I was asked to make musk ox medicine recently. And when I do medicine work, I will invite dreams to share with me what the medicine is meant for.
Musk ox came to me and spoke of old aches and pains SA国际影视传媒� the choices we carry from our past. The actions we are not so proud of. How when passing over the great snow lands of time our burdens and our blessings, our choices, pains, joys, sorrows SA国际影视传媒� all these keep us warm SA国际影视传媒� like the coat of the great musk ox. These weigh us down, but hoof after hoof, we must move forward SA国际影视传媒� the very weight of our backbone is a challenge to carry, but musk ox carries what he needs to survive the storm.
Musk ox showed me a storm. A great storm, which he carried himself through. Grandfather medicine. MetaSA国际影视传媒揷ine he said SA国际影视传媒揟his musk ox showed me the storm transforming into a landscape so beautiful it must have been musk ox dreaming SA国际影视传媒� all ice crystals flowing in the wind, the power and grace of the snow, the beauty SA国际影视传媒� those immense landscapes so gallopSA国际影视传媒揳ble SA国际影视传媒� so far for musk ox to charge SA国际影视传媒� as far as the eye could see and musk ox reminded me that to carry this weight is a grace SA国际影视传媒� to carry our pasts with honour is strength, and that even the littlest of us (I being so young still, only just in my early thirties) hold burdens that we are learning to allow to warm us, rather than hold us down.
The person I made this medicine for, I was told after, carried many shadows in their past. Deeds done that are unforgivable. I was told once, but that first time was before I had made the medicine and in that first telling I did not hear what was told to me. Not because I was not listening SA国际影视传媒� but because, in the ways that the creator sometimes does SA国际影视传媒� it was blocked out of my mind. I think back to that moment and it isnSA国际影视传媒檛 fuzzy, I remember clearly sitting on the edge of my bed, listening. ItSA国际影视传媒檚 like the words were garbled SA国际影视传媒� somehow made from clarity into white noise, and that is when, in retrospect, my curiosity picks up.
Musk ox came to me and breathed quietly in my face, musk gathering in the air all around SA国际影视传媒� SA国际影视传媒淲e are learning to carry burdens we are all proud of, and not so proud ofSA国际影视传媒� he said. There are changes happening in the world and all around us, celestial transitions, that shed light on shadow, on the integration of dark and light.
Forgiveness, fear, sorrow
On forgiveness. On fear. On sorrow, and the balance of understanding.
If ISA国际影视传媒檓 honest, it took the making of this medicine, the seeing of these dreams, for me to understand this in the way I do now.
Musk ox told me this is the medicine our nation needs (our many nations) SA国际影视传媒� to hold our past with honour, dignity, and respect because we are learning to travel long distances through harsh times, and how we move through is sometimes the only choice we have to mitigate how we arrive at each our interSA国际影视传媒� dependent destinies.
If I had heard what was shared with me about this Elder, what his past had held SA国际影视传媒� I might not have made the medicine. He had hurt a lover many years back, and I have been on the run, like my mother, and grandmother before her, from lovers for many years. Seeking shelter, safety, community SA国际影视传媒� home, when home was never normally a SA国际影视传媒渟afeSA国际影视传媒� place, and lovers sometimes meant something other than love.
I know what it is to live with fear of our beloved other. I know what it is to flee. To run. I still live with the echoes of bruises on my arms and heart, and some days it doesnSA国际影视传媒檛 seem to matter how far I have run, those bruises still ache.
If I had known this was who I was making medicine for I might not have made it.
But, instead, I was called into the making, into the dreaming, and into the learning with musk ox, and the seeing of how I too am learning to hold what I have seen, heard, said and done.
I am honoured by musk ox and the journey he brought me on. I saw the strength and the overcoming of fear.
I saw the beauty of us when we venture out to move our great bodies forward, through the storms, as we have always done.
And I saw the beauty, the strength, the grace SA国际影视传媒� the great snow storms swirling around ourselves and our communities and nations, and how we are all venturing out into those great snow storms, and what finds us out there can be so, so heavy, and so so beautiful.
