A WORD BEFORE

The year was 1872, and it was early summer. A band of Lakota Sioux, making their way toward the Rocky Mountains, were camped among the headwaters of the Little Big Horn River when one of their number fell ill. A little boy of nine years, with his arms and legs and face badly swollen, lapsed quite suddenly into unconsciousness.

A healer was called, medicine was sent from neighboring villages, and prayers were offered as the people waited. But the child lay as dead for twelve days, barely breathing. And then, just as everyone despaired for his life, he awoke and all at once he was well again. Presently the group continued joyfully on their way, soon turning their attention to a major bison hunt.

But one evening the boy’s father commented to a neighbor something like this: “Since my boy was sick, he is not the same boy. He has queer ways and he does not like to be at home. I feel sorry about the way he is, poor boy!”

* * *

As it happened, the man’s son would never again be the same--and that is because our existence in this world turns out to be only one tiny facet of our being. The little boy, Black Elk - for that is who he was - he had spent those twelve days in a finer, clearer dimension of Being. Thus for the remainder of his long life, his heart beat through an open door of Understanding into the infinite splendor of what it means to be truly, fully, and magnificently human.

Almost sixty years later, Black Elk came to know that his experience was to be recorded; that he was to ‘save his Great Vision for humankind.’ In the same intuitive way, he recognized the person sent to do that work with him. So when the poet John Niehardt spoke of ‘great battles, high moments in Sioux history,’ Black Elk would respond politely and then gently turn his narrative toward the ‘things of the Other World;’ until finally the poet understood, also.

So at last the poet acquiesced; laying aside the history, he instead recorded the vision. Thus came to be preserved, upon the North American continent in the twentieth century, a spiritual chronicle that parallels in our time the Book of Revelations of St. John the Beloved from two thousand years ago, as well as the elegant Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of perhaps 1000 A.D.

All three of these testaments unfold their story through imagery. More so than words, images can reflect infinite Oneness into everyday awareness. Through images we can stand within the boundaries of time and space and safely behold the energies of Creation, just as we convey electrical power safely into our homes through transformers.

In his 1979 introduction to the book, VineDeloria, Jr. observes that “Black Elk Speaks did not follow other contemporary works into oblivion.” He further speaks of its profound importance for the ‘contemporary generation of young Indians who have been aggressively searching for roots of their own in the structure of universal reality.”

In addition to celebrating this affirmation for descendants of Americans who survived a genocide, we can also cherish the power of this vision to heal the enduring psychic wounds to a whole nation entangled in that genocide.

Even further, it is a spiritual truth that works such as this will not slip into obscurity until their purpose is fulfilled; somehow these messages which emerge from out of our own Oneness become mystically ‘placed’ into our dualistic world, surviving - sometimes miraculously - for as long as they are needed.

So in these pages we will contemplate that very special kind of understanding which Black Elk saw; a way of understanding that happens through the heart more than through the mind, and what it might mean for our time and for our own lives.

We will do this through that same language of images, correlating among various traditions, and perhaps catch a glimpse of the immense power waiting there in our own hearts.

The remaining sections are:

THE UNDERSTANDING HEART

MANDALA FOR THE UNIVERSE

OUR LIVES & TIMES

THE COLOPHON

BACK to Main Page