Dawn at the Ranch

Bozho, ni je na, 
Hello, how are all of you,
This is the way it is with me this day, Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Citizen Band Potawatomi of the Shawnee, OK agency and Muscogee Creek of the Okmulgee, OK agency. 

In the way I was taught, or, 'helped out' by my teacher, Marcellus Williams, Muskogee Creek, in Indian talk...everything of life, is ceremony. Therefore, it is always about remembering…for the old ones say, "It is not whether you will do ‘it’ but whether you will remember it", and, at the core of our remembering lives our sacred nature and the sacredness of all creation.

I remember that my emergence point from the spirit world into physical form as a female two-legged was in the Kansas plains during the wartime winter. Now that time is long past and as with any ceremonial venture there is the prayer making the leaving of the house the beginning of the ritual and a safe return to the same spot the ritual ending. I offer thanks and credit for these circle realizations to another one of my treasured teachers, Martin Prechtel, that big old orphan, as are most of us who are searching and seeking atonement. At the Wisdom Keepers Gathering, in the measured days of a workshop-sacred circle, we will share carefully considered thoughts and council talk that the world might live.

My star journey eventually landed me into a home called Sweet Medicine Land and since that early morning my life has been one never, never far from the Mother Earth and Father Sky-Sun. This is always my/our birth, breath, sustenance and source of endless beauty and wisdom. These are the things with which I would concern myself. I endeavor to invite, gift, and appeal to Spirit that a sacred circle be built and that all who enter might be able to purify and renew the heart, mind, body and spirit. Then, may we most truly be able to live life 'in a good way', to make a contribution that the children might live and to have some fun along the way...for all one truly wants is to be happy. Within these remembrance and honoring circles are then to be found and shared many proven and worthy tools to be taken forward into the larger life. 

To the Kansas plains we return…to remember that the Mother Earth is the source of all true knowledge and wisdom. To her body we make ready the approach to the rivers, the winds, the rains, sleets and snows, the bite of our father the Sky-Sun, the Skebyak-the green beings. Let us make ready to come forward and to speak our names, bearing our gifts of wide smiles and tear stained faces, hearts full of love and disappointment. Always, in the soul, may the perfect template of creation be remembered in silence, solitude, community gathering and always in the first, last and highest ceremony, that of remembering and of gratitude. For such is the required gift and price of being allowed to carry the gift of life in human form.

Come, let us gather and be for a while of one mind.

Consider...honoring the Kansa who came before, and petitioning them as ancestral spirits to receive our greetings and thanks and to look kindly upon us. We would walk softly upon the Mother Earth who supported their steps before ours and who will, with our prayers, support our steps and those of the seven generations who would come after.

That's the way it is with me.