Creation occurs when some part of us is drained away into the thing we are creating.

This past week, I took three days to go up to the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota. On the way, I paid a visit to the bookstore at the Oglalla Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation. There I picked up a recent book written by Lakota Chief Albert White Hat, Sr. One of the fascinating things I discovered in this book is White Hat's description of the Lakota story of origins. As he puts it, Inyan, the Creator, "began creation by draining its* blood, and from this blood created a huge disk around itself. Inyan called this disk Maka, the earth." The story goes on to say that "Draining its blood for each new creation, Inyan became weaker and weaker . . . When creation was complete, Inyan was dry and brittle and broke apart and scattered all over the world." As I drove and hiked across the Badlands, I imagined I could see Inyan's blood in the beautiful reddish-colored features of the landscape. In the story, Inyan's blood is described as blue. But I still found myself imagining it as red in color because that is the hue of my own blood.

This story helped me relate to a challenging experience I've had over the past year, a situation where I am apparently no longer allowed by the Creator to be convinced that I possess and feel and hold on to the spiritual insights I've been given. In fact, it seems I've entered something of a dark night of the soul. However, this situation bears positive fruit in my life, for it teaches me I can only know an insight when I GIVE IT AWAY to others. For me, this kind of self-emptying turns out to be a sort of participation in Inyan's act of creation through LOSING a part of Itself with each new creature. In my case, the part of myself that appears to be drained away is my feeling of certainty and ecstasy that at one time was part-and-parcel of any insight I received. Now, by contrast, a spiritual insight only appears convincing and attractive to me when I find the grace to let it go and GIVE IT AWAY to others. I find consolation in knowing that this sort of experience turns out to be my own way of participating, in a small way, perhaps, in the self-emptying of the Creator.

Photo: A vista in Badlands National Park, SD; May 18, 2013

*The origin story refers to Inyan as neither male nor female.