I am doing a little interfaith action this week of the Native American variety.
Thursday, I am going to do a sweat lodge with Yogadev, and Saturday some brahmacaries are cooking some prasadam and we are going to support Vamsa at Parisha’s where she is dancing in a Sun ceremony. We will do some bhajans between the rounds of dancing.
In the Native tradition, charcoal from a tree struck by lightning is considered to be good medicine (has spiritual power) so taking some to give as gifts was a nobrainer.
Soma wanted to see the tree so he drove over and I went along to collect some charred wood. We got two larger pieces to give to each ceremony, and I also gathered a lot of loose charcoal to give as individual gifts.
When Soma saw the tree, he told me that the pictures I had published of it on my blog lacked scale, so we took some with people in it.
Could that be the spirit of the tree lurking in the stump? Or is it Soma?
“We have seen that in India the lower-class people sometimes go to the forest, and if they have knowledge that a ghost lives in a tree, they worship that tree and offer sacrifices.”
Bg 17.4
The tree split above the stump into several main branches and that is what fell in the different directions and why the top parts seem disproportionate to the stump.
I counted the rings and the tree was 160 years old. That means that it was as old, roughly, as Srila Bhaktivinode would be if he was still on the planet.
