Healing Lodge Reflection (Jack, 2008) - to Mama Mary Sunbeam

Angels

By Yafei (Jack) Luo

Monday afternoon, I met Mama Mary at South Lakes for the second time. When I saw her, she was a timely person connected to everything, and she used her free time to help students to understand different cultures.  I liked how she spoke, and when she talked to us, she was very careful to explain how important the way of our study is.  Now I understand how very important the heart is to care about others.  Just like me, I have my beautiful family and friendships to consider. If everyone follows this example, you will feel your close relatives' pains, joys and experiences, and our community will be more beautiful.  At that point, I had a dream to see the sweat lodge, and that would be very nice and wonderful because my dream would come true when the sweet Saturday finally arrived.  I hoped that we would have a fantastic day there. 

After the pleasant trip of one-and-a-half hours, our bus finally arrived at the blessed place near Mama Mary's outdoor “fire place.”  I saw the warm fire which was built by Mama Mary's daughter's wonderful work. Everyone was full of energy to see what we would do in a few minutes. Here she is, I thought, when Mama Mary finally come out with a beautiful dress and a drum. Well, Mr. Van had a horse drum, too. Mama Mary started to use the drum to make music and sing songs.   We followed her. The first song was the peace song. Later, we sang the cultural songs from our own languages, and I sang a song from my own culture (China); it felt like some angels were singing in the quiet back yard of your daughter’s house, and it was beautiful.  After the round of songs, we started to enter the lodge. I helped to carry the heavy rocks to the lodge. After a second, everyone was ready to open their heart to help themselves, their families, and friends. It was unforgettable to think about those lovely friendships coming back, and safety of our families' days, and improving our school days.

Now I feel I am a new me today.  I am writing here, I love this world, this nature, this community; they are wonderful to me, and I am important to them. I hope every day will be just like when I was a free person in the lodge, and this is today. So I really wish everyone can have a chance to feel another culture's beautiful face, then learn new ideas that are good for you and yours. After all, I will say thank you, Mama Mary, thank you Mr. Van, thank you to all my new friends, thank you all.