The Spirit Who Rearranged My Weekend

How a beloved Tribal healer orchestrated everything from the spirit world, a story and healing offering we have for you in these words.

I can sense the generations of knowing in their bodies as they rhythmically pound the earth, invoking, awakening, honoring. The artful ceremonial feathers balancing on their heads sway with grace and power as the dancers confidently move in unison to the hand carved drums. The dancing continues for long stretches and the rhythm makes its way deeply into my bones shaking loose what was ready to release and inviting a kind of potency of what is to come. I gently wait through slow cycles of captivating conversation with the other healers I am grateful to be weaving ceremony alongside. Soon we will invite this community into an experience of honoring grief.

Mexica/Aszec Danza dancers headed to the water to offer healing and prayers. There were 76 of them present.

This day was not what I had expected, but of course it had been forming quietly under the surface over time in that magical way that only becomes clear once the steps are being revealed to me in layers as I am ready to see them. 
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It began at my son’s aikido class, a few years ago. I was sitting with the other parents watching the children move through their practice when I found myself in easy conversation with another mom. I knew her, but not well. As we talked something shifted in the air between us. I felt the unmistakable warmth of spirit connection arriving, quite powerful and clear, and we slipped into a small side room where we could really be with what was unfolding.

A presence came through with immediacy and force, clear and specific and full of personality. There was warmth in his energy, and directness, and a humor that felt completely like him. I shared what I was receiving and watched the familiar wash of undeniable recognition bloom in her being.

Atawi Art Mcconville, a powerful Tribal healer was coming through. Art was instrumental in creating and founding the Water Ceremonies that now bring together many bands of indigenous people each year to gather in community and heal the waters at Cathedral Park on the Willamette River. 
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Cassie shared with me that around age 40 Art got a job on the Warm Springs Reservation in their Cultural Resources Department collecting stories from elders. Around that same time, Cassie shared that 70 aunties decided it was his time to learn how to connect with Creator to become the healer he was intended to be. After dedicated training, the elders knew when it was his time to face Creator, to receive his first song, to relieve himself of all fear and negative self talk and to trust his spirit to connect to the Creator. It was in this first moment he made the commitment for life to always protect and heal his people and this is when he received his powerful healing gifts from Creator.

He had just crossed over, and she was navigating the particular ache of losing someone who had been both mentor and anchor, whose influence had stretched far and whose absence was being felt widely and deeply. His energy that day was unmistakably alive, present, and loving.

It was a powerful moment, and not very common for me to step into spirit connection when not in session. But his energy was not going to miss the opportunity to communicate and was very clearly connected to the flow of healing energy I invite to come through me in service of the highest good for all. 

Cassie came to see me in my office over the following year and Art came through loud and clear. We have seen each other in passing and she’s invited me to be at the Water Ceremony since that happened but it never seemed to align with my schedule.

Then about a week ago I ran into her at a Girls on the Run event, both of us there cheering children on. She shared that the Water Ceremony was happening the following weekend, that there would be a grief ceremony and invited me to come and participate. I had already committed to spending that weekend with three other powerful healer friends, with ceremonial intention to be together along the Columbia River, with the land and water, getting powered up to serve in our respective ways. I felt the familiar pang of missing this event again, but was committed to the plan of sharing space with these women. 

A couple weeks prior when the explosion happened at the paper mill in Longview, Washington, I’d reached out to these women and asked if we could specifically focus on healing the water and life in the Columbia River that toxic chemicals had seeped into from the explosion. We would be about 20 minutes down river from where that happened and the potency of being that close felt timely and important to honor the healing we could bring. 

Then, as the weekend approached, something began to shift. One by one, things came up for each of us. Someone had food poisoning the night before we were to gather, someone else accidentally put it on the calendar for a different day, I learned my niece would be graduating that day and didn’t want to miss it, the weather turned to a full day of rain where we were headed. The original plan was softening and releasing the way things do when energy is redirecting. Even though we all deeply wanted to be together, we each recognized what was happening. The energy was changing direction and asking us to follow.

As soon as I recognized this, I said to the text thread, “💕💕💕 yes let’s follow the energy! 💚” And as I felt into what the shift was opening, it became completely clear - OF COURSE - the Water Ceremony!

I immediately reached out to Cassie to ask if it would be welcome for us to come and if we could offer to contribute to the grief ceremony. It was an immediate yes. She connected me with the three other healers who had put heart, thought and love into the grief ceremony and they beautifully welcomed us into the planning and delivery. From there everything unfolded with that particular ease that I have learned to recognize as spirit led guidance.

It all happened so quickly, that it took a moment for me to realize.

Art. 

Of course. 

Our healing water intentions belonged in greater community at this event rather than up river on our own. 
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What an amazing organizer and orchestrator you are. Thank you Art.

The altar we created together for the grief ceremony.

Now we return to the grief ceremony. By the time afternoon arrives, the earlier dancing ceremony has ended, the drums quieted, the energy shifting. We have woven our way into the day gradually, my four healer friends and I, and now three of us step into what we came to offer alongside the three women who had invited us to join them.

Beneath the tall trees and the magnificent arc of the St. Johns Bridge, we move in and out between each other, honoring grief in its many forms and the many ways it lives individually, in community, in the rivers across lands and lifetimes. A few minutes in, my friend AmberJane, a powerful Native healer herself, beautifully calls in the directions, our allies and lands us all home at this water’s edge in a way that feels potent and provides a level of truth hard to sometimes feel in our active busy lives. We later stand at the microphone together and sing spontaneously, letting the notes find what words can’t reach. 
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We take a moment, the four of us, before we go our separate ways, to walk down to the water’s edge. We make our blessings and our prayers and offer our healing intentions and energies to the river, to all the life within it, to everything downstream and beyond.

Here we are. On the left AmberJane, then me, Anna Blossom, Amron Bevels and Amy Trepka. Otherwise known as the “A Team.”

I feel so honored to have been invited. So grateful to the ancestors for bringing me into a place where I can both contribute and receive. Grateful to Cassie for her trust, Art for his, my healer friends for theirs and this primarily indigenous community for theirs too. And I am also grateful for your trust.

The experience of the day continues to moves through me, reverberating and reaching into my cells to reform and heal. Art and your spirit teams and I now offer its ripples of presence and healing to the waters that run through your body. Let them be with you for a few moments or a few hours. When you’re ready, let them expand into people, plants, animals, all life.

We invite you to take some time in these next days in whatever ways help you feel most present to fully receive this offering. ✨

This is what I know to be true: we are all in this together. And together we are stronger, more joyful, more clear, more loving than any of us could be on our own. We each belong no matter where we come from, where we live, what our ancestries are. We belong in a way that is deeper and more profound than any individuality. 
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And when we listen and follow where the energy is leading, amazing things, greater than we could imagine, present themselves to us in blossoming majestic alignment.
​In closing I would like to invite you to meet Art through this wonderful video and learn more about the work he, Cassie and other full hearted dedicated souls are doing to heal the waters and our communities through Portland Harbor Coalition. Please consider donating and getting involved.

Thank you for your trust and your time, for reading these words, watching Art speak and taking in our offering. 
🌈 With so much love,

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