LETTERS FROM HOME: OF GRANDFATHER'S BREATH AND WORDS SHAPED BY THE HEART

July 17, 1997

Dear Leslie,

Just got back from Virginia. The East has a curved, lived-in beauty compared to the raw spires and slopes of the West. I like the sound the English language makes in Virginians' mouths. More curves. Charlottesville had the feel of money and tradition, of Saturday night blazers and gin and tonics, of expensive outdoors stores that cater to folks who want to camp in style.

My first look at the Shenandoah Valley was stunning, a hawk's-eye view from the top of a pass on I-64. Below was a landscape painting of farms in full bloom and forests George Washington had probably tromped through. The immensity of the Eastern forests surprised me. I had expected that people might outnumber trees in some areas, but a natural partnership seems to have been struck. There are trees in the median strips in Charlottesville.

I was in Virginia to attend a workshop for men. I hoped to discover something about the connection between love and creativity. I've been feeling some blocks.

Both love and creativity come from the same source, I know. And both, I know, are most accessible when we are open to the sublime.

Rituals are one connection to the sublime, as every religion knows.

On Saturday night, beneath a bright half moon, 20 of us crawled on hands and knees into the low earthen womb of a sweat lodge. Sitting shoulder to shoulder in a circle, we waited.

Six of 24 large stones we'd heated for hours in a bonfire were brought in. There was no light inside save the initial glow of a new stone.

John, the leader, sang songs heard in Lakota Sioux sweat lodges hundreds of years ago. Fragrant cedar and lavender were sprinkled on the stones with each hot new arrival, then John spread a dipper of water over them. The Lakota called the steam Grandfather's breath, he said.

A sweat lodge summons perspiration and toxins from every pore on your body. We sang and prayed and breathed Grandfather's breath for two hours. The door was opened only to bring in more stones. At those times, a water jug was passed around.

The heat was searing. I dug my fingers into the ground sometimes just to feel some coolness. There was nothing to look at, nothing but the everlasting present moment to think about. Any words that came to your lips in the form of an invocation were shaped in your heart.

The intensity led a few men to leave, and they did so without dishonor.

When it was done we dove into the moonlight on a nearby pond. The water was deliciously sharp on the skin. Back at the lodge at midnight, we ate ravenously and silently and slept like dead men.

But the feeling the next morning was of being alive, purified, opened.

As we prepared to return home, one of the leaders warned us to drive carefully because we were in a heightened state of consciousness and openness to all of our feelings. "It won't last," he said, "but you might find yourself falling in love with the girl at the 7-Eleven. And she might not understand."

What I think is that creativity, love and even sex are all sweetly entwined, like the honeysuckle near the sweat lodge. To withhold anything of yourself from the world, to accept any blocks, is to be less alive.

A card I saw at a bookstore says it beautifully: "A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman." Not Hallmark. Wallace Stevens.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.