Ojibway Healing Prayer

Working with the energy arts has lead me down a rather unexpected path.  At least unexpected to me.   Questions I thought I had answered for myself years ago crop up again and again.  And each time the answers are different - sometimes subtly different, other times radically different.   Leaving, I hope, my understanding more expansive and inclusive than before.  One thing I have learned is that, while a lot of very smart people are doing a lot of impressive research, we really don't understand any of the interesting stuff.  Stuff like:  "What is the true nature of the universe?" or "Is there life after death?"

Tom Harpur's book "There is Life After Death" is a thought provoking and mind expanding journey through scholarly research and anecdotal evidence that leaves one wonder-struck by the possibilities.   Though he was an Anglican priest, Harpur gives fair coverage to many of the world's faiths.  In the chapter he calls "Amerindian Religion" he quotes Art Solomon, an internationally respected spokesperson for Native religion.  Art is an Ojibway elder who explains that his people see "the continuum of life and the universe as a sacred, delicately balanced harmony and whole."

I don't pretend to know anything about Native traditions other than what I've read in the incredible book travels in a stone canoe.  But the Ojibway prayer on page 235 of Harpur's book struck me as a something everyone can relate to:

Grandfather,

Look at our brokenness.

We know that in all creation

Only the human family

Has strayed from the Sacred Way.

We know that we are the ones

Who are divided

And we are the ones 

Who must come back together

To walk in the Sacred Way.

Grandfather,

Sacred One,

Teach us love, compassion, and honour

That we may heal the earth

And heal each other.