It guides you,” he said before handing it over. “Turning bear’s good if you need to turn your life away from a bad path. I pointed to the turning bear and gave him forty dollars. He lined up seven of the hand-carved stone fetishes for which he is locally famous. Prior to the lodge, Delbert took my girlfriend Toni and me into his office with its dirt floor and fake oak paneling for walls. He is a lineage holder, a medicine man he’s just doing his job. But he doesn’t make a big deal out of giving it. He is one of those people who wants nothing from you, yet he has something to give. You can feel his warmth when he talks you sidle up. How can you not like this guy? Late sixties, long gray hair, big belly, jean shorts. “You’re being boiled alive by an Indian.” His great-great-great-grandfather battled bravely, headfirst, against the Crow Indians. He was raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It feels like I’m breathing fire.ĭelbert Charging Crow, an Oglala Lakota Sioux and former dental assistant, is leading the sweat lodge. Here in the lodge his advice translates as Go with the heat. Then I remembered my Zen mentor’s advice: Always turn into the slide. Years ago at the monastery I was driving our Tacoma down the icy switchbacks when I lost control. I throw the towel over my head, drop my head between my knees. Steam pours forth, like when you take the lid off the vegetables on the stovetop and your face gets blasted. Delbert Charging Crow splashes medicine water on the grandfathers.
It’s filled with sixteen “grandfathers,” stones heated earlier in the campfire outside. I can’t see the hole in the earth before us. Several layers of heavy tarps cover the top and sides. The frame for this enclosure is made from bent willow branches.
We’re packed inside a claustrophobic hemisphere in Delbert’s backyard. All the old people, our ancestors,” Delbert Charging Crow says. And so I’ve come to this sweat lodge for answers.Ī voice cuts through the darkness. My dream journal from the following morning reads, Have I been lost since Roshi died? Or am I just finding my own way? I can’t always tell the difference. I even shouted, “Use your words!” This is what my youngest sister tells her toddler when he’s being stubborn. No title, author, or image, but I knew it was Single White Monk, which I wrote (and he never read, fortunately). He was holding a book with his thumb and index finger. He appeared to me in a dream a few nights ago. No wonder sweat lodge participants often report seeing spirits. You can’t distinguish between inside and outside. Forty minutes of darkness this deep does something to your boundaries. It’s pitch black-a black so deep that when I close my eyes I can’t tell the difference.
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