Leaning on Kachina Woman

I have been blessed to live in a beautiful part of the country, a life-giving desert full of energy and vitality. The other day, my friend and I decided to explore this desert by visiting Sedona, a hub of natural beauty and spiritual seekers.

A brook ran behind one of the new age stores we stopped at, the meditation garden intentionally conducive to quietness, stillness. I stared at a cross on the ground shaped out of rocks, with a crystal sticking up out of the center.  I wasn't looking for anything. But there, in a moment, I felt the ground I stood on was sacred, that all of this earth was holy. I pressed my palms together at my heart in gratitude for the sacredness of the ground, of nature, of life.

We walked a ways down to meet the brook that ran through the town.

I'm pretty sure that when you look for God, you find God. When you choose to find God in your surroundings, you will find God. The Presence of God was everywhere, manifested in the life energy of the trees, the flowing water, the swimming fish.

"This is God," I thought, immersed in the wonder of it all.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau 

To dry our feet after traipsing across rivers and balancing across fallen logs, we went to the red rocks.

There is healing and peace amongst those rocks.

There are "vortexes" throughout Sedona, places at which the physical energy is high, places people say are conducive to spiritual discovery.

I believe this earth was made with glory and power within it, made beautiful in mind bending ways that Nikola Tesla was only beginning to understand. So, I believe in forces created into the earth, not present in and of themselves, but placed there for seekers, to draw people to God. And that is where we went, drawn to the red rock vortexes.

We hiked up Boynton Canyon to sit between two knolls, one of masculine energy, the other feminine. A man met us as we were on our way up and he on his way down. He had been playing a flute, guiding seekers to the vortex. He told us about the twisted tree, the place between the two knolls where feminine and masculine energy meet in perfect unison, like a dance. We thanked him and he turned to walk back down the path. He stopped, turned to us again.

"Hey," he said, and handed us each a heart shaped red rock, "This isn't just a place to receive. It's a place to let go of anything you're holding onto."

We watched him turn around and walk away. Our temporary guru. And I thought of a quote from Elizabeth Gilbert:

"If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you."

We wandered up to the twisted tree. My friend sat down at the mesh of the energies. But I was drawn elsewhere. I looked to the knoll on the right, Kachina Woman, named after the Hopi legend of Kachina Woman who was sent to earth to mediate between humans and God, watching over them. 

I took off my shoes, knowing I stood on holy ground. I leaned against the smooth red rock, closed my eyes, and practiced stillness. In the quietness of my mind I heard a whisper, like a breeze. 

Pay attention. 

Pay attention to the subtleties. 

God is there. 

I sat in peace with God for an hour. 

There are "mountaintop" moments, moments in which one is filled with wonder and awe, a feeling of being full of God's Presence. A feeling of oneness. A feeling of being. 

The challenge is bringing that moment off the mountain with you, into the daily grind, the messy beauty of humanity. Find the beauty in the people around you, in each moment, in architecture, in poetry, in art, in acts of love both big and small. Search for beauty and it will not be withheld from you. Search for truth and it will not be withheld from you. Search, search for God like a man with his head on fire searches for water. 

And perhaps take a trip to Sedona to lean against Kachina Woman.