middle of the great plains and bury it there.”

“That’s a very good idea, My Brother,” the Creator said, “but it is destined that he shall visit every place on earth and he would find it there too easily and take it for granted.”

“Then give it to me,” said Otter, “and I will carry it in my mouth and place it at the bottom of the deepest ocean.”

“Another good idea,” the Creator said, “but with his ability to dream, Man will invent a wonderful machine that will take him even to the depths of the ocean and he will find it too easily and take it for granted.”

“Then I will take it,” said Eagle, “and I will carry it in my talons and place it on the very face of the moon.”

“No,” said the Creator, “that is an excellent idea too, but part of Man’s destiny will see him reach even to the moon and he would find it there too easily and take it for granted.”

One by one the Animal People came forward and offered suggestions on where the Creator could hide the gift of Knowledge and of Truth. One by one the suggestions were turned down. It began to look like they could never find a suitable place. Finally, a small voice called from the very back of their circle. All eyes turned to see a tiny mole, a tiny, half-blind mole asking to speak. Now, the mole was a very respected member of the Animal People. The mole lived within the earth and so was always in contact with Mother Earth. Because of this the mole possessed great wisdom. And because he had lost the use of his eyes the mole had developed true spiritual insight. So despite his size the mole was respected as a great warrior.

“I know where to hide it,” Mole said, “I know where to place this great gift of Knowledge and of Truth.”

“Where then, My Brother?” the Creator asked. “Where should I hide this gift?”

“Put it inside them,” Mole said with great dignity. “Put it inside them. For then only the bravest and purest of heart will have the courage and the insight to look there.”

And that is where the Creator placed the gift of Knowledge and of Truth. Inside us.

Some stories, I guess, we hear too late.

T
here’s a moment during a sweat lodge ceremony when everything becomes clear. You’ve fasted for four days. Your stomach is slack. You feel light-headed. You strip naked, offering tobacco to the grandfathers and grandmothers watching from the spirit world as you walk clockwise around the fire. Already, you
have tied prayer cloths to the trunks of trees surrounding the lodge, asking for guidance, direction and strength. Now, you crawl on hands and knees through the doorway of the lodge, entering again in an east-to-west direction, the direction the sun travels, the direction light moves, the direction of enlightenment, understanding and wisdom. Finding your place, you crouch or sit, staring at the fire pit in the middle of the lodge. One by one, glowing rocks are handed through the door by the lodge helper outside. The elder arranges them in the pit with a pair of deer antlers, splashing them as they arrive with water from a pail containing sage, sweetgrass and cedar. The aroma is pungent.

As more and more rocks arrive the heat builds. Finally, after thirteen rocks are placed, blessed with water and smudging herbs, the flap is closed over the doorway and the skin of the lodge is drawn tightly over a world that is suddenly reduced to heat and smoke and darkness. Darkness. Impermeable but for the eerie glow of rocks. The elder passes around rattles, beating sticks. They arrive in your hands with a nudge out of the darkness, the sudden movement unnerving. A prayer song is sung. Water is splashed on the rocks and you feel the first waves of wild heat sear themselves into the space around you. Another prayer song begins. More water is splashed on the rocks. Heat. The mordant smoke of smudge and a feeling of dislocation that sends the first wriggles of fear through your slackened viscera.

You’ve been told to pray in your own way and you find yourself reciting every prayer you ever learned, mumbling fast, furious as a zealot, the darkness, heat and sweat flowing down your body, propelling you into the incantations, taking you out of the bosom of the concrete world and into the realm of the spiritual. You feel elevated somehow, and as the elder tells you how to pray, to ask for health, happiness and prosperity for everyone and everything in your life, you direct yourself out of your being and feel the tangible release from the oppressive, sweltering darkness.

After what seems like an eternity, the flap is thrown open and light pours in on waves of cool air. You bathe in the relief. Four times you do this. Each time the doorway is opened the opportunity exists
to leave the lodge without shame, but you stay. Thirteen more rocks are added each time, building the heat within the skin of the lodge unbelievably. As they are splashed with water you sweat and pray. Your body feels loosened, unencumbered. Your mind is cleared of obstructive thought. Your spirit moves within you, limber and lithe as a child. There is a rattle in your hands and you shake it to the rhythm of the prayer song that surrounds you, envelopes you in praise. You raise your face towards the curved dome of the lodge, eyes closed and jubilant, sweat streaming down your countenance. Nothing exists in the world except for earth, air, fire and water, your emotions, your spirit and the feeling of connectedness to all of it. You sink your fingers deep into the earth, smudge it over your chest, arms and face. You splash yourself with water and it electrifies you. The fire cauterizes the wounds of the world you carried in and you realize that healing is as much an ordeal as learning to live with faith. You need to learn to struggle through the darkness. That is the moment of clarity.

When the flap is thrown open for the last time, light pouring into your world and your skin steaming in the flush of cool air, you crawl back out into the world energized. You’re abristle with life. You’re grateful for the awareness of your place in the world, your sudden overriding humility, the knowledge that we are born into a world of light. We are always reborn when we emerge from the darkness of our doubt and fear to stand again in the face of Creation, wondrous, wide-eyed and whole.

I emerged from my first sweat lodge ceremony with that insight. When I shared it with Jacqueline she smiled and gave me permission to return to her lodge anytime. I did. Every month that winter, spring and early summer leading up to my graduating year of high school I returned to the lodge. My parents helped me prepare each time and we talked about the remarkable parallels between the faith I was raised in and the faith of my people. I began to see that faith — the unassailable belief that we are all under the guidance of a nurturing and creative God — is the foundation stone of all cultures, whoever that God might turn out to be.

I began to see that for me, Joshua Kane, living and expressing
that faith was as essential as breathing. The Christian ethics and practices I was raised with were enhanced by my exposure to the ethics and practices of my heritage. The reverse was also true. I no longer felt like I stood in the middle of a bridge between two cultures but rather that I had a foot firmly planted in each.
I was the bridge.
My racial and cultural displacement hadn’t assimilated me; I had assimilated it. And somewhere within me the spark of gratitude I’d felt all my life towards my God, my Creator, began to kindle and stoke itself. I began to sense that my calling, my gift, was learning to share and teach this bridging, this delicate joining of ways and means, this spiritual pilgrimage few are aware is necessary and even fewer respond to.