3-3 A Little Girl's Prayer

A Little Girl's Prayer

What is it that makes humans different than every other creature in the known universe?  Is it our ability to reason?  No.  There are several primates who have been taught to communicate with sign language.  Even birds sometimes open nuts by intentionally placing them in traffic and getting the goodies after a car has run over them.  Is it our ability to conceptualize ‘the future’ and plan?  No.  Even squirrels and mice store food for the winter.  Is it compassion?  No.  Have you ever heard the stories about people who would have drowned except that they were pushed to the surface by dolphins? 

The question of our uniqueness in the universe is based first on the premise that we are unique, and that there is some quality that can be defined as ‘human’ that cannot be found elsewhere.  This is actually a rather arrogant premise, and not every culture holds this to be true.  Still, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there are those who insist that humans, alone in all the universe, possess the intangible power of emotion.

I do not subscribe to the theory that humans are the only beings that experience emotion.  I don't even limit emotion to the realm of the primates, or even mammals.  I believe that emotion is one of the fundamental building blocks of all existence, a freely floating elemental particle as ubiquitous as carbon and hydrogen.  Emotion, at its most basic level is a binary concept of yes or no.  It is positive or negative, sometimes wildly so, and in either direction it is a powerful source of energy. 

Those who believe animals cannot experience emotion have never lived with dogs, cats or horses.  I doubt that they have ever watched river otters at play, or seen dolphins riding the wake of a power boat.  I doubt they have seen the grief an elephant mother displays while standing vigil over the corpse of its child, or the joy on the faces of gorillas who have been separated over a period of years and are suddenly reunited. 

'Instinct', they will call it.  Reaction to stimulus.  Learned behaviors passed through example or genetic inheritance.  I think of instinct as inherited emotion.  If we accept emotion as either a positive or negative influence - the drive to or away from something - then emotion and instinct become two ends of the same sliding scale.  Further down the scale is the very nature of all living things to act in a way that is most beneficial to their own survival.  Trees grow towards and orient their leaves towards the sun.  Flowering plants, if under stress, will commit their last remaining stores of energy to create viable seeds so as to propagate the species.  This basic building block - the ability to do things that ensure survival, the desire to do things that feel good and avoid things that feel bad, that which we call emotion in ourselves - is universal in all living things.  When we accept that the emotion we feel is fundamentally no different than the desire for a tree to reach its branches out to capture more sunlight, we begin to understand that humans are capable of communicating with all living things in the universe, and that our feelings and our thoughts and our prayers are not ours alone, but radiate from us like light from the sun, or gravity from a black hole.

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It is a slightly overcast day in August, and we are walking the trails of Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa.  The area is rich in Native American history, the evidence of which are the many effigy mounds on the hilltops overlooking the Mississippi River.  In 1803, the United States Government acquired a great expanse of land known as the Louisiana Territory.  In 1805, explorer Zebulon Pike was sent to explore the Mississippi Valley and locate sites suitable for military outposts.  One of the key features of the Pikes Peak area is an overlook with unparalleled visibility of the Wisconsin River where it empties into the Mississippi River.  This great confluence was, in the days of Zebulon Pike, a veritable superhighway exchange, and its military importance could not have been overstated.  Pike suggested that a fort be built there, but Fort Shelby was instead built on the prairie below in what was known as Prairie du Chien.  Until the fort was built in the early 1800s, the prairie, named for the Fox Chief who lived there, was a place of peace - a thriving place of commerce for the fur trade.  In 1814 Fort Shelby became a casualty of the fighting between the British and the Americans, and in 1816 Fort Crawford took its place.  Flooding destroyed Fort Crawford in the 1920s, and a stone replacement was built on higher ground on what is now part of Wyalusing Academy.  It was there, at the second Fort Crawford, where Black Sparrow Hawk surrendered in 1832 after the end of the Black Hawk Conflict.

