Rising Smoke On The Four Winds
(Audio Sample - 1 MB)
Thanksgiving Song to the Great Spirit
O Great Spirit, grand-father the sky, the wind and the clouds;
O Great Spirit, the air that we breathe, for joy and for laughter,
for singing and dancing: we thank you for our breath!
O Great Spirit, our mother the earth, the soil and the rock;
O Great Spirit, for life-giving harvest, for strength in the bone,
for warmth from the stone: we thank you for this place!
O Great Spirit, our brother the sun, the new light of day;
O Great Spirit, the heat on the brow, the fire in the soul,
for pain and for passion: we thank you for desire!
O Great Spirit, our sister the moon, the radiance of night;
O Great Spirit, for crystal thrill of twilight, for deep chill of starlight,
for pure white frost of morning: we thank you for our rest!
O Great Spirit, our lakes and our rivers, the deep running streams;
O Great Spirit, for clear sparkling water, refreshing our weary feet,
reviving our remembrance: we thank you for our dreaming!
O Great Spirit, small creatures of the forest, large beasts of the grass-land;
O Great Spirit, for eagle in the mountain, for salmon in rock-pool,
for wolf and deer and pony: we thank you for our friends!
O Great Spirit, rising smoke on the four winds to honor and to praise you!
O Great Spirit, rising sun from the East, gentle breeze from the South,
blinding white storm from the North, we thank you, West Wind of Peace!
O Great Spirit, the crashing of thunder, the shimmer of rainbow;
O Great Spirit, gleaming feather of wisdom, silent, wide open spaces,
the call to the journey: we thank you for this earth!
A Reflection on Lakota, Genesis 1, Psalm 23
O Great Spirit, grand-father the sky, the wind and the clouds:
O Great Spirit, the air that we breathe, our joy and our laughter:
O Great Spirit, our mother the earth, the soil and the rock:
O Great Spirit, strength in the bone, the warmth in the stone:
O Great Spirit, our brother the sun, the new light of day:
O Great Spirit, the heat on the brow, the fire in the soul:
O Great Spirit, our sister the moon, the radiance of night:
O great Spirit, crystal thrill of twilight, and deep chill of starlight:
O Great Spirit, rising smoke on the four winds, which honor you and praise you:
O Great Spirit, rising sun from the East, gentle breeze from the South:
O Great Spirit, blinding white storm from the North, gentle West wind of peace:
O Great Spirit, the crashing of thunder, the shimmer of rainbow:
O Great Spirt, gleaming feather of wisdom, silent, wide-open spaces:
O Great Spirit, the call to the journey:
We thank you for this earth!
Composer's Reflection
On Michael Stearns' recording Sacred Site, the venerable shaman Lessert Moore sings an ancient Lakota Indian chant to the Great Spirit. The compulsive ethno-musicologist in me drove me to write down the melos. The dreamer in me sent me on my own vision quest; who are these people and how is this reflected in their celebration? The entrepreneur in me wanted to steal the chant, for it to speak to a Judeo-Christian tradition without sacrificing integrity. The historian in me remembered a conversation with Bernard Huijbers, who maintained that most great musicians stole from other great musicians, and his advice was to make sure I stole only the best!
The Lakota Indians roamed the Great Plains from the Upper Mississippi valley and the Rockies to the Dakotas. Their name Dakota or Lakota means an allied people or many in one. A more common name, Sioux, is derived from the Algonquian Nadowessioux meaning snakes or the enemy.
This semi-agricultural people, originally seed gatherers, became the great prairie buffalo hunters only after the Spaniards had introduced the horse into North America. They honor Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit. Their spiritual home is the cave of the winds in the Black Hills of North Dakota, the birth-place of the great white buffalo woman. They live in harmony with the earth, their mother and source of all energy, and with grandfather the sky, source of their breath and vision quest. Important moments are shared sitting in a circle on the earth, from where they draw their strength. In this hoop they face the four winds, corners, of the earth, celebrating their oneness as family by facing each other. All gatherings begin with smoking the pipe to honor the four winds, inducing the dream space in which they reconnect with the Great Spirit, source of life.
Black Elk, in The Sacred Pipe, describes the seven important Rites of Lakota worship, which include the Sun-Dance (an important expression of Lakota identity and unity), the Sweat Lodge and the Vision Quest.
The Spirit- or Ghost- dance (responsible for their victory over Custer) is a recent phenomenon. White civilization virtually destroyed the life of this great people, rendering the buffalo, on which the Lakota depended for food, shelter, clothing, almost extinct. Banishing the tribes to the reservation removed them from the lands which the Great Spirit had given to them and the sacred buffalo. The railroad further violated the land, bringing more white people to inflict even greater sufferings on the nation. In 1888, a simple Paiute Indian in western Nevada had a vision that fighting would cease and a great change would come over the earth, where there would be no misery or sickness. In this vision, Jesus Messiah comes to the Red Man, having been rejected by the White Man. The dead would return from the spirit-world, and all Indians would be united in eternal happiness. By performing the special dance, and wearing the ritual shirt, the Indian would be immune from harm. The Vision Quest and Sweat Lodge are important purificatory rites in which fasting and ordeal induce spiritual rebirth. Vision quest is sought in isolation, Sweat lodges are communal experiences.
Early Christianity grew to greatness by embodying indigenous cultures and local 'pagan' insights. Then, this custom abruptly terminated in an attempt to preserve theological purity and integrity. Now, with all the insights which have evolved into the Third Millennium, people of every faith and creed should be even more willing to embrace other traditions in quest of a deeper resonance to their own faith and worship. Christians have been slow to learn from the Native American. The White Man honors a far-distant God; the Red Man knows no such separation between heaven and earth. Judaism may speak of a God who has chosen a covenant relationship with people, promising to be with those who chose to accept him as their God. Yet Christians deny themselves such freedom, having clothed their God in all manner of philosophical raiment spun by the metaphysicists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This does not exclude communal and all-too-often personal a experiences of the deity, but this God resides in the heavens. For the Indian, the Great Spirit is everywhere, because the earth is mother. The White Man's dead go beyond the stars; the Red man never leave this earth, which is sacred and beloved.
I would joke with a friend in the Pacific Northwest about having my feet firmly on the earth with my head in the clouds; she joked with me about sitting on the earth, which in Oregon is often very cold and very wet. She was a post-graduate student taking a year out from work before turning to a new career. For some, this may be a sabbatical, for others a breathing space, and perhaps for others a vision quest. It seems as though changing times make different demands on us. Sometimes, we have no option but to stop and evaluate. Bygone days of certainty and assurances have been replaced by a common restlessness. Yet this does not mean we are spiritually dead; perhaps we are beginning to waken up, to come alive again. At the heart of everyone is the need for dream-space, for vision-quest. These ideas must not be taken lightly, nor dismissed as being strange Indian customs.