Thinking Out Loud on Wednesday

The early morning sun is bright in the cloudless blue sky. It is warmer than usual for March. I prop the screen door open. It feels good to have currents of air move through the house. Out of the corner of my eye I see a lizard on the kitchen floor, breathing deeply without any other movement. I listen for a long time, feel her presence and watch, and then I helped her outside to be free.

.   .   .

For as long as I can remember Auntie has reminded me to remember my dreams, so that I would be able to find my path within the great circle in relation to how Indigenous people viewed the world, which according to Auntie meant that when it came to spiritual things, our dreams told our spirits desire. She said it was important to pay attention and follow the path our dreams illuminated, and that it was equally important to be kind, to help and let other people follow their path.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, the stories she always told me spoke of The Seven Ways. The female cycles of life in the medicine world: The Way of the Daughter, The Way of the Householder, The Way of the Mother, The Way of the Gatherer, The Way of the Ritualists, The Way of the Teacher, The Way of the Wise Woman.

But she never used those exact words. Instead she told me stories, the ones that guided Native children to understand there was a natural world, and a spirit world, and places that connected the two, where some could, if they were suppose to, move from one to the other. But when I was young I thought her stories were like fairy tales, and that she told me the Grandmother Spider story to keep my mind off all the teasing I got at school, being called spider, because I had long skinny legs. 

-- a rough draft page from "We Who Walk The Seven Ways" a memoir in progress.