Good Morning by Lexie Wolf
I’m writing this early on Tuesday morning, Election Day. It’s tricky, trying to anticipate what the mood might be tomorrow morning when this note lands in everyone’s inbox. I’m having the same challenge planning my class for tomorrow morning.
What I know is that tomorrow the sun will rise.
So, like most weeks, we’ll practice some sun salutations in class. We’ll honor the life-giving warmth of the sun with Surya Namaskars. We’ll breathe deeply together, embodied. We’ll feel the earth solid underneath us as we move and we’ll open our arms wide and lift our chests to open our hearts.
Later, the sun will set. In between we’ll do things, we’ll think things, things will happen. I think of Shakespeare’s famous quote from the Tempest: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.” It is all fragile, dreamlike, temporary. This too, shall pass. Whatever “this" “may be.
This past weekend I had the great good fortune to participate in my first Temazcal - sweat lodge ceremony- in the Chatham woods where I make my home. On Friday, a friend, a minister of the Native American church, led a group of us in building it from saplings on the property. As humans have been doing for five thousand years or more.
On Sunday, twenty of us gathered for a beautiful ceremony. We sat on the ground together, inside our handmade structure representing the womb of mother earth. To reconnect with our mother. Stones heated by a roaring fire and placed in the center of the earth. Water from the Haw was poured over the stones to create steam. We sat together in the warm blanket of steam. Drums, prayer, song. Warmed to our core - to our hearts. Sweat, tears, release. This is such stuff as dreams are made of. Leave it on the earth, let it dissipate like the steam.
Later, as the sun set, we shared a beautiful meal together and laughed and talked. A little lighter, a little clearer, yet grounded. More connected to she who sustains us, and to each other.
I woke extra early today, did my meditation, started writing. The sun is not up yet. Soon, when it comes up, I’ll walk outside to honor the directions. I’ll first stand facing East, first, and thank the sun for coming up.
