To All My Relations

Out of the Mouth of Babes- To All My Relations

Many moons ago during a community sweat lodge a young family joined us with a 7-year-old boy who was both intrigued and curious as he was introduced to the sweat lodge. We shared some basic information as we stood at the East door and modeled getting down our knees and saying,” To All My Relations “before entering. He turned and so wisely looked at us and said, “But I don’t know All My Relations.” Children have the most beautiful way of asking universal questions with such innocence and grace.  It begs the question to ask ourselves, who are our relations and how are we in oneness with them?

At a literal level, we think of our relations as being our immediate relatives or our ancestors like our grandmothers, grandfathers, great-grandmothers, and great-grandfathers. Those who proceeded us are our genetic ancestral lineage. Beyond the human lineages, we have connections with our earth lineages. Our earth relations: the plant world, the mineral world, the animal world, the human world, and the world of Spirit. Those worlds also include the elements of earth, water, air, and fire. We think of those worlds as “outside of us”.  There is a circle song that I’ve sung for many years that goes “Earth my body, Water my blood, Air my breath and Fire my Spirit.”  Yes, the minerals are our bones, blood runs through our body like water, Air keeps us alive, and Spirit keep us connected to the Creator and all of Creation.

So the question “who are my relations?”, is a rich one to be explored, experienced, and rooted into our being. In that being-ness, we are One with All That Is.