The land was purchased in 1837 and held privately by Alexander McGregor and his descendants until deeded back to the federal government many years later by Mrs. Munn, the grand-niece of the original settler.  Mrs. Munn never allowed settlers or development in the vast tract of land which, in 1935, became Pikes Peak and Point Ann State Parks, and so it was then and still remains today a nearly pristine example of natural woodlands along the western Mississippi bluffs.  Today, as I stand and look over the edge of the bluff across the vast and elegant interlaced channels, backwaters, islands and spits to the opposite shore, Wyalusing State Park is visible as a hazy wooded area to the southeast.  Prairie Du Chien is plainly visible to the northeast, and the Wisconsin River can be seen inexorably adding its watery influence to the great river from the east.  Man's influence cannot be completely ignored.  There is no escape from the power lines and bridges, or the boats and buildings.  Still, it is possible to close ones eyes in this place and feel the massive greatness of nature.  If you still your mind and listen with your body, you can feel the positive energy of this place as clearly as the warmth of the sun on your face.  If you raise your arms at the edge of the bluff, the rising thermals passing through your outstretched fingertips can lift your soul to soar over the river like the hawks and vultures, effortlessly navigating the swirling vortices of air and time.  It is at that moment it becomes possible to nourish your spirit with the very breathing of the earth.  It is at that moment you become aware that the most important thing we can do is love.

As we were walking down the trail, visiting the various overlooks, we crossed paths with a family of four travelling in the opposite direction.  The father noticed my walking stick, with the fur and feathers, and said, 'there has to be a story in that stick'.  He very genuinely wanted to know more about it, and then as I began to tell him about the journey he listened with rapt attention as I described each item on the walking stick and what it symbolized.  He and his wife, and their young daughter listened to the story of Black Hawk and how so many of his people came to their sad end just a few miles up the river, and nodded along as I explained that I had followed his path and was now journeying back to their home. 

When I reached the part of the story where the women and children were being killed, I told the little girl that it was very, very sad, and that part of what I was doing was sending prayers to the little children who died so that they wouldn't have to be sad anymore.  I asked her if she wanted to send a prayer to the children, and she said yes

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I said earlier that emotion is a natural reaction to the world around us.  Love and hate, joy and grief - these are the emotions we feel when we are exposed to life.  Thought is the mirror-image of emotion.  Where emotion is a reaction to the outside world, thought is the energy we direct back out into the world.  It is a measurable electromagnetic force we use to fill the space around us.  When people think positive thoughts, there is a positive energy that is sent outward from their bodies.  The more positive the energy we put forth, the more powerful is the influence.

When suddenly faced with saying something as important as a prayer out loud and in front of others, I saw fear and anxiety begin to overtake the little girl.  But when I told her the prayer could be silent, and didn't have to be whole sentences or even real words, she set her emotions aside and I saw her respond in ways that simply took my breath away.  She closed her eyes, and knotted her forehead, and this little girl sent forth one of the most powerful prayers I have ever witnessed in my life.  For thirty breathless seconds, she became filled with love, and what came out was like the birth of a star. 

Animal Spirits – you have heard the words in this child's heart and spoken to her with voices of stillness – please capture the impassioned beauty of this wordless prayer and guide its healing energy to the dark places of the universe.

Ah ho.

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(Key Terms: Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, Black Sparrow Hawk, Black Hawk, 1767, Saukenuk, Pyesa, Rock Island, Black Hawk’s Watch Tower, Black Hawk State Historic Site, Hauberg Museum, Sauk, Sac, Meskwaki, Fox, Rock River, Sinnissippi River, Mississippi River, War of 1812, British Band, Great Britain, Treaty of 1804, Treaties, Ceded Land, William Henry Harrison, Quashquame, Keokuk, Fort Armstrong, Samuel Whiteside, Black Hawk War of 1832, Black Hawk Conflict, Scalp, Great Sauk Trail, Black Hawk Trail, Prophetstown, Wabokieshiek, White Cloud, The Winnebago Prophet, Ne-o-po-pe, Dixon’s Ferry, Isaiah Stillman, The Battle of Stillman’s Run, Old Man’s Creek, Sycamore Creek, Abraham Lincoln, Chief Shabbona, Felix St. Vrain, Lake Koshkonong, Fort Koshkonong, Fort Atkinson, Henry Atkinson, Andrew Jackson, Lewis Cass, Winfield Scott, Chief Black Wolf, Henry Dodge, James Henry, White Crow, Rock River Rapids, The Four Lakes, Battle of Wisconsin Heights, Benjamin Franklin Smith, Wisconsin River, Kickapoo River, Soldier’s Grove, Steamboat Warrior, Steamship Warrior, Fort Crawford, Battle of Bad Axe, Bad Axe Massacre, Joseph M. Street, Antoine LeClaire, Native American, Indian, Michigan Territory, Indiana Territory, Louisiana Territory, Osage, Souix, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Ho-Chunk)