Thanks, Joseph Rael

I may have accidentally mislead a large number of you into believing that Jagger is my spirit animal.  Sadly, this is not the case, as my (maybe) ethereal guide is nowhere as effing majestic as The Jaggers.  Pupper is, in fact, just DG's rottweiler-lab rescue.  Yesterday, I was quite short on time and extra ideas, so when Snaggletooth McWigglebutts plopped his head down on my lap, I ran with it.

So, I briefly have been hinting that something of interest was to occur yesterday, which it did.  Dear readers, I attended my first sweat lodge.

No, not like that.  Like this:

Image courtesy of WelcomeHome.org

For the uninitiated, a sweat lodge, or a purification ceremony, is typically a dome-shaped hut built and insulated with natural materials for the purpose of a ceremonial steam bath.  According to Wikipedia, it's a rather old Native American practice, that has even seen equivalents in ancient Greece and Eastern Europe.

DG had attended multiple times in the past and recently asked if I would be interested in attending one.  I was admittedly pretty hesitant.  The first time he explained it to me, it sounded like the worst torture one could endure.  You sit with strangers in a confined space that is heated to extreme temperatures with red-hot stones and steam, subjecting your body to possible heat stroke or worse, sweat pouring from your every pore until you're a waterless husk, and at the end of it, you deliriously crawl out on your hands and knees, brought back from the edge of death by the cool taste of watermelon.  Only one part of that sounded even remotely appealing to me, and if I'm that desperate for watermelon, I can always run out to the corner store.

Of course, DG neglected to share, initially, the most important part of the ordeal, which was the spiritual aspect of it all.  (Yes. Yes, you did.)

I've said it before, and it is no less true than the first time I've said it - I'm not a very religious person.  In grade school, I dabbled in Christianity because it felt like the "right" thing to do, but after I got to college, it all started slipping away very rapidly.  But, I've still always been interested in spiritual expression, particularly subjecting the self to rigorous conditions.  So when he brought it up again, I said why not.

Dear readers, and I say this with all due respect, what follows is possibly one of the crunchiest undertakings of my young life.

I didn't find it wholly appropriate to take pictures, so unfortunately, we'll be exploring today's entry through the medium of my memory.

When we first arrived, I was greeted by the sound of beating drums, rhythmic shakers (some maraca-type instruments), and a very deep-sounding wooden flute.  Already, people were gathered about a small, glowing fire, stacked with logs white and ashen.  Just to the side of the fire, others were lined up before a woman holding a small basket of smoking sage.  In turn, each person stood, arms extended to the side, allowing the woman to brush the smoke of the sage against their bodies with a large feather.  A pre-cleansing, as it were.  I intently watched each person approach and receive, scared that when it was my turn, I'd do something rather offensive.  Etiquette hadn't really been explained, and everyone else not chanting was essentially silent.  But my turn came, and it was otherwise uneventful.  Smoking sage actually smells pretty nice.

Once everyone had been cleansed, the leaders introduced themselves and the purpose of the lodge, as well as one rather important rule: The purpose of the lodge was for healing and purification.  It was not a time to prove oneself by being macho and suffering through the heat if it were unbearable.  If you needed to leave, you left.  No shame.  And, if at any point, you wanted to come back in, you were more than welcome.

With that said, one at a time, we entered the lodge on our hands and knees.  Thanks to a sunny September day, the hut was already warm, and growing warmer with the increasing number of bodies in the small space.  While I sat, waiting for the others to enter, I glanced around at my surroundings. It was a squat kind of hut - much too short to stand in.  The entire structure was essentially long branches lashed together in a sort of criss-cross pattern.

"Sweat lodge at Lake Superior PP"*** 

It was hard to see with what light shone through the door, but the walls looked as if they were made of many layers of fleece blankets.  At the center sat a round pit with several large stones, brought from the fire.  Above it hung four long strips of cloth, red, yellow, white, and black, one hanging in each cardinal direction.

Those cloths were the last thing I saw before the leader asked for the door to be closed, leaving us in pitch black.

The next thing I can really remember is the hiss of steam as the leader poured water across the hot stones, releasing steam into the air.  Though I saw nothing, my mind filled with a hazy image of a mushroom-like cloud pluming into the air and then slowly settling down across the lodge.  The smell of burning sage filled the room as the leader introduced the lodge to us, a little of its history, its significance, how it tied us to the Mother Earth and Father Sky, etc.

We then listened as we were told of the significance of the cardinal direction of the East, the direction  of the rising sun and of new beginnings.  The leader asked that a few people be willing to pray aloud for the group for new beginnings, at the end of which, the leader then offered the prayer to the fire to be sent into the sky and come back to be showered upon us all.  Once several plucky volunteers had had their say, we were then asked to chant together a soft "a"-kind of vowel, to create a vibration of harmonious energy as a sort of communal prayer.  I'm not sure if I was doing it on purpose or if she was, but as I hummed, I harmonized with the girl sitting next to me.

With that, the round ended, and the door opened briefly, to let in a little air (believe me - it didn't help much), to bring in more rocks, to create more steam, and to introduce a new herb to the fire.  I glanced over at DG, who was dripping with sweat, and I likely the same, but we both just smiled.

