Catching a breath for peace

June 6, 2002

Dear Julie,

Some people have visions during the Native American purification ritual called the sweat lodge. I had heart palpitations.

Debbie Naeter, a woman known hereabouts for her affinity with the plant world, invited 11 people to her land north of Cape Girardeau Tuesday evening to take part in the sweat lodge. Some dug the pit, where rocks heated in a large bonfire would carefully be placed later that night, and positioned poles and covered them with blankets to complete the lodge.

Most of the builders were women. Charles Ramsayer, the man in charge of the evening, said that meant it was a goddess lodge.

A goddess lodge, he explained, is "a circle of women getting together and teaching a circle of men how to be a circle of people."

Charles arrived from the four directions with his 10-year-old son, Skye, and a red truck shaped like a box. Charles is involved with the International Peace Gathering being held June 19-23 at the Phoenix Ranch in south-central Missouri. He believes the 800-acre ranch on the Jacks Fork River is one of North America's sacred places. He said people are gathering at sacred places around the world during the summer solstice to play for peace.

Charles asked each of our intentions for being at the sweat lodge. A young woman named Christy hoped for guidance about the duality of good and evil in the world. "I wish I could just suck the meanness out," she said.

At this time when the world seems entranced by terror, the goddesses are seeking peace on earth.

I was in a sweat lodge in Virginia where the heat became so intense that I burrowed my nose into the ground searching for coolness. But I didn't care. A sweat lodge completely immerses you in the intensity of the experience.

I emerged from that lodge with clarity and peace of mind and a profound hunger. The sleep afterward was the deepest of my life.

This time, my heart raced and I felt sick. After the second round, when Charles opened the door to the East, the direction symbolizing rebirth and wisdom, I couldn't get out fast enough. I wobbled to a stump to sit and took a long while to regain my bearings.

I wondered if being middle-aged now made me more vulnerable to the heat, but Charles said he has run many sweat lodges with elderly people who can't get enough heat. I am left to conclude that the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual toxins currently in my body are so embedded that instead of welcoming the purification, I resisted it. I have much sweating to do.

Many people at the sweat lodge talked about the Oglala Sioux holy man whose visions were recorded by the poet John Neihardt in "Black Elk Speaks." Black Elk said this about peace:

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men."

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.