Tree of Dreams A Spirit Woman's Vision of Transition and Change

ONE Your Song "You are walking in the footprints of the ancestors," Face in the Water said to me, her brilliant blue eyes reflecting the blaze from the central fire. We sat together in ceremony in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. "For many years I have listened to your words, your voice, in awe, Grandmother. You hold up a mirror for me that has been clouded by smoke as if your voice and your presence came from the world of spirit and not from this land." Face in the Water looked down at the red chief's blanket we were sitting on. With her long, elegant fingers, she traced a thread of black wool woven in the pattern. I wondered at all her hands had touched in the many years of her life. She was so very old, and had helped so many with the goodness and wisdom of her soul. She lifted her hand, and as if touching a tiny bird that had fallen from its nest, she lay her fingers on mine and then settled her palm onto the back of my hand. Her generosity, the tenderness, the pleasure of her touch put me instantly at ease. "You will fly away soon to do your work, little wolf. Your nest is being prepared." "Will I see your face in my dreams, Grandmother? My confusion is deep. How do I teach my people about transition, change, and death?" I asked. "In the Tree of Dreams there is a song," the old woman said. "Like any other living thing, it has a song to be sung. To lose your song is to lose your soul. The song in the trees is something to be listened for very, very carefully. It teaches you that life is never ending. This is what you can say to your people. So many of you in the Western world are looking at elderhood for the first time. Perhaps what I am going to say to you will help them." Smoke from the fire whirled around us in purple-gray plumes, creating mysterious shadows in the air. "As the leaves begin to drop from the tree in autumn," she continued, "an harmonic is created. The harmonic is different with every leaf that falls and different again for every tree. The Tree of Dreams is you and me. We are all a Tree of Dreams. We are filled with yearning, joy, and love. We are filled with the teachings that we have received and the experiences that we have had. Our branches are the different times of our lives. The leaves are the experiences-the colors, the textures, the aspects of the divine. As the leaves fall, the song can be heard, a new song that plays on the wind and is communicated to other trees, if they are listening. "The whale people who live in the north speak about the great whale and how, when she sings a song, it is heard sometimes a thousand miles away. Another whale picks up that song, and the echo is heard another thousand miles away. This goes on until that song is created around the world by all whales singing in unison. "The music that forms from the dropping of the leaves is similar. The song that was very much your own blends to create a harmony with other songs as it touches the earth. It is at that moment that all leaves become one, surrounding the earth with crimson, orange, red, and gold." I watched this woman who was one of the oldest among us. She had never come out of the mists for me. She kept to herself, but she had touched my heart from the very beginning when Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs and I had paddled a canoe up river through the fog of the far north to the encampment of the Sisterhood of the Shields. I will never forget the luminous vision of forty-four shields painted and shimmering on their tripods, and each woman dressed in quills, bone, silver, turquoise, coral, beads, and ceremonial dresses, awaiting our arrival. The fire was roaring and the drumming began as we paddled silently around a turn in the slow-moving river and broke through the tule fog into the afternoon rays of sunlight. The women, old and beautiful beyond my imagining, stood and welcomed us. I haAndrews, Lynn V. is the author of 'Tree of Dreams A Spirit Woman's Vision of Transition and Change' with ISBN 9781585421299 and ISBN 1585421294.