ALL SAINTS 2005

Several weeks ago I did a shamanic journey in which I was granted an audience with the grandfathers. I was in the upper world, the place where it kind of feels like you're walking on clouds, and you can speak to those who have passed over, as well as various power animals. My power animal is a panther, and he joined me quickly once I arrived, but whenever I visit the upper world I am always first met by an affable Frenchman named Armond. Armond and Panther led me to a ring of teepees, and entering the largest, I discovered a warm, glowing room crowded with old native American men, sitting in a circle around a fire.

The grandfathers passed a peace pipe, and teased me until they deemed it was time to get down to business. Their manner was friendly but serious and they told me that a part of me had died, a part that I did not want to let go of. They told me to go do a sweat lodge in order to grieve the part of myself.

Ever the dutiful student of all things metaphysical, I immediately reserved places at the next available sweat lodge in the Bay Area, one for myself, and one for Flavio. I was a little nervous about this. Mostly because I did not want to accept the wisdom of the grandfathers, but also because I have never successfully endured a sweat lodge. I have tried before, and the smothering heat sent me into a fit of claustrophobia such that I had to leave it.

But I was determined to follow my instructions, and so we arrived at Pacifica at 9:30 in the morning, and began helping to construct the lodge. The people we met there were wonderful. All were what I would call "Marin County-types," rich white people who for one reason or another felt disconnected from their own spiritual heritage who had found meaning in Native American ritual. Having a thimble-full of Cherokee blood doesn't, in my mind, divorce me from that group. In fact, we fit right in.

We covered the lodge with tarps and blankets, and then tied tiny pouches of tobacco that represented our prayers. These were tied to the ceiling of the lodge, and then rocks were put on a large fire, while we voiced prayers and intentions for each one. Then, when the rocks were hot, we put on our bathing suits and crawled into the lodge.

It was not unlike the grandfathers' teepee, with a fire pit in the center, and wicker mats all around the sides where we could sit and sweat for the next three hours and not get too muddy. Once we were all settled, our medicine woman, Marilyn, began her prayers. The first round of hot rocks were carried in via a pitchfork, the door was shut, and I began to sweat.

If you have never been to a sweat lodge ceremony, it can be a dramatic and profound experience. First of all, you are in complete darkness. No light enters, and there is no fire inside. You are alone with the blackness in your head, and a quickly rising temperature that threatens to bake the skin off of your face.

Marilyn cried out to the grandfathers and grandmothers, entreating them to hear us and be with us. Then, one by one, we went around the circle and offered our own prayers. I was shocked to discover that rich white people can pray just like black Pentecostals when given half a chance. Most of these folks would never be caught dead in church, let alone an evangelical charismatic church, yet here they were wailin' in the spirit and rolling on the floor like they was deacons at the New Beulahland Missionary Baptist Church of God in Christ. Hallelujah and praise God!

I was astounded, and for a second, I forgot that I was there to pray, and had to consciously remove my anthropologist of religion hat so I could return to business. When we had gone almost all the way around the circle, it was my turn. Even though I knew I was in a little tent with about fifteen other people, there was also an unsettling sensation of being utterly alone. The hot air felt like it was scorching my lungs, and water was just pouring down my back. I had a moment of stage fright, remembering that there were so many others present. I started haltingly, "I want to pray eloquently, grandfathers and grandmothers, but instead, please just let me pray honestly." And then the words gushed forth, faster than I was able to articulate them. All the pent-up grief, fear, and frustration came pouring out of me, and I babbled like a thing possessed, disentigrating into a hysterical lump of raw emotion rolling in the mud. By the time I was done I was not so much forming words as I was just wailing and keening into the stifling dark. I was vaguely aware of others around me raising their voices with mine, supporting me, crying out, "Yes, grandmothers, hear him!" and wailing along. I tried to get up, but Marilyn pushed me back down into the mud, saying, "Let your mother hold you." So I clung to the moist dirt and wept, and opened my circle of awareness as the emotional convulsions subsided.

And I was amazed because, I DID feel held. I felt the benevolent generosity of the earth as the solid rock that will not fail, I felt the loving concern of those other muddy sweating rich white people, as true a church as has ever been, and I felt most amazingly, the grace-filled presence of my own ancestors, pressing me on every side, nurturing, whispering, guiding, admonishing, loving.

As I lay there panting in an oven that felt like hell, I glimpsed the truest vision of heaven I had ever had. I had always imagined the Christian doctrine of the Communion of Saints to be something of a quaint relic we pay lip service to in post-modernity, but snicker about privately. I always found the notion a little absurd, as if the dead had nothing better to do than to hang out in the bleacher seats and cheer on those of us who could still get pimples and irritable bowels. I mean, how boring is that?

But in that blind cave of rock-hot spirit, I saw that the dead are not passive spectators, but active participants in the ongoing project of the world. Our life IS their life. Just as my hand is me, and is not me, but is useful to me and with which I can order my world, I saw in a flash of visionary insight that my ancestors are both me and not me, that like my own hand, I am useful to them, and through me they work to order the cosmos.

These were not distant saints sitting on clouds, looking down on creation, cheering us on. The ancestors were, in fact sitting with me in the mud-and not just then, during the three hours I was in the sweat lodge. They sit with me in the mud ALWAYS, always whispering, always nudging, living out their will through my flesh.

I do not believe I saw what I saw and felt what I felt because I had come there harboring some half-baked notions of Native American theology. I saw and felt them because THEY WERE THERE. Almost every culture acknowledges in some way the presence of the ancestors. In many of these traditions, food is put out for them, prayers are offered for them and to them, and due attention is paid to them. Some cultures fear that if insufficient attention is given the ancestors that they will become angry and ill fortune will befall the living.

