Solstice Summer : A Great Human Heart
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| Solstice: ©2016 SacredPipe.org |
Just after midnight I gathered with friends and relatives near to the precise moment of the summer solstice. Together we made songs and used old indian rattles and sttod with our feet on the mother earth, around a stone medicine wheel, drinking blue corn and water. Passing through the sky, the old timers called it.
Passing through the sky, singing in my middle.
For 3 days prior, before, we made drumming and songs, ate together ceremonial foods, and talked about the mystery life of sacred pipe, eagle feathers, drums, songs, names and human hearts.
The Moon was full and round, a “Ripe Berries Moon”. A moon good for wild goats and strong songs. For looking up at the sky, for seeing Mars and Jupiter. A brief alignment, a portal perhaps, at least from within a state of mind…projected and focused through the ceremony.
Alignment is the entire practical point of a ceremony. The root of the ceremony you could say. The Ahnishinabeg suggests there are eight levels of consciousness possible in ceremonies like this. One level is the root, alignment. Another level is the “passing through”. Alignment in machines, in ideas, in mathematics, in the complex movements of people and history and events is very important. Its presence or absence is very informative in understanding many things.
Given these consideration I have always done all I can to make solstice and equinox ceremonies at the moment in real time. In modern times it is easy to find out well ahead of time the hour and Second of the solstice. This occasion we find out that Full Moon is happening also at the same moment in calendar time as solstice.
All around the world, even after these tens of thousands of years, there are human beings seeking to stand with the mother earth at the solstice. In ancient times, thousands of people worked very hard to erect circles, stones, pyramids and other markers to measure and note the solstice and equinox. Today, no one really remembers why we did that.
For me it is direct and simple: alignment. You say that and sometimes people give you that look, that what are you talking about look. But that’s it. Alignment. If you take your breath, your body, your posture, your consciousness, your eyes, your ears, your toes, your sense of smell, touch…gather them all up into a single moment, in alignment with the sun and stars and earth…and something will happen. Ceremonies, at their very very least, are opportunities to focus all your senses into a single intention. This may be the most important fact about them. I consider at least a good starting point in the ceremonies of the four directions unity bundle.
Far Away. Friends who are keepers of other fires called in, sent messages. There were several other fires. In the original time there were tens of thousands of fires, of ceremonial alignments. These Morning Tobacco Fires.
the greatest wonder
the greatest surprise
is in your heart
right there
in your heart
great wonder
a great surprise
a great human heart
it could be
right there all along
(based upon something said by Muhammad Ali)
Summer Solstice : 00:34 CET : 21 June 2016
