This month (August) I will write about what I think about a great deal: children. This past weekend I poured a sacred Lodge ceremony for 16 children who had spent a week in the mountains unlearning everything they knew in a vulnerable, dangerous, and purposeful way under the guidance of skilled facilitators from the House of One Common Unity. They were under the care of the forested mountains of Elk Garden, West Virginia at Abram’s Creek. The whole process of initiation changed the “young-people-who-were-once–children-but- now-are-adults” into adults. We gave them as many Medicines, and skills as we could to those new adults to face the deadness of the life-styles of many of their homes and neighborhoods and challenging but enduring qualities of their country’s spirit. Adults initiated bring new energies, primal energies into a world set on it’s own spiraling course downward away from the original intent of Creation.
Back in Washington DC the children I have been leading this summer in a work crew walked with me to the community garden we had created to harvest our tomatoes. The depth of their disrespect towards food stunned me. They could not eat food without chemicals in it. The sight of me eating a sun kissed red tomato fresh from the patch astonished and repelled them. One boy cut a tomato into tiny pieces and left them on the ground, another slapped one into the dirt! They took pictures of each other grimacing at the taste of their tomatoes. There is a learned disconnection between children, the water and the land. More than anything else it defines their relationship, and understanding of the Creator. – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
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