Heather Plett is one of those people that I feel I know, yet have never met. A Facebook post here and there. A fellow practitioner of The Circle Way. A fellow practitioner through the Art of Hosting.
I appreciate Heather’s words below, what came from her silence after a sweat lodge.
Last weekend I had a profound (and difficult) experience in a sweat lodge. Afterwards I had to spend a few days in silence, because there weren’t really words to process it. When I did sit down to write though, the following was the first thing to emerge. I thought I’d share it on this list, because I believe this is the work that many of us as hosts are being called to.
Invitation from a sweat lodge
Can you carry the sadness of the world
in your tattered basket
without being pulled in
and smothered by its hungry hands?
Can you hold the container for others,
tenderly weaving the edges so they hold fast,
while trusting that you are held
by invisible hands?
Can you create the space
where hard secrets and ancient tears
are shed like old snake skin
and left at your feet like an offering?
Can you enter the story
without the story consuming you?
Can you walk through the door
without losing your Self?
Can you crack open your heart
and let the tears flow
when the basket becomes too heavy
and the sadness needs to spill out through you?
Can you hold the inherited ache
of your burning sisters
and silenced mothers
without wounding your growing daughters?
Can you sit on the earth,
feel Her deep pain and betrayal
and let it vibrate through your body
without letting it shatter you?
Can you be the storycatcher,
the fire-eater,
the wound-carrier,
without being consumed by the flames?