Early on Thanksgiving morning I joined friends a few miles from the Bishop’s Ranch for an annual dance and singing at Ya-Ka-Ama (Our Land). The dancing and singing takes place in the center of a pow-wow ground, a double circle pole construction with a wide empty center. The pole structure is made so that branches can be laid over the double circle, providing shade in the bright, hot summer gatherings.
A bonfire burned brightly and high in the middle of the dance ground, stoked occasionally during the singing and dancing. The dancers were Native Americans from several local tribes, such as Yurok and Pomo. They were mostly young adults and children. The lead singers were a group of older women and men who stood on the side and sang the traditional chants.
Near the end of the ceremony, one of the men singers gathered all the dancers and spoke about the next chant and associated dance – the War Dance. “This is not a dance about vengeance or violence against any people. This is not meant to tell you all to go out raiding (there was laughter here). This is a spiritual dance. We are asking for help from the ancestors and the spirits, and from inside us to resist drugs and alcohol and gang activity, and for us not to give in to those things.”
The War Dance itself had the men and boys making soaring motions, like eagles. I thought of eagles being able to see clearly, and to see from a great height, an attribute that Christians have associated with the Gospel of John, with its powerful spiritual and mystical content.
Jesus advised his followers to count the cost of following him before leaving everything to be one of his disciples. “Counting the cost” is a way of insuring that the commitment is successful. Jesus even used the example of a king preparing to go to war, and before sallying forth sitting down and looking at his strength relative to that of his enemy. We need to have the vision of an eagle – looking closely at particular things, and also seeing them in broad context if we wish to be successful as followers of Jesus.
I was grateful to start my Thanksgiving Day partaking of these spiritual messages. Around the Thanksgiving table with my family, before our prayer we named our thanksgivings. One was this spiritual start to a day that reminded me to seek to see the world through God’s eyes that see each thing as it is, and in its world. This kind of warfare is based on the awakening of love for all. We win these wars not by annihilating our enemies but by praying that they embrace their own transformation under the creative power of the Holy Spirit.
+MHA
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