Ceremonial Pipe Dedication Prayer
Great Spirit, Gitche Manitou,
I place myself in this sacred high place so that I can survey the wonder of all that you have made,
And so that I can be reminded to remain humble in in this circle,
With the awareness that the center of the universe is everywhere, in the spirit of every living thing,
Making every life small in its place,
And mighty in its preciousness.
I raise this sacred pipe to you as a way to give thanks.
I have prepared myself to the limit of my ability, through study, work, relationship, and service.
Yet even the best of our efforts do not approach the fulfillment of the power of this symbol,
This living branch of male and this living stone of female, brought together into equality
And made holy with the feathers of eagles and the colors of our prayers and our people,
Red, yellow, black, white, and the blue of the holy sky.
This limb of ash, taken lovingly from its mother tree, and then given life once again as the bearer of the breath of our prayers,
And this bowl of stone, lifted from the bosom of its mother earth through the labor of sweat and the giving of tobacco, and worked with hands of a friend and a teacher, given life through its place in friendship, and bearing upon it the symbol of the seven strengths that lead us to a place of wholeness.
I lift this offering of wood and stone to you, to your face in every direction, to your heart in the earth beneath me, to your vision in the heavens above me, and to your many helpers who surround us and come to us.
I raise this offering in this place of beauty, but with a mindfulness that this offering is made in behalf of those who do not rest in a place of beauty today,
But who cry in a place of loneliness,
Who cry in a place of bad dreams,
Who cry in the places where they were left by hands of power and greed and violence.
I raise this offering in their behalf, that they might not remain in those places, but that they might offer their lives, too, as people of holiness, wonder, and possibility,
That they might find the vision of themselves as you see them.
With this offering, I also rededicate myself to friendship and alliance with them as well, not as a man presuming to lead or guide, but a friend who prays for them.
As they sit here with me in my heart, each one of them, we send you this prayer of affirmation,
We, your children who you made through spirit and earth,
Affirming that we will reach out, we will dry one another’s tears, we will heal wounds both in ourselves and in others, and we will remind one another of the possible future.
We affirm that we will help our children see their future, and to love an earth in which we see not desecration and waste, but beauty.
We know, Gitche Manitou that you have given us a sacred power as men and women,
A power to reconnect others back into the broken circle of this life,
A power to find laughter,
A power to refuse to radiate the same hate that has brought us into pain,
A power to restore, to rebuild, to repair, and to recognize what so many others deny.
And we pledge to use this power to heal wounds.
This is Gizhewaadiziwin - loving and caring for others.
Creator, I also raise a prayer about those who brought betrayal to each of us.
I do not pray in their behalf, but rather I pray in defiance of them
To ask that you free us from the false image of ourselves as dehumanized, broken, and desecrated,
And to see these as the truth of our betrayers instead
Not because I desire any harm against them,
But because their own souls are shattered and outcast from your living circle.
Let our lives be lived in celebration of what is yet possible,
As we learn to reject the false lessons of the lowest points of our pasts,
So that we can be as free as this medicine smoke to move into the world with grace and flawlessness,
In whatever shape and direction you will,
Set free into healing action
Let us not harm ourselves with the useless goal of perfection,
But let us grow with the perfect goal of usefulness.
Yes, Creator, we give you our hands
And we give you our souls and our imaginations, and our energy and our companionships
To become circles linked to circles
In the great hoop of life.
For this, I offer this pipe and this prayer.
I place myself in this sacred high place so that I can survey the wonder of all that you have made,
And so that I can be reminded to remain humble in in this circle,
With the awareness that the center of the universe is everywhere, in the spirit of every living thing,
Making every life small in its place,
And mighty in its preciousness.
I raise this sacred pipe to you as a way to give thanks.
I have prepared myself to the limit of my ability, through study, work, relationship, and service.
Yet even the best of our efforts do not approach the fulfillment of the power of this symbol,
This living branch of male and this living stone of female, brought together into equality
And made holy with the feathers of eagles and the colors of our prayers and our people,
Red, yellow, black, white, and the blue of the holy sky.
This limb of ash, taken lovingly from its mother tree, and then given life once again as the bearer of the breath of our prayers,
And this bowl of stone, lifted from the bosom of its mother earth through the labor of sweat and the giving of tobacco, and worked with hands of a friend and a teacher, given life through its place in friendship, and bearing upon it the symbol of the seven strengths that lead us to a place of wholeness.
I lift this offering of wood and stone to you, to your face in every direction, to your heart in the earth beneath me, to your vision in the heavens above me, and to your many helpers who surround us and come to us.
I raise this offering in this place of beauty, but with a mindfulness that this offering is made in behalf of those who do not rest in a place of beauty today,
But who cry in a place of loneliness,
Who cry in a place of bad dreams,
Who cry in the places where they were left by hands of power and greed and violence.
I raise this offering in their behalf, that they might not remain in those places, but that they might offer their lives, too, as people of holiness, wonder, and possibility,
That they might find the vision of themselves as you see them.
With this offering, I also rededicate myself to friendship and alliance with them as well, not as a man presuming to lead or guide, but a friend who prays for them.
