Winter Solstice Twenty Twelve || Children Screaming

6:11 PM CET || These days my emotions and my attention goes to those children and their teachers who were murdered in Connecticut. I am one of the Keepers Of Sacred Pipes and Ceremonies of Connecticut. I know Newtown very well. I know the land and the elegant lifestyle of the rich and well to do who favor Connecticut to raise their children. The Old Indians call it the Golden Tower.

The Tower has exploded. Before I thought about or heard about or had my heart beaten like with a stone about those children in Connecticut, I was thinking that every American Indian woman has, or is standing next to someone , who has been abused, raped, beaten, shot . And no one is ever arrested and it never makes the news. And then came this event. I watched the President of the United States hand his head and weep. And gun sales have actually gone up every day since that moment.

It was hard for me to give up my life in America. I have unfinished business for one thing, with my family, with Taos Pueblo, with the land. Finally leaving America eight years ago, I became desperately ill for several years….just from the shock of doing it. It was really hard. I have a job to do, to take the sacred pipes of the four directions unity bundle in a circle around the world. Or at least as far as I can get. So far I have not been able to leave Italy.

We Wabeenos call Connecticut, “Long River”. We call the sacred pipe which belongs to the Five Tribes there, the Long River Sacred Pipe. It is the only inter-tribal, blessed my many elders of many tribes, sacred pipe at the Eastern Gate. It is the Eastern Gate. If you are not aware of Wabeeno ideas, that’s OK. You could understand the idea that a properly blessed, sanctified, historical object of sacred power and faith, certified before heaven, sacred pipe is right there.

My point? I have a voice in this argument about mass shootings, violence against random strangers, about the children who inherit our world. Though I am far away I grieve for what happened at Sandyhook Elementary school. Honestly, I can imagine that sometimes people wish they could kill the government. There are a lot of “kill” language points in all political arguments. I can’t get my heart around the murder of innocents. The feeling I have is just a numbing grief and sorrow. The murder of these innocents is an act to far. As a sacred pipe I want to help, but holy men help by praying and making ceremonies. So that is what I did today, the solstice. I made the sacred ceremony of the Northern Gate, also called the Solstice. I welcomed in the slowing down of the earth, the biting coldness of the wind,

Here is a link to a video (quicktime) of my ceremonial song for the Children and the Solstice...

Ceremonial moments are about good feelings. They are about celebration of life, all lives and all life. They are also moments of awareness, of accountability. Of responsibility. For your life. For your community. For the peace of your house.

It is easy to see, from here, how the GOP, the political right, and its billionaire bag men (the Sandyhook shooting was sponsored by a rifle made by particular “investment” corporation, their most profitable product)…easy to see ho they use the language of fear and difference and redirection to social issues to no one will notice what the corporations and the underlying philosophy of the GOP really is. America and Americans are being cynically manipulated, even now. Sandyhook may be the exception that breaks through, somewhere. I know something will come, a gesture. A gesture over the fields of blood. But sometimes, almost always by way of ancient and tragedy, people and communities and even cultures can make a great leap forward.

The sacred ceremony is an agent for empowering and enacting self responsibility, so that you, the one in that sacred moment, can take responsibility. There is something you can do. There is always something you can do. Pay attention.

The way is open. Right now. All that a holy man, a sacred pipe, can do is pray and look you in the eye and ask you to speak the truth. Feel the truth. Pay attention

(Solstice of Winter || Twenty Twelve)

I can hear children screaming
While the old men in their hand-made suits
Eat fried chicken to prove how much they hate Obama
And the poor
And the hungry
And the lost, as they lock and load
One more time
As they count the money in their designer bags
As the bullets pass through the hearts
Of screaming children, of mothers
And dreamers suddenly awakened
In pain and clenching rigid jaws
I turn and measure the long shadow behind me
And sit down to pray and sing
In a sacred manner
And welcome in the winter’s rise
Another gate has opened….but I am sitting very still
This time
All the movement is inside