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From Kevin Locke: The October 20
Baha'i Holy Day; "Birth of the Bab" is especially poignant to me
because it is also the anniversary of my mom's passing. In commemoration of
this day, author Robert Atkinson has given me permission to excerpt this
section from his book; " Mystic Journey, Getting to the Heart of Your
Soul's Story"
“Recognizing love as the source of our core identity helps us remember at the
same tim
e that we are
souls on an eternal journey. One very vivid illustration of what this
all-pervasive love can look like for us, and how it can change our perception
of ourselves, was given by Patricia Locke, a Lakota educator and MacArthur
Fellow, when she introduced herself at a talk she gave as a Libra Visiting
Professor at the University of Southern Maine. She stood in front of her
audience, took a step forward, and said:
I am an old person. I am a grandmother. And I am a keeper of our tradition.
She made a complete 360-degree turnaround in place, and continued on:
I am a young matron. I am raising my son and daughter. I am teaching them how
to be brave, how to be generous, how to be compassionate, how to be respectful,
how to be wise, and I am helping to keep alive the traditions of the Lakota.
She made another complete turn around, and continued:
I am a college student. I am learning the skills that will help me be a warrior
in the society. I’m having fun. I’m still learning about the values and the
traditions of the Lakota and the Anishinabe.
She turned around once again, and continued:
I’m a teenager. I’m frivolous. I’m a surfer. I’m a dancer, and I’m kind of
foolish.
She turned around again:
I’m a child, a little girl. They have named me “Tawacin Waste Win.” My parents
love me. My grandparents love me. I sit on my grandfather’s knee. I am barely
learning about the Sun Dance, about the Sweat Lodge, and it’s hard to be quiet.
She turned around another time:
I’m a spirit child, looking to be born. I wonder where in this world I should
go. Who needs me? Where shall I land? Into which family shall I go? I am going
to be a sacred being.
And she turned around one last time, and explained,
And now I am a grandmother again, before you. I did that because I want you to
remember the same thing in your lives, that you are all of those segments of
your own lives at once, simultaneously, and you can call on all parts of your
being to help you though the travails of life. You are still a sacred being, as
I am still a sacred being because I am still a child, and I am still a dancer,
and a surfer, and a young mother and a young wife, and all of the time all of
those parts of me are still with me, and the same is it with you.
She went on to explain further,
I say that because I want you to know that I know you are sacred. I am not sure
you know that. Sometimes in living in the cities and living with today’s
bombardment with problems, we forget that we are sacred, and we become
overburdened and sad, and we lose the joy that we felt when we were children,
and when we were teenagers, and when we were young men and women.
I have another reason for asking you to remember all those stages of your life,
because if you remember them, then it’s easier for us to be friends, to be
interrelated, even though we are many different colors in this room.
She explained that looking beyond the external parts of our beings is something
we have to do because “in each one of us there is this child, this lovely
sacred being. The word for child in the Lakota language is sacred being, wakan
yeja. That’s what our people call children, wakan yeja, so you are all wakan
yeja, and we are all related.” She concluded this part of her talk by adding,
That’s what soul-making means to me, that we remember that we are gifts of the
Creator, and our souls and our spirits are sacred because they are gifts from
the Creator. If we understand this that we must always, all through our lives,
try to make ourselves hollow reeds, then that energy that comes through us will
help us to be citizens of our families, our communities, and the larger world.
Patricia Locke helps us all remember the most important things in our lives:
that we are all sacred beings; that we are all related; that we are in all the
stages of our lives simultaneously; that our souls are gifts from the Creator;
and that it is the Creator’s love for all creation that makes this all
possible.”
From Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Our Soul’s Story, by Robert
Atkinson (New York: Cosimo Books, 2012), pp. 97-99.
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