As they sit here with me in my heart, each one of them, we send you this prayer of affirmation,
We, your children who you made through spirit and earth,
Affirming that we will reach out, we will dry one another’s tears, we will heal wounds both in ourselves and in others, and we will remind one another of the possible future.
We affirm that we will help our children see their future, and to love an earth in which we see not desecration and waste, but beauty.
We know, Gitche Manitou that you have given us a sacred power as men and women,
A power to reconnect others back into the broken circle of this life,
A power to find laughter,
A power to refuse to radiate the same hate that has brought us into pain,
A power to restore, to rebuild, to repair, and to recognize what so many others deny.
And we pledge to use this power to heal wounds.
This is Gizhewaadiziwin - loving and caring for others.
Creator, I also raise a prayer about those who brought betrayal to each of us.
I do not pray in their behalf, but rather I pray in defiance of them
To ask that you free us from the false image of ourselves as dehumanized, broken, and desecrated,
And to see these as the truth of our betrayers instead
Not because I desire any harm against them,
But because their own souls are shattered and outcast from your living circle.
Let our lives be lived in celebration of what is yet possible,
As we learn to reject the false lessons of the lowest points of our pasts,
So that we can be as free as this medicine smoke to move into the world with grace and flawlessness,
In whatever shape and direction you will,
Set free into healing action
Let us not harm ourselves with the useless goal of perfection,
But let us grow with the perfect goal of usefulness.
Yes, Creator, we give you our hands
And we give you our souls and our imaginations, and our energy and our companionships
To become circles linked to circles
In the great hoop of life.
For this, I offer this pipe and this prayer.
Replies
wow matt. i could meditate for HOURS on that prayer.
Wow. i dont have the words for it.
thank you so much.
Thank you Matt, I am going to copy the prayer into my \'Joy journal\' if that is OK with you. I had tears streaming down my face as I read it, thank you - for the love, care, prayers, hope and healing you have put into this for all of us.
Very Very Nice. thanks so much for this and the photos are awesome. Is it ok to print and share this prayer?
Wow, this is just amazing. Would you mind if I shared? Thank you so very much.
Thank you matt. This brought tears to my eyes and warmed my heart. I will read it again and again.
I can\'t even begin to express how perfect this is... Thank you Spirit. Thank you Matt. Thank you creator! So beautiful. I would love to share how I felt last night and into this morning.
Thank you for sharing your prayer; it really pulled me back from the brink today. I don\'t have a lot of words right now so I hope my deep gratitude is something you feel even though I can\'t express *hug*
Oh, by all means--print, share, whatever you\'d like! It\'s yours.
Reading the prayer brought tears to my eyes too, and I felt a calmness wash over me and it seemed easier to breathe ... strange, but true. Thank you, Matt, for everything.
The pipe is stunning, still, as is the pouch, which I don\'t think I\'ve seen before. The location is gorgeous. Where is that?
The small pouch is a tobacco pouch, which I made. The larger bag is a pipe bag, which James (from the retreat) made for me. Both of them are Cheyenne designs, which are based on the designs that women wear on their leggings. I don\'t know why the Cheyennes use women\'s legging designs as their standard beading patterns. The small stick that you can see in the top picture (with the beadwork on the end) is a women\'s hair pin, which is used as a pipe tamp.
Oh, and the location--it\'s Elk Mountain, in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in south Oklahoma (near Lawton). The buffalo, elk, and longhorn are all wild, not \"livestock.\" There are also mountain lions, but I\'ve never seen one. You can see more pictures at http://bit.ly/seSXdh
Is the women\'s design and the hairpin because it is a prayer aimed at women or do the Cheyennes use these patterns for their male ceremonies too?
Maybe it is a way of uniting man and woman in the process?
You mentioned that the designs on the pipe have meaning; it would be great to hear of the significance.
The women\'s hair pin was just coincidental. I\'ve had it for years. Hair pins and sun dance pins are commonly used, and so are the big African porcupine quills (you can see those at http://onetribe.nu/images/prod_africanquills.jpg). Feel free to read any significance into the women\'s pins that you\'d like.
The silver inlay in the pipe bowl is based on a very ancient rock carving from up north, which is an Ojibway pictograph used to teach the \"seven hills of life,\" or \"seven lessons.\" It was first published in a very old book called \"Chippewa Customs\" by Francis Densmore about a century ago, and she didn\'t really know much about it when she included a drawing of it. It\'s not \"public\" knowledge, either, because the last time we openly shared a religious symbol it results in the scourge of \"dream catcher\" trinkets for sale at gas stations, so we just kinda keep it private. The image is of a zig-zag line that branches off into seven terminal points on the way from bottom to top, ending in a final circle. You can see a drawing of the original petroglyph in my art at http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/Akicita/my%20art/art.jpg on the lower left edge. It represents the seven journeys we have to take during our lives as we approach our final fulfillment (the top circle). Argus and I decided to use this symbol on the bowl, but for artistic reasons we made the center path straight instead of zig-zag. But that\'s the meaning of the seven branches off the center line going up the pipe bowl, and the tobacco opening of the bowl is encircled by the final \"healing\" circle. The seven lessons, or strengths, are named by River in his letter in \"Letters To Survivors.\" You can also read about them here: http://www.oocities.org/redroadcollective/Sevenvalues.html
Wow, Matt, this prayer is beautiful. Thank you very much.