It’s amazing how dirty feet can be after a sweat lodge.  I find it amusing that I cannot stand dirty fingernails but dirty feet during and after any ceremony are totally tolerable.  Amazing.

Such a boon!  An infant joined the communities lodge yesterday.  A sweet purely perfect 6 week old came in the door between first and second rounds.  He was passed from hand to hand around the circle, each of us offering our blessing to him.  All of us taking delight in the enormous gift of his presence.  His tiny toes were altogether clean.

I was guided to make baby moccasin on Christmas day.  What? OK, sure, I love to sew for tiny feet.  Surprisingly, what came up was not love.  I got a  little agitated and anxious about people having babies today, these times too awful.  Who’d want to bring a child in now?  Conscious or unconscious parents, my thoughts rambled on…. what must they be thinking?  Such judgment and fear welled up in me.

Ah… Medicine work is such a revealer and healer.

I noticed that my fear churned when I laid the pattern down.  This fear has lived in me for a while.  The judgment and questioning came as I cut the pieces from the hide – symbolic to me of how separate I was feeling from the Whole.  While praying and sewing the little pieces of red Deer hide back together, creating “Winter Girl” moccasin, I was reminded that we are all here by agreement.  These New Ones are coming in by choice.  And they have their reasons for coming in at this time.  They know what they are getting into.  This allayed my fears tremendously. I was then and am now, humbled and awed.   I bow to the unknown wisdom of the Soul’s path and the Mystery.  I stitched such gratitude and love now.  These little shoes – the lesson I received that Their enlightenment is my, our, gift and we need them now.  There is no escaping the Whole – I needed to be reminded.  I remember.

Mother and babe crawled out of the lodge, the door came down, we went on with our prayers.  Just now, I wondered about the fire tenders, did they too have their time with the baby?  Surely they must have.  I hope so.  Afterwards, still in our circle, I watched Mom. She was captivated, watching him asleep in the crook of her loving arm.  Looking at them with my heart-eyes and not the fear-mind, it was clear that the lesson I’d received that day allowed me to fully be present for the gift of their presence.

Joyfully (my usual way), I had sewed moccasin for this one too a few months before he was born.  Mom thinks he’ll be wearing them by the time we go into ceremony to dance the Night Turtle Dance this summer.  My heart was so full.  My feet needed a pumice stone.  🙂

Happily and lovingly (truly) sewing baby moccasin.  They are filled with prayers of gratitude and joyful wonder at the remarkable mystery of it all.

Mitakuye Oyasin

All My Relations