Meditation Journal - Why Jones Gap?

There are those who will be able to create change best on a global level. I feel more suited to a local habitat. Jones Gap is close to home for me. It has grown in meaning and importance in my life over the years. As one from Native American ancestry, I have found tremendous impetus to spiritual growth and change in this particular area I call my Medicine place. It has become a place of visions and enlightenment. It is here where I learned my connectedness to all of creation on a most significant plane of understanding. This beautiful mountain gorge has become a healing place and a school of higher learning. It was here in Jones Gap where I learned I was not the center of all that is. Here I have been able to connect with the ancients as well as the here and now ecology of this environment. Jones Gap is a microcosm of the whole of Mother Earth, and the entirety of the universe.

This is one place I can write about because of my familiarity in both a spiritual and physical way. As I walk the trails, or venture beyond the trails, I can watch the innocence and purity of the great Circle of Life unfold from its primordial birth to its present day and beyond, to the future. It is one place where, perhaps I can make some small contribution toward the wellness of us all.

Caring for a place is caring for the spirit that sustains me from day to day. Nature is honest. It cannot tell lies. All humans lie. There are no masks, no posturing, and no manipulation that has ever come from our Earth Mother. She is honest, pure and true in every aspect. Because Creator’s life giving spirit flows the same through her as it does through all of us, then indeed, the possibilities are endless. Who I can become, becomes limitless. My self-imposed boundaries become absurd. An old Sioux proverb says, Mitaku Oyasin. We are all related.

In my understanding, Creator’s spirit flows the same through you, me, the trees, the animals, water, sky and even the rocks. We are not different from these. We are not higher than these. We cannot live without Mother Earth. Mother Earth cannot live without our responsible care and understanding. What ever we do to her effects us all. We are all related means the birds, the fox, the trees and the rocks are all my brothers and sisters. We are one in the same. We possess the same molecular energy, as well as the same spirit life force within us.

My Cree name was given to me by someone very special to my life. The name, po’wakan maskwa, carries a great depth of meaning: Guardian of all relations. It carries with it a “mantle” of responsibility. That is my medicine. Where better to begin, than where Creator has me, here and now? Jones Gap is my here and now.