weaving myself back to the earth

Body House

Pastel, Monotype, Digital, Mixed Media | January 2025

Prayers with Tobacco

Each night before bed I go outside to connect with the stars.

I lay tobacco on my heart and listen. He peels away the fog, and it softens and opens to her own wisdom. Tobacco mirrors what my heart already knows. He can sit in the room with her as the wise and powerful elder that he is. I sing my simple prayers of cleaning and connecting. Then blow the sacred smoke, the smoke mastras and maestros and medicine men and women smoke. Opening up portals, cleaning, curing, healing, and bringing in truth and light from the holy plant people. It’s all right here. The world wide web of the plants and holy ones. The smoke reveals the web and the network. 

I stand in each direction, to fill my cup of the medicine from these healers and teachers.

The East offers sweet new light.

The South provides warmth and beauty.

The West cleans as I review the day, my thoughts, and feelings.

The North brings me to the dark, filling me up to the brim with its starlight.

I thank the star beings above and the star under my feet, my beautiful home.

A day of distraction I center myself in my choice, seeing all the gifts, and lessons. It’s a time of releasing my day and preparing myself for a night of sleeping and dreaming. To then do it all again on a new day. A prayer to not wait on the side of the river bank but to swim in the great river of life.

— — —

I am so grateful that there’s more to this world than student loans, drive-through lines at starbucks, interest on my visa card, and the Golden Globes. That’s where most of our attention goes - at least, that’s what we think our world is made of: trips to Target, synthetic smells, and shipments of junk from China. But there’s a timeless, sacred world living alongside us. I find it in trees in the parking lots. The medicinal shrubs that line our freeways. The migratory birds that stop at the marshes that they can’t build over by the gas stations, that are growing cattails and where nests of many animals find refuge. 

I am untangling myself from this dream of consumerism, debt, and Botox. And weaving myself back to the earth. The smell of the dirt, the rhythm of the breeze and wind, the sounds of the birds, and the special appearance of a high flyer. The busy ants and the growing weeds. This is the world I was born into. This is my kind of reality, the one with magic and wonder.

So, at the end of each day, in every season, I go outside and look up at the twinkling lights above my head. A nightly reminder of the magic and brilliance of what is true and ancient. The feeling of home settles in my bones, quieting the noise from the day. I blow my tobacco, giving thanks and sending prayers for my loved ones. I enjoy the night, for it’s the time I can connect to the parts of myself and the spirits that only awaken when given the quiet space to emerge.