This Wheel of Rocks

Informationen zum Autor Sister Marya Grathwohl Klappentext "In this memoir, Sister Marya Grathwohl recounts her spiritual journey, how she-a Catholic nun from Ohio-came to be embraced by the Crow and Northern Cheyenne, and how their traditions prompted in her an expanding devotion to the land, its resources, and its connections to faith and God"-- Leseprobe Part I THE ROAD TO PRYOR, MONTANA 1 Inklings Show your servants the deeds you do; let their children enjoy your splendor! PsalmS 90:16 They were inklings, I realize now. Flowing in the material world, they came whispering. I believe they were sent from God. The messages lodged in my soul and mind, tenacious as loss, tenacious as memories of beauty. They had the potential to shape my future. The earliest was Mom. Jane Seiler Grathwohl often walked, carrying me, around her yard. She stopped to admire tall white lilies, held me to their wide faces to smell them. She wiped yellow pollen off my nose. Newly wed Jane and Larry Grathwohl bought a home on a dead-end street, Laura Lane, in Norwood, Ohio. They took frequent evening walks, seeking nearby parks where they could take the children they anticipated bringing into their lives. They discovered an Indian mound a twenty-minute walk from their home. Two distinct cultures, named by archeologists Adena (800 BCE to 100 CE) and Hopewell (100 CE to 500 CE), had built hundreds of burial and ceremonial mounds throughout the Ohio valley. What the builders called themselves is unknown. Unknown to Jane and Larry was how the mound would shape my future. To me, Laura Lane was no dead end. The mound was located on the highest point in our neighborhood. Fenced as a small park, it was one of the few mounds that had been left undisturbed. Norwood had built the town's two water towers behind it. Whenever it was my turn to suggest the destination of a frequent family walk, I always chose the Indian mound. Its conical grassy hill was almost as high as a one-story house. Maple and oak trees had taken root on it. It was quiet and cool at the mound, even in the humidity of summer. As we walked around it, Mom reminded us not to climb on it because it was special. "Maybe some people were buried in the mound," she said. "Let's pray for them." My sisters, Regina and Susan, and I stood close to Mom and said the usual Catholic prayer for the dead, "May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen." We knew the prayer by heart because we prayed it before every meal as Mom and Dad recalled their deceased parents and six sisters and brothers. We extended to these unknown dead the reverence we had for family members. I realize now that my parents nurtured my sense of wonder here as they encouraged respect for the mound. I learned that mystery coupled with quiet and beauty evoked a sense of the sacred. This place wasn't "church" by any stretch, but here in nature and ancient human ritual there was a kind of holy presence and power. It appealed to me, perhaps more than church. The mound ignited my imagination. I felt an affinity with the people who had built it and must have had their homes in what was now our neighborhood. Back on Laura Lane, walking to school and passing friends' houses, I pictured the children of the Mound people playing under the trees in yards or peeking out from behind the bushes that hedged sidewalks. In addition, the mound and its people recalibrated my sense of history, gave me a human story here that was older than our family stories of grandparents coming to the Ohio valley from German and Alsace-Lorraine regions. It was a story older than America, older than Columbus, and closer to home than stories of the first Thanksgiving and Pocahontas. All this was a child's small awareness, but it bestowed a respect and reverence for the original peoples of this continent. It...

Auteur

Sister Marya Grathwohl

Échantillon de lecture
Part I

THE ROAD TO PRYOR,
MONTANA

1

Inklings

Show your servants the deeds you do;
let their children enjoy your splendor!

PsalmS 90:16

They were inklings, I realize now. Flowing in the material world, they came whispering. I believe they were sent from God. The messages lodged in my soul and mind, tenacious as loss, tenacious as memories of beauty. They had the potential to shape my future.

The earliest was Mom. Jane Seiler Grathwohl often walked, carrying me, around her yard. She stopped to admire tall white lilies, held me to their wide faces to smell them. She wiped yellow pollen off my nose.

Newly wed Jane and Larry Grathwohl bought a home on a dead-end street, Laura Lane, in Norwood, Ohio. They took frequent evening walks, seeking nearby parks where they could take the children they anticipated bringing into their lives. They discovered an Indian mound a twenty-minute walk from their home. Two distinct cultures, named by archeologists Adena (800 BCE to 100 CE) and Hopewell (100 CE to 500 CE), had built hundreds of burial and ceremonial mounds throughout the Ohio valley. What the builders called themselves is unknown. Unknown to Jane and Larry was how the mound would shape my future. To me, Laura Lane was no dead end.

The mound was located on the highest point in our neighborhood. Fenced as a small park, it was one of the few mounds that had been left undisturbed. Norwood had built the town's two water towers behind it.

Whenever it was my turn to suggest the destination of a frequent family walk, I always chose the Indian mound. Its conical grassy hill was almost as high as a one-story house. Maple and oak trees had taken root on it.

It was quiet and cool at the mound, even in the humidity of summer. As we walked around it, Mom reminded us not to climb on it because it was special. "Maybe some people were buried in the mound," she said. "Let's pray for them." My sisters, Regina and Susan, and I stood close to Mom and said the usual Catholic prayer for the dead, "May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen." We knew the prayer by heart because we prayed it before every meal as Mom and Dad recalled their deceased parents and six sisters and brothers. We extended to these unknown dead the reverence we had for family members.

I realize now that my parents nurtured my sense of wonder here as they encouraged respect for the mound. I learned that mystery coupled with quiet and beauty evoked a sense of the sacred. This place wasn't "church" by any stretch, but here in nature and ancient human ritual there was a kind of holy presence and power. It appealed to me, perhaps more than church.

The mound ignited my imagination. I felt an affinity with the people who had built it and must have had their homes in what was now our neighborhood. Back on Laura Lane, walking to school and passing friends' houses, I pictured the children of the Mound people playing under the trees in yards or peeking out from behind the bushes that hedged sidewalks.

In addition, the mound and its people recalibrated my sense of history, gave me a human story here that was older than our family stories of grandparents coming to the Ohio valley from German and Alsace-Lorraine regions. It was a story older than America, older than Columbus, and closer to home than stories of the first Thanksgiving and Pocahontas.

All this was a child's small awareness, but it bestowed a respect and reverence for the original peoples of this continent. It hinted at the sacred inherent in nature. It would help guide my life and ministry among the Crow and Northern Cheyenne in their ancestral homelands we call Montana.

Grandpa, Mom's dad, also lived with us in the Laura Lane house. He had lost a leg in an accident at work. Using a cane and an artificial limb, he navigated the house slowly, and often sat out on the front porch. He had an endless supply of peanuts for the squirrel that lived in the tall oak a few feet from th…