Greetings!    

During this holy season, many of us think of sacred places with rich traditions and stories steeped in symbolism. The classic novel THE ROBE  by Lloyd Douglas tells the story of the Roman soldier Marcellus who won Christ's robe as a gambling prize and then set forth on a quest to find out the truth about the Nazarene. The novel opens with fifteen-year-old Lucia, growing tall into womanhood but dwarfed by her palatial home - by the tall marble columns, vaulted roofs, stately statues standing silently in the manicured yard, the high silver spray of the fountain.  No matter how old she became, she felt she "would be ever a child" there.

"A dark mist lay over the Black Hills," he writes. "At the top of a ridge I caught sight of Devil's Tower up thrust against the gray sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and the motion of the world was begun. There are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man; Devils Tower is one of them."

Sundance Mountain lies between Devils Tower (a poor translation of Mato Tipili or Bear's Lodge) about 30 miles to the west, and Bear Butte (Mato Paha) about 40 miles to the east. On the ranch there is a much smaller butte that I call my prayer knoll. I used to climb to the top some afternoons and sit, higher than the soaring red-tailed hawks yet dwarfed by the beckoning landscape. 

With Sundance Mountain lit by the glow of the setting sun, I would fashion a cross with broken twigs, burn a few sprigs of dried sage, and let the smoke waft around me.  Once in a while a solitary pronghorn buck, like this one photographed by Sundance artist Bruce Speidel, would stand guard at the base of the knoll.   

Holy lands. They are everywhere. Yesterday, I hiked the wooded trail on the north side of the mountain where I now live to a granite outcropping that overlooks the steep canyon where my mother's ashes are scattered. It is a holy place, a place of story and tradition and faith for many in my community.

Do you have places you consider holy? Places that speak to you? Places where you go to listen to an older wisdom? Places that hold sacred the deepest yearnings of your heart? I believe the Creator waits for us in these places and when we go to them and breathe in their essence, every season becomes sacred, imbued with symbolism.  

Wishing you many blessings this holiday,  Page