Sparks fling themselves upward from the crackling logs below on a cold California winter day. We are standing by the lodge: a small structure made with willow poles woven together; lashed with tiny pieces of red cloth and covered with layers upon layers of cotton blankets and canvas tarps.
We are on an outcropping at the edge of a hill. It drops off steeply to our right, to the North. The valley below is full of manzanita, poison oak, cedar and brush. The wind whips across our faces, and tears through our jeans and shirts. We stand firm despite the cold, despite the wind, despite the discomfort.
We wait to enter the lodge.
There are many rituals and practices that Earth-centered peoples around the world use to reconnect to their place in the world. For years now the sweat lodge has been an essential one to me.
It is a place of creating community. Of leaving behind what no longer serves me or the world through me. It is also a place of deep apprenticeship with the world. Not the world made of human ideas and social agendas, but one of an older understanding of the Earth and our place in it.
There is little that is sacred in the modern world, in the modern understanding of things. For centuries, a base materialism has governed collective social thinking. The idea that the accumulation of things and the subsequent flaunting of those things is a worthwhile endeavor for a life has left millions of people starving. It has shifted the human out of humanity and made of so many of us expendable pawns in the unending quest to feed the hungry ghosts of greed and consumerism.
What was “holy” in holidays is seldom seen. The rush is to feed the starving soul with unfulfilling things on Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays, and whatever other enticing name is given to the bragging rights of having gotten more for the illusion of less. All the while, the natural world around us bucks us off with increasing intensity.
I have spent the majority of my life learning from indigenous cultures and traditions. It is what makes sense to me. Over the years one thing that I have learned is a deep sense of gratitude and indebtedness to the world for allowing me my days of living. Not as an entitlement, but as a tremendous, immeasurable gift. It is an understanding that is echoed through and through by the peoples I have had the privilege of learning with. Humble people. Wise people. People that see beyond the currents of capitalist hunger that spread like wildfire devouring communities, cultures, and individuals. People of all races, colors, and cultures.
Something unspoken happens in ritual spaces like the sweat lodge.
It is an act of remembering. In the original sense of the word. As in, to put back together.
Through ritual practices like this, done in community, I get a deeper, felt understanding of my connection to the land where I live, to the people that share it with me, to the cycles of life and death that allow me to be here for a flickering instant of geological time. Something older, wiser, more alive than the currents of consumer hunger and materialism speaks through the elements that a present in the sweat lodge. The fire, water, earth, and air weave an ancestral understanding into my bones. The prayers and songs reweave the place we humble humans have in the world.
To many people, this is a foreign concept. That we may not be the center of it all is beyond imagining for many people. It is easier to stay caught up in the web of political intrigues and media escapades.
But rituals like this, and ritual communities with a deep understanding of our connection to the Earth, help me to see beyond the patterns of living that are destroying our chances for survival as a species. They also provide a sense of meaning and belonging that is an ancestral need in us all.
I’m not saying that everyone needs to run out and find the nearest sweat lodge. This is not a magic pill that will cure all your ills. It is not a high-speed rail ride to enlightenment, wealth, or uber-marketable guru status. It is an apprenticeship with humility. It is an appeal to recovering our humanity.
There are many practices, shared by many communities and groups of people that aim in a similar direction. Many paths up the mountain. The sweat lodge happens to be a powerful, transformational one in my life. I am not saying it has to be yours.
What I am saying is that perhaps we could begin seeking in our own communities to find what reconnects us with each other, with the Earth, with the wisdom of the ancestral voices in our bones, in our DNA. The point isn’t to find a fast fix. It is to start questioning “if not this, then what?”
The world goes on, careening towards an almost certain outcome that doesn’t involve human participation on the Earth for much longer, if we don’t change the ways we’ve been living. The Earth will be fine. It can and will recover and regenerate from whatever devastation we wittingly or unwittingly unleash on it.
But maybe you could be part of a turning tide. Starting small. In your community. Learn from older cultures. Those that are tied to the Earth. Those that understand where their food comes from, where their water comes from, where their clothing and shelter materials come from.
Be of service to your community. Create ritual spaces that weave together who you are with the land and the collective dreams of a people. We won’t change the world through massive monumental heroic actions, but with the daily practices. Seek a ritual community that inspires you. One that provides sustenance for you spiritually as well as physically. Then, devote yourself and your gifts to it wholeheartedly. In my experience, it is the only life worth living.
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Photo: Getty Images
