disappointed. For months

At first, it was like agony. Much to my initial dismay, when it came to actually being “taught” by any of the Traditionals I was with, I was sorely disappointed. For months I just mimicked, and then, something started to seep in.

I learned of the mechanics of tending fire for Inipi, the sacred sweat lodge. After a while, I could sit up at night and run through the sequence of “stacking” the fire in my mind – not a simple exercise because for ceremonial fires, there is a very precise way to do things.

I took a certain amount of solace in finding that I was getting better and better in knowing what to do. Yet, as each day went by and I became more automatic in doing each step, I found that there was something else going on. Something not about what was done but about how it was done.
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My logical mind noted what Richard, my mentor, did; how he physically balanced the pile of stones. At first, I’d study which he chose, trying to figure out his logic. I would meticulously order and stack my own pile, and invariably, half way up, they’d collapse in a heap and I’d have to begin again and again and again. My head seemed to have nothing to grasp on to; I checked the shapes and “saw” where each would fit. But they wouldn’t cooperate. Wouldn’t cooperate? That flied in the face of anything I knew!

Then, one day while I was working with the stones, I picked one up from the pile and something strange happened. To my immense surprise, in the center of my chest I felt resistance. I put the stone down, like “Whoa! Sorry,” and then picked up another. This registered “I want to go!” I was stunned, but had learned not to argue, so it went.

I kept moving in that way in my choices, realizing (in the center of my chest) it wasn’t about *my* choice anymore, but that it was about relationship. Then, when it came to “stacking” the stones, one after another they took their place on the tipi shaped cone. They took their place.

For the first time in my experience as a firetender, all of them interlocked and held their balance on the pile without my having to juggle or change a thing. And in those moments, my brain found the words to describe what my heart already knew, “Stone People.”