healing time

Four times a year, a group of us treks down from the River Road to the Minneapolis Rowing Club's dock just north of the Lake Street Bridge. At the winter and summer solstices, and the vernal and autumnal equinoxes,  we stand by the Mississippi River and offer her prayers, songs, drumming, chanting. We do it with intention:  to heal the uncleanliness of the water, to celebrate the life that lives in and on the river, and very often pray for other needs as well.  Often we do it in the morning. We've had sun and overcast. We've had fog so thick we couldn't see the middle of the river or the bridge. We've had snow and cold (although we don't always walk down the icy hill -- we stay up on the River Road.) 

Tonight we began at 7 pm, and although the moon is nearly full, gathering rainclouds kept its light from us. The rowing crews were just coming back in off the water, so we didn't stand on their dock, but instead made our way along the shore. The high water left us only a few inches of sand on which to stand, but the scrub trees along the bank provided a kindly shelter as the rain began to dance on the river water.  We began to drum and rattle. A fish jumped right in front of us. (In my early twenties, I worked in downtown St. Paul and walked from the parking areas on Harriet Island across the Wabasha bridge in the mornings. When I would look over the railing into the shallower of the channels and see a fish jump, I considered it would be a good day.)

There are a dozen or so songs we sing with our untrained voices... songs brought forward from spiritual circles we have each encountered -- wiccan, Lakota, Vedic -- even that favorite round from Girl Scout campfires and Catholic churches, "Dona Nobis Pacem." 

I passed along to the group a request from my friend Jamie, whose mother is moving into her transition to the next world:  sing to the earth spirits, too, for the woman who loved working in her garden, loved the North Dakota farm country in which she lived. And I sang "Lay Down Your Burdens" for my friend Cathy, and asked the river to carry away any of the pain from the cancer she has fought so optimistically, but which seems to be stealing her away.

May we care for the earth, for the water, for the air. May we care for the fire-bright spirits of those we love.
Blessed be.