In the House of Dreamers
©2007 Photography and text by Turtle HeartWaiting for the Rain to Fall, he said, “In the House Of Dreamers”
“It takes how ever long it takes. Maybe that will save your life. Right now.It has probably saved your life. Going slowly, even while you are waiting. It is not easy but that is not the point. Even when it feels easy everyone is waiting for the rain to fall.”
“Don’t be hasty” he would always say. Some things take time. It is always surprising to be alive and well and inside the rain. It takes time and even inside of the time it takes, things that seemed slow suddenly there arrives a change. An answer in the peace of waiting. The power of being still and quiet. The earth waits for the rain. Flowers and lizards. Wait for the rain.
The word for Rain, the word for the Snake on the ground, the name for the Waiting World and the name for “Open Heart” is the same one word. In an ancient language. It is a word we put inside the sacred pipe. It is the exact same word. It is the one word which means all these things. We don’t just stuff our lives, like dried leaves. Inside the pipe. It is sacred so we breathe at each touch and sing so the mystery life will remember us. And we breathe the sacred words which come to us the dreams. As best we can. We study and think about our dreams in the house of the dreamers. Mide-wi-an. The shape-shifters. Like corn we grow slowly in the night to become the future of where this sacred pipe can be. Changing where you have been into where you are going is real shape-shifting.
Dreaming is a tool, a polishing of the soul that is very useful and interesting.
Not every step is clear nor should it be. Waiting ends, when it ends, inside one single breath. You may remember that waiting is a special kind of listening. Have you never heard the rain? Listen to the waiting is like listening to the rain and is in fact a choice you can make.
44 breaths inside 44 bells ringing in an empty sky in the house where the dreamers sleep. Kung Fu Dreaming. Drumming is there and sometimes corn. Before that moment we crawl around on four legs and go inside an old circle, a sweat lodge, and sing and sing and breathe and we become the rain, the waiting world, the open heart, the animal so close to the earth. The word inside the sacred pipe for this moment. Is. Rain. His name when you translated it to english was “waiting for the rain to fall.”
What is right? What is wrong? Exactly? Shadow and light follow every life. Just at edge of these two lives, in shadow and in light, there is where you find the dreaming. Exactly. Which direction is it moving? It moves right along with the rain. The rain and the light, so why not the shadows?
In one week, up in Milano we will have the dream ceremony, the water drum, the morning fire and the sweat lodge. We will dream together again and remember where we have been. Waiting. You will see. When you go back home something will have changed. The great wind will carry you.
He said we were all born dreaming together. This is what we mean when we say “waiting for the rain”.