This is, in fact, the origin of "trick-or-treating." The ghosts must be offered nourishment or they may express their displeasure in inconvenient ways. This is a handy explanation when the yak dies inexplicably, or the beer turns out sour. And who knows? Maybe there are some vengeful ancestors hanging out on the other side, but that is not what I experienced. They were not sad, they were not desperate, they were not angry. They were, calm, serene, concerned, optimistic, and engaged.

I know how nuts this sounds. I like to fancy myself an agnostic, but as I have said before, I have had way too many mystical experiences to be a PROPER agnostic. Like everything else, belief and unbelief are a continuum, not black and white options.

My comfortable disbelief was forcefully challenged quite recently. Many of you knew our dog, Clare. She was a much-beloved parishioner here, and although she never took communion because of her nervous nature, she participated fully in almost every church activity. Shortly after Clare died last February, we put her bed and toys in the attic, as it was simply too painful to have them underfoot and empty.

After a couple of months, it seemed a good idea to start dog-sitting for friends. We sat for a string of four different dogs, and a day or so before the first one arrived, Flavio said, "Should I get Clare's bed down from the attic?" It seemed like a good idea, and Flavio brought down her bed and toys. We put them in their old places with a little sadness, all the while looking forward to the patter of little paws that would soon be there.

To our amazement, the first dog we sat for refused to go near Clare's old bed. In fact, she cut a wide swath around in whenever she crossed the room. I thought this was curious, but chalked it up to the little dog's eccentric demeanor. Next we sat for two dogs belonging to a former parishioner. These were healthy, bounding dogs, full of vigor, eager to explore everything. But again, neither of the dogs would go near Clare's bed. They walked around it, and preferred to lay down on the floor than to lay in it.

After a couple of weeks, Gina Rose's dog, Luna, came to stay with us. I was watching Clare's bed closely by this time, and once again, Luna refused to use it. It freaked me out a little, and so I mentioned it to my spiritual director at our next session. After I related the story, she shocked me by saying, matter of factly, "Why don't you ask Clare to move?"

I laughed it off in the moment, but I couldn't shake the notion. And so, later that evening, feeling like a complete idiot, I knelt down in front of the wicker dog bed and spoke to it as if Clare were there in her old spot. "Clare, honey," I started, "you know this is your home, and you are welcome stay here as long as you want to. And you are welcome to sit on the beds or on the couches, or anywhere else you want, but you know what, honey? The other dogs need your bed right now. Do you think you could move and sit on the couch for a while?"

By that time I was feeling insufferably foolish and self-conscious, and saying to myself, "Oh, well, that was uncomfortable" I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. Five minutes later I walked back into the living room and nearly dropped the teacup. For there was Luna, sitting in Clare's bed as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I'm still a little freaked out by that experience, but I no longer doubt that Clare is still hanging around. And I have felt incredibly grateful that I have been able to visit her-or rather, she comes to visit me-when I have done shamanic journeys since her death. About half of the time I visit the underworld, she is waiting for me in the cave I typically go to. But on that occasion when I was returning from my audience with the grandfathers, walking across the clouds towards the tree I would climb down back to ordinary reality, Clare tore past me on her waySOMEWHERE. She shot me a look over her shoulder, but didn't slow down for a second.

I took great comfort in that fleeting glimpse of her. For I saw that she was not weak and cancer-ridden as she was in her final days, but vigorous and strong, as she is in my fondest memories of her. I saw that she was not trapped in the limbo of our house, unable to move on, but that she comes and goes as she pleases, visiting us in our home because she loves us and wants to be there, but that she has purpose and adventures in the other realms of being as well. I saw that she was happy, strong, unafraid, and that, to my heart's great relief and joy, she still cares about us.

Clare is now one of the ancestors, and with the grandfathers and grandmothers, with the communion of saints, that great cloud of witnesses, she remains active and engaged in my world. I saw in that sweat lodge that there were not just fifteen rich white people huddled in a tent, but that that lodge was packed with uncountable souls, that we are borne up by innumerable unseen hands, that we lie to ourselves if we ever think ourselves alone.

This is both unsettling and comforting. I hate to think I have an audience while tending to my toiletries or in the throws on conjugal passion, and yet if it is through my flesh that the ancestors work their will upon the world, who am I to deny them whatever satisfaction they may desire?

The Celts believed that the dead continue to walk upon the earth, that they are always present, and yet are removed by a thin membrane of spirit that prevents them being seen. I have exprienced, through the mystical agency of hot rocks and mud, that this membrane is thin indeed, and that the dead are very much a part of our lives. When we read the names of the dearly departed later in this service, let us consider it not so much a remembrance of those no longer with us, but rather, a roll call of all those who are present but unseen. It may seem that we are few in number in this sanctuary. But my friends, if only we had the eyes to see it, we would know that these pews are PACKED. Let us pray

Grandfathers, grandmothers, hear our prayer. We are flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone. Your longings and loves are ours, and through our limbs you continue your work in our world. Help us to remember that you are here, to honor your presence in our lives, to allow ourselves to be held and carried when we feel alone. Let us taste a strawberry for you soon, to be conscious of it's sweet, tart taste, fully present in the experience so that you may enjoy it as well. Because we remember how much you love strawberries. We pray in the name of all our relations, human and animal, the plant people, and the rock people, and spirits of all things. Ho.