There were four rounds it total, all of them more or less following the same pattern.  Each round was dedicated to a different cardinal direction -

• South - polarities
• West - courage
• North - healing and confronting fear

Each round introduced a new herb to the fire - western sage, sweetgrass, bear root (omigod yes, it totally is a thing, and it smells like celery), and one that escapes my memory.  In all but the last round, individuals were asked to share personal prayers.  Many were to the Great Spirit, but the leader had multiple times indicated (almost encouraged) that they could be non-denominational.  Many prayers were said to no one in particular and appeared to be a request for strength to get through some personal issue in life.  I admit that I wasn't terribly keen on these prayers, and had a tendency to recede into my own head when people began to go on diatribes, twisting the meaning away from the intended.   

I'm no stranger to warmer atmospheres; in fact, I tend to run a little cool, so I didn't really feel the heat hit me in an unpleasant way.  Then again, feeling is apparently not the same thing as affecting.

I'm under the impression that a lot of this was strain and nothing else, but bear with me for how cliché this is about to get.

I knew that it was warm, of course, but after I sat quietly through the first few rounds, I wasn't expecting much of an effect.  But the longer I sat there, the more I realized something.  The interesting thing about being in pitch black is that there is visually no difference between your eyes being open or closed.  And then, sometimes you forget which is which.  This wasn't really that interesting until my brain started to form light of its own accord, and waves of a dim grey-blue amorphous luminescence started swimming about in my vision, regardless of whether or not my eyes were open or closed.  While I was trying to drown out the others, the swirling became more prominent, more active, like a swift current rushing through vapor hanging before me.

Then, apropos of nothing, my eyes shifted slightly upward, and I was staring at the back of a hawk, wings spread wide, preparing to take off.    

Alright, so it didn't happen quite like that.  The hawk didn't talk to me, and I didn't even interact with it, so to call it my spirit animal is probably something of a stretch.  But it was pretty damn cool.

That might have been the first sign that the heat was actually starting to get to me.  The second was a bit more direct.  During the last round, instead of the call for individual prayers, the leader asked us to all pray aloud.  Aside from the vibrational chanting, I had been largely silent, but this time, I decided to join in.  Prior to this round, I had been sitting pretzel-style with my head a little low.  Feeling my leg cramp a bit, I shifted and pulled my knees to my chest, and then steepled my hands over my head and I chanted the Chinese niànfó.

My fingers were on fire.  

No, not literally.  But thanks to the steadily increasing heat of the lodge, they felt like they were burning off.  I held my hands there until the prayers died down.  It finally felt almost oppressively hot (at least for me - DG later told me that others were breathing quite heavily as early as the second round), and I wanted to hold onto that for just a little.  

Not long after, the ceremony came to a close, and the door opened once more.  I crawled out, not aware just how hot and soaked I was until I stepped out and felt the air against my skin.  It was in the low 80s yesterday, and even still, drenched in a mixture of sweat and steam, I was actually cold.  My gait was a little uneven as I kind of swayed over to a towel I had earlier laid out on the grass.  As I reclined, a light dizziness set in, probably from dehydration. The sky was cyan with wisps of white cotton clouds that seemed to spin with my head.  

As promised, a plate of watermelon was brought around.  And, yes, it did taste pretty good.

I've been reflecting on the whole affair, pretty much since I exited the lodge.  My gut instinct was to compare to religious gatherings I've attended - essentially any Christian Mass you can think of.  And, you know, I found there to be a number of similarities.  A gathering of like-minded (at least, spiritually) individuals seeking to better themselves through a more other-worldly expression.  A worshiping of an omnipotent being.  Very solemn rituals as dictated through an elder.  Strengthening of the spiritual atmosphere through communal chanting.  And of course, the strongest running theme - me feeling rather clumsy through the whole ordeal.

I would say that I've never been comfortable with expressing myself spiritually, but I would be lying through my teeth.  Expressing myself in a communal religious capacity might be a different story.  Being around others during any kind of worship has always made me a little antsy.  Awkward, even. A large part of it was that I always felt a little out of place, sticking out like a sore thumb, someone who knew nothing and therefore couldn't fully appreciate anything.  Yesterday, in particular, though, my biggest block was that I lacked empathy for the way others connect to any kind of deity.  I've already said that I had no real love for the people who prayed aloud for themselves, but what should it matter to me?  Aren't they just asking for strength from the people around them?  From the energy of community?  Aren't we all doing the same, perhaps just not out loud?  What gives me the right to be so critical of their weaknesses, particularly when they are trying to better themselves?  And in the end, being so irritated hindered my own ability to benefit from the lodge.  Whenever I began to wall-off, it did nothing for me except make me see myself as a sweating girl in a hot room full of strangers.

And yet, perhaps one of my favorite parts of the whole experience was humming as one.  We weren't particularly harmonized or in sync, but for the brief moments we were, sitting and enduring together in that oppressive heat, it was quite beautiful.

It's hard to say what I took away from this because I was so nervous and closed off for a portion of it.  Would I go back?  I think yes, probably with an attempt at a less judgmental inclination.  When you get past the crunch, it was overall a very serene kind of experience.  No pressure, no demands, just a place of reflection and healing.

Do I think I'll get a lot more out of it a second time around?  Tough question.  In the past, as with so many other things, I've preferred to observe and contemplate in complete private.  I don't know that I'll ever really be comfortable with a religious gathering.  But there's something to be said about being around others, learning and appreciating how others express themselves, feeding off of their energy, and providing some of your own.

After all, we are each of hawks angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.

Until the next.

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*** "Sweat lodge at Lake Superior PP" courtesy of D. Gordon E. Robertson - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.