Just one glance into the recesses of one's memories are the many times the presence of good and evil, of a sacred and divine flow of energetic particles seem to flow along the contours of the fiber of our being from a core. Every life has felt it. What a thinking person does with it is their decision. It is unknown how these things occur, but accepted child-like with the reverence gratitude instigates all becomes magical feelings, and a thinking stops thinking as a primary way of absorbing the world of sensory perceptions. More often than not it becomes magic of a kind that is comforting or probing.
Animals don't think about these things to the degree people do. The four-legged People's thoughts are voices without sounds, pictures of the deeper things that convey mystery language to the sense of knowing and belonging to the whole.
One morning when I was a young father, my brother-in-law, Scotty, carefully shook me awake just after the sun cracked an eye open in the east. Grumbling, I followed him downstairs outside. I had left my machete in the house. I was clad in jeans, barefoot. The early birds were flying circles above the street looking down at people standing on cars, or braced to run in terror from a pack of wild dogs. The dogs formed a half-moon shape from the leader against the backdrop of the forest at the end of the road. Their menace was thick in the air. I relaxed into the moment recognizing the leader and a dog here and there I'd met over the months stalking them in the depths of the forest searching for their dens.
The leader looked deep in my eyes, and I in his recognizing what was important to know in each other. These assessments can be long, or short exchanges. We knew each other. Out of habit I'd readjusted my weight to balance against attack, but they were too far away, and only the leader was calling the shots. I was telling my story of who I was that day, and he his story came full and possessed with hunger tinged menace. I thought of killing. He thought of tearing flesh. In the end we knew the dance for that moment.
With an almost imperceptible nod from the leader to me the other dogs turned without a sound and filed into the tall grass, and slithered between the hardwood trees without a sound. I looked after them awhile sad, and glad to see them go. The people on the cars were staring at me with fear wondering what happened, and how. Under my breath I told Scotty, “Go to work.” and went back to bed.
People remember the power of one when the whole is threatened. In turn the community ideal is to complete the circle aiding the one. This circle binds us together as a community. This is my story.
Gregory E. Woods
Keeper of Stories (Dawn Wolf)
2.16.15
published by Indian Voices
March 02, 2015
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| Dawn Wolf in ceremony sharing a Medicine Wheel teaching |
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