From left: Frederick Marx; Dallas Chief Eagle; Charlie Pecaut; Martin Marks; Bob Christenson; Jerry Haack; David Bauerly
That’s been a lifelong goal of mine. I didn’t consciously know it until I attended a Vision Fast ceremony high in the Eastern Sierra Mountains in Aug. 2015 with a group of spiritual warriors and friends. But it’s as true now as it was then, as in fact it has been ever since I was a teenager.
Seeing big, dramatic moments in my life as sacred has never been a problem – events like my wedding, holding my mother’s hand and looking into her eyes as she died, taking trips to Zanskar and Dharmsala and meeting the Dalai Lama, seeing a buffalo show up at last year’s Tatanka Alliance founding, treading lightly on the Sphinx while making Saving the Sphinx, visiting the Bahai temple in Delhi, countless meditation retreats, shooting the men’s basketball high school state championship in Champaign’s Assembly Hall, even having my friend Walt teach me how to drive a stick shift… the list is long.
My challenge has always been to see the sacred in the everyday, the quotidian… washing the dishes, putting out the garbage, standing in line at the post office, dealing on the phone with customer service at the cable company, picking my wife up from the BART station, getting a speeding ticket…
The 1st Anniversary Meeting of the Tatanka Alliance in Pine Ridge, SD last weekend was a palpable reminder of exactly how to make every moment sacred. For the brief 24 hours most of us were together every moment was woven into ceremony and recognized as sacred. No moment was left out, whether eating breakfast and saying a prayer over the food, calling in the grandfathers and grandmothers to open the meeting, having every single person – young, old, and in-between – check in with what’s present for them and honoring their feelings… This was a business meeting! But business as it’s conducted in a mix of Lakota Indigenous Peoples and MKP cultural ways.
One of the key items of business was selecting new administrative staff to support the ongoing work of the All Nations Training Center. Roger Dobitz stepped up to claim the critical role of Principal
Frederick Marx, Tom Bussler March 26, 2016
Administrator. His job will be to lay out the path ahead and begin implementation of the grand dreams of Native Americans Becky and Dallas Chief Eagle.
The process to select him was done ceremonially. The call was put out to the whole circle of about 40 of us. Roger heard the call and knew it was his time. We all recognized it because we saw his emotional reaction. We followed and stayed with his emotions, those tears, until he was fully enrolled. Dallas and Becky stepped out to express their support. Other men and women lined up behind him to symbolize their commitment to support him. Roger addressed the fears and concerns he had. Answers of support and encouragement came from the backers. Mechanisms were put in place to deal with future arising issues. It was all done in a ritual way with great feeling.
And so it went. Other people stepped forward, were enrolled, and ritually welcomed into their new support roles. In this way much of the afternoon passed. Plans were made, roles were allocated, and the first glimmerings of institutional structure came into being. For more on what the day brought, and further ceremonies, and reflections on Lakota rites of passage ceremonies for teens, please see the brief interview with Larry Swalley below.
If only processes and procedures like this could be replicated on a grander scale. They certainly exist already in institutions like Mankind Project, like Youth Passageways, like the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. But what if school boards were run this way? Neighborhood Watch Committees? PTOs? City Councils? Local businesses? Sports clubs and teams? What about corporations? Inter-governmental bodies like the U.N.? Choosing a President?! If every moment were treated as sacred the quality of our leaders would never be in question. The process itself would root out the unqualified.
Perhaps the key benefit would be how it would improve the quality of our personal lives, how it would make us happier, more fulfilled. I invite you to consider what you can do to make every moment of your life sacred.