The Deer
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by Charlotte Maxson Moore
"Back home" for the Shalem summer retreat last August, I quickly dropped my bags in my room and set off for a walk toward the woods. As I walked, I drew from my pocket the crumpled paragraph from the retreat acceptance letter: As you prepare for this time, please be encouraged to approach it prayerfully. Our theme is "Letting God Guide."...Insofar as you can and in whatever ways you feel most authentic, allow God's Wisdom in you to lead your preparations.I stood, at a loss, devoid of any authentic feelings of God's Wisdom in me, with no focus for the retreat I had so much wanted to make. Wearily, I stuffed the paper back into my pocket and trudged on. I looked up just as a deer was emerging from the trees on the crest of the hill. Seeing me, she stopped. As we gazed at one another, my lackluster mind was flooded with the same reverence and awe I'd felt when I was a guest at the Sacred Deer Dance of Tewa Indians in New Mexico in January. Again I was standing in the snow on that frosty morning, awaiting the moment when the rays of the sun would touch the top of the hill. There was a long, drawn-out Aaaaah as the first costumed deer bent over the willow stick to the compelling beat of the drums and began to dance. Down the hill, through patches of ice and snow, the rest came, in winding, snake-like patterns--coming to offer their lives that the people might have food. When they reached the bottom, they paused among the shawl-covered people to receive their blessing before returning to the Kiva to complete their four-day prayerful retreat.
The little deer roused me as she sauntered back into the woods. It would soon be time to join the group for introductions and supper. With a sense of joy and greater readiness to let God guide, I returned to "walk in beauty" with fellow retreatants.
During our first gathering, we were asked to explore our hopes for the days to come, to consider the questions, Where am I right now? and What is my prayer? We were invited to ponder the words of Scripture: I alone know the pattern for you. When you seek me, you will find me. Make your home in me as I make mine in you. Peacefully, as we entered the silence, I began to examine the path through my God-given years among Native Americans. The quiet, unassuming little deer had blown away clouds which had protected an essence of those years until the day when I was ready to let Wisdom share more deeply with me. I gave thanks to the little deer. Somehow I knew she had been sent across my path to help me explore--during those days of silence and during the weeks I've been home--how my gift of becoming "at one" with Native Americans has been one of God's ways of awakening me to the Love that passeth understanding.
When I was about twelve, my mother and I were invited to attend an Onondaga Indian Tribal Ceremony during which we, too, were purified from sin for the year to come! As a member of an Episcopal confirmation class, I couldn't quite believe that we actually were purified, but there was still a ray of belief strengthened by the holiness of the occasion, and I received a glimpse of another of the myriad paths to God.
In 1941, I boarded a train to go "way out to South Dakota" to teach Dakota Indian girls at St. Mary's School. I rebelled when I discovered that we teachers were automatically to be missionaries. I had all missionaries stereotyped as black-stockinged, puritanical, straight-laced creatures. But humor, love, prayer and forgiving brought understanding which dissolved images--mine of a missionary and theirs of a ramrod Easterner. We had much to learn about ourselves and from one another. Again and again, I turned to God, saying, "You will have to handle this, I can't."
As the scheme of Dakota life unfolded, I caught deeper and deeper glimpses of the wonder of learning gently to let God guide. I became a part of the St. Mary's family and eventually, through the children, was adopted into the all-important Dakota kinship relationship system, in which the same word, Wicekiya, is used to address a relative and to pray; praying is understood as relationship with God.
During the summer retreat, we broke our silence each afternoon and gathered in small groups to consider, explore and perhaps to share the meaning of oneness with God or the amazing concept that we, mere people, could be manifestations of the Spirit of God. A very dry season had turned the thirsty meadows brown. We likened it to our own dry seasons when the reality of a loving God seemed remote. The aridity was, perhaps, God's tool for letting us take our rightful places as a part of rather than masters of creation. We were comforted by the knowledge that the roots of the grass were alive, awaiting the healing of the rain. Much as I missed the lush, green grass, the deer had guided me into reflection on the spiritual gifts of the Tewa. The brown meadow took me back, in spirit, to the brown sea of waving grass on the Dakota prairie and, much later, to the high desert in Arizona where I spent seven years "walking in beauty" with the Navajos at Good Shepherd Mission.
The path of Shalem's summer retreat, strewn with spiritual gifts bestowed during my life among Native Americans, has left me singing with the Navajo: You see, I am alive. You see, I stand in good relation to the earth. You see, I stand in good relation to the gods. You see, I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful. You see, I stand in good relation to you. You see, I am alive, I am alive.
Charlotte, a graduate of Shalem's Personal Spiritual Deepening Program, has attended several of our Summer Retreats.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.