The Holiness that Invites Reconciliation
I begin this piece humbly requesting the forgiveness of my elders for presuming the rightness of the fact that I am presenting these words and ways. I do that out of respect for their acquired wisdom and the fact that they are my elders who also could share this wisdom of the Lakȟóta, perhaps more appropriately. I also request forgiveness for my attempt to lift-up, articulate and share some of the indigenous wisdom of the Lakȟóta people, as a non-Lakȟóta who has been blessed to be adopted in a traditional cultural spiritual-ceremony as a Lakȟóta grandson and younger brother. I was “made a relative.” I am blessed by the generous and humble love of my Lakȟóta brothers and sisters.
Having walked with and been loved by Lakȟóta people in southwest South Dakota, on the Upper Great Plains of the United States, for over four decades now, I have been blessed with their indigenous cultural wisdom in wonderful ways. To attempt to capture even a small part of that wisdom and way of life in so short a piece is truly challenging. However, each step we take in that serious learning of even a small part of that wisdom truly blesses us.
Many years ago, I joined a family to search for and to harvest some Sage. Sage is an herb whose smoke for the Lakȟóta people is used in spiritual ceremony and daily prayer to purify one’s heart, mind, world, and one’s prayer/living space. Having found some Sage growing in the middle of a field that we were crossing, I was invited by the family to join them and to pray in gratitude for the growth and gift of this Sage, before we cut some for our later use.
In Lakȟóta culture, all of creation – absolutely everything – blesses us with the holiness of the Creator, who gifts us with it all. This Sage had grown in this holiness to now gift us with the blessing of the Creator in our later use of it. It is only right, therefore, to prayerfully acknowledge the generosity of the Creator and the holiness of this creature, before we take it for prayerful use. We needed to prayerfully respect the dignity and gift of this creature, the Sage. We are surrounded and blessed by Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka – the pervasive holiness and sacredness of absolutely all of creation – all of the time. We are blessed and related to all of creation, each other, and all that surrounds us in the love and the holiness of Tȟuŋkášilá, our loving Creator God and holy Grandfather.
This pervasive Great Holiness (Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka) and blessing invites us to see our relationship with all created being and to recognize and know our brotherhood and sisterhood, not just with our human brothers and sisters but with all that exists and whose aura of holiness blesses us each and every day.
This sense of the holiness that pervades everything and surrounds us invites us to see our relatedness and the good and holy relationship to which that holiness invites us as receivers and recipients of the Creator God’s loving care. This holiness invites us to go deep. It invites us to go above and beyond all of the differences that we can imagine separating us and dividing us. This holiness – and the Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka that gifts us with it in all things – calls us and enables a reconciliation and relatedness as one family (one Thiyóšpaye – an extended, diverse family) that blesses us as true brothers and sisters. Without this sense of the holiness that makes us one family, our diversity becomes only the walls that separate us rather that the rich and beautiful complexity that enriches and blesses us as we bless one another as brothers and sisters.
The grandparents, parents, children, and I formed a circle around the leafing green Sage. We joined hands in the holiness of this circle, the blessing of one another, and the blessing of created Sage to give thanks. That thanks, that gratitude invites us to relationship and opens the doors more fully to reconciliation and the blessings of life. Mitákuye Oyášíŋ – We Are All Related!
By Peter J. Klink, S.J.
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