Birthday Sweat is Spiritual!

For literally 20 years, when my birthday rolled around, my goal was to perpetrate, obliterate and eliminate my feelings, consciousness and spiritual connections of any type by integrating copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. Winding up more often than not locked up, run down, sick and alone. Happy Birthday. Now however I can say that I feel I've finally come to a new place on a new path for a few days and I thank my friend Steve Weber for allowing me the opportunity to enter his lodge and re-connect.

This birthday I was honored to sit with real friends (writers, therapists, spiritual guides) mentor Dr. Diana-Qualey Berge and spiritual adviser Steve Weber (who's been running this lodge for 17 years)...who brought into my life spirits from all four corners...great warriors who gave me their strength, in a sweat lodge. So for three hours I listened to the songs that have been passed down for hundreds of years from Great Grandfather to Great Grandfather, to give me spiritual guidance, serenity and peace.

The lodge is located on the land of Steve Weber, out by Edness Kimbell Wilkens Park, right along one of mother earth's life arteries,  the moving water of the Platte River. All present offered tobacco to all four corners, all four representatives of each of the four parts of the earth...and then all moved inside the lodge. As the door is closed total darkness sets in and after the rocks, the Great Grand Father's who were hundreds of years old and possessed the wisdom of time, were brought in red hot, and the sage, sweet grass, and other medicines were sprinkled on the rocks....then the water from the river were splashed on the rocks and and the steam filled the lodge different songs were sung, different prayers offered each "round" or individual time that new rocks were brought into the lodge, for specific people, specific vocations, specific opportunities. And the spirits from many walks of life were invited to come in for a visit on the smoke of the medicine and spent some time with and working into the souls of those in the lodge.

For me a time of reconnecting, reliving, reinvigorating my connection to the past and the present. Of listening to the message those spirits brought to my soul. And of allowing the healing to take place emotionally, physically and spiritually. My birthday was truly a great day to sweat.