Today I remembered this story and felt like sharing. This is an excerpt from my diary when I was volunteering at a hostel in Florida City. Matthias, Charlotte, Raz, and Iris were some of my friends there, and Meryl was the hostel’s self-proclaimed guru. Oh, the adventures you find when you’re least looking for them!
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| I will only stand in agreement about pretty flowers. |
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February 19th, 2011
Last night, Matthias said we should check out the full-moon ceremony that Meryl was hosting. (We had been previously invited.) Raz, Charlotte and I reluctantly agreed, and headed to the newly-built sweat lodge out in back of the hostel.
When we got near the squat cloth-and-stick wigwam situated on a rock-lined pit, all but Matthias chickened out. But he managed to convince us to go inside, and one by one we removed our shoes and crawled into the opening to join the six or seven people already inside. We had to cram, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, with our backs bent because the roof was so low. Owhnn waved a smoldering bundle of sage under our noses, and the sweaty air pressed in tightly around us. Crammed between Charlotte and Matthias, I tried not to cough or panic or both.
As Iris (in a corner, eyes rapturously closed) shook a seedpod rattle, Meryl began to speak in his measured voice, telling us that we were here “standing in agreement” to summon the spirits of life. We should realize that we are “innocent” and “the best we can be” and “spirits of independent thought.” The heavy fragrance of sage choked me. Matthias, Charlotte, Raz and I crammed together awkwardly, but everyone else was completely enraptured in the moment, humming and shaking rattles as we all sweated and the air got heavier and closer and more smothering. After an eternity, Meryl instructed us to exit the sweat lodge slowly, one at a time, to “embrace new birth” as we “emerged from the womb.” I crawled out of the lodge and gasped for air.
After that, we gazed up at the full moon for a while. It seemed to be spinning through the indigo sky as clouds stood still around it. The man in the moon has always looked like a mourning woman to me, but she is beautiful.
A coughing fit sent me looking for water, but eventually I joined the others as they smoked strawberry tobacco through their hookah. I watched the steamy smoke spiral up through the colored lights, pink and green. I asked everyone who what they had thought. This exchanged pretty much sums it up:
Iris, one of the new interns, said, “I like what he was saying: that we are all beautiful and wonderful.”
Raz, after a few moments of thought, replied, “Yes, but why do we have to be in little tent with smoke to say it?”
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