This is Violet Catches, a Lakota elder, Linguist, Educator, Medicine Woman, and Grandmother.
BEARING WITNESS
I just have returned from a Zen Peacemaker’s Retreat to the Black Hills of South Dakota where I continued my study and engagement with Indigenous cultures. I had no idea how much of me was longing for a total plunge deep into the Lakota history, language, stories, chanting and ceremonies.I felt like I had been here somewhere in another life and was coming home.
Of course, those feelings and memories might have been implanted earlier when I was 12 years old when I attended Camp Yonahlassee in Blowing Rock, N.C. This was an all girls six week sleep-away-from-home-camp with many nature-based experiences and “Native American ceremonies” dramatically depicted with Fire “Pow wows” every Saturday night.. All campers were assigned to a tribe: Cherokee, Chippewa, Iroquois or Seminole. We had “chiefs” who were the older campers and they led the ceremonies. This was in 1964 when things were way different than they are today, but the power of sacred ceremony and Earth-based spirituality was deeply embedded in me from this camp experience. What they were trying to impart to us campers was a powerful message our parents never knew. It was about empowerment. It was a foreshadowing of my work with women to come.
Today, many of us women are looking more directly to our Indigenous people for how to care of our Earth, our family of all living beings of which we are a part, because we are in trouble as a culture and facing extinction on this planet. Bearing Witness 1 and camping with the Lakota elders on their sacred land last week was an opportunity to drop into a way of living that honors all beings. It was a practice in being present to everything and feeling it all. It was finding relatives in the trees, the stars, the elements, the animals and living with deep respect and gratitude with the five Lakota elders who shared their stories, their trauma and their hopes with us. Over those five days under the pine trees together in a circle, I began to see how I was able to give back and open my heart to the pain and suffering all around me, and to the beauty also. I was being nurtured by the open-hearted warm presence I received from everyone and especially the trees, plants, rocks and animals there. We rode Lakota horses and slept and ate beside them.
I’ve been curious about how I as a woman in my 70’s can help to bring awareness to our potential as human beings to shift this trajectory we are on. The deeper I meditate, and the more folks I meet asking these same questions about how do we go from here, I find hope. This group of people were open and loving and curious about how they could break open their hearts even more. The Zen Peacemakers Path is a powerful way to approach social action.2 I am noticing that breaking open my heart is a way to prepare for the expansion we all need to do.
That’s what I hope my writing can do is help you and others expand yourselves to feel more than you’ve felt before, and to stop holding yourself back or shutting yourself down. When we are feeling our human experience fully, then we have the potential to use our imagination that will show us how make the changes that need to happen.
1 Bearing Witness is the second tenet or precept of the Zen Peacemaker’s Path.
2 Zen Peacemakers Path was established by Roshi Bernie Glassman in 1994 at a Zen Peacemaker’s Retreat he organized with his wife, also a Roshi, Sandra Jishu Holmes, in Washington, DC. Bernie Glassman pioneered “Socially Engaged Buddhism” by embedding spiritual practice into concrete, community-focused initiatives. This Zen Path is still very active in organizing socially engaged retreats every year. The core three tenets are:
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- Not-Knowing: Letting go of fixed ideas about oneself and the universe.
- Bearing Witness: Attuning to the joy and suffering of the world.
- Taking Action: Arising from Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness to heal oneself and others.
- I will be offering Crones Awakening Circles this September both on-line and in person for post-menopausal women who want to explore Indigenous practices and other pathways for deep personal expansion as we explore books and discussions that can enlighten and inform our crone stories and actions.
- You can read more and sign up here.
