Morning Thanks--Sacred

When you're nine, I'm guessing you don't think much about the word sacred. We were on our way when it occurred to me that our grandson probably needed to know the word. I'm driving, my wife is shotgun. I'd say we're babysitting, but Ian's no baby. 

"You know the word sacred, Ian?' I said. He was sitting in the backseat, talking to us and playing with a handful of connectable toys he'd taken along. He's nine. "What?" he said, not because he didn't hear me. 

"The word sacred," I said again. "You got any idea what it means?"

Pause. Finally, "Secret?" he answers. Wasn't really a bad guess. 

We told him sacred meant, like, "super precious, really precious," told him to think about the cross and what a cross meant all by itself and how if he had one right then in his fingers, chances are he wouldn't use it to pick his nose. "We might say the cross is sacred," I told him.

I can't see his face, but his silence suggests that he caught my drift. I thought he should know that word before we got to the monument because it was going to be important to know about the stone Native people have quarried there for hundreds, maybe thousands of years--how the stone, pipestone, to Native people is sacred. He goes to a Christian school, but he's a Protestant kid, and I'm quite sure Protestant kids don't talk much about sacred.

Just inside, the Monument has a wonderful introductory film, 22 minutes long. It plays every half hour and had started five minutes before we got in the door. It was scorching outside, so just sitting down in the air-conditioned theater was blessed relief. My grandson, like any kid his age, can seem distant, even unobservant; but a year later he'll floor you with the accuracy of what he remembers. 

Pipestone's video tells a story, a Native story, of how and why the pipestone got so red, so sacred. Once upon a time, there was a flood. It's something of a creation myth with a dash of Noah maybe. The flood was a slayer: people were dying, drowning all around, when a little girl climbed the highest hill she could find. Once on top, she prayed. 

It was dark in that mini-theater. Ian was sitting a row behind me, so I couldn't see his face. He's going into fourth grade. He didn't know sacred, but I know very well he knows prayer.

That little Indian girl prayed, the film said; and the Great Spirit answered, sent a giant cloud and a man to rescue her.

I'd have given anything to know what Ian was thinking right then: a little girl's fervent prayers to God answered just like that. Magic. Sacred. 

But there was more. The voice said the blood of all those people who'd drowned soaked into the earth and made the rockbed red beneath it, blood red, and therefore sacred. And so for centuries, long before Ian's great-great-great-great grandparents were anywhere near Pipestone, Minnesota, Native people have quarried this lovely red rock for sacred pipes because the smoke of tobacco and sweet grass and sage, smoke that rises from those sacred pipes, rises to the Great Spirit like prayers. Sacred.

We couldn't have been sitting there at Pipestone National Monument for fifteen minutes. Our grandson isn't even ten years old. I couldn't help but wonder how all of this was going down in his mind, in his soul. And I couldn't help wonder what his teacher will tell him next spring when the fourth grade takes its annual class trip to Pipestone National Monument. He'll already have been there. Maybe he'll already have thought about all of that blood red rock. Maybe he'll have some thoughts about the word sacred. 

It's a Christian school he attends. I hope the teacher doesn't tell them all that business of the little girl's prayer is so much hocus-pocus, doesn't just say, "We know Jesus, don't we?" I hope she just smiles and lets my grandson and all his classmates wonder. 

After all, his grandpa does, and he's 71 years old.

When the video ended, we hiked the trail. It was hot, super hot.  But there's a falls, a beauty for the prairie.

We hit a McDonalds on the way home. Ian wanted McNuggets. While he poked at his food, he slowly unwrapped something his grandma had bought for him while I was watching the part of the film we'd missed when we came in late. 

Inside all that wrapping, cut and smoothed from blood red rock, from Pipestone, sacred pipestone, was a cross, a small, beautiful cross. 

I thought that was wonderful. Still do. It was super precious.  

I hope you'll catch my drift when I say this morning's thanks is for the cross.  Sacred.