![\"Church](\"https:\/\/earthwalks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Church_Rio_en_Medio_NM.jpg\")
Church at Rio en Medio<\/p><\/div>\n
Search as I did, I could not find another suitable location for the Earth Walks for Health weekend.\u00a0 There were to be people attending with serious health problems so I called our guide for the weekend, Maria Elena Orona to ask her advice.\u00a0 Maria Elena was of Mexican Huichol\/Raramuri\/Tahono O’odam ancestry and was considered a “dream healer.”\u00a0 She was also a devotee of the east Indian avatar Mata Amritanandamayi.\u00a0 I trusted her guidance implicitly.\u00a0 In truth, she told me, there are spirits moving everywhere, spirits that have not found their final resting place.\u00a0 We were to be doing a purification ceremony that she said would create a doorway of light for the spirits to pass through for their own peace and for our healing as well.\u00a0 I decided to offer my home, but little did I know what was to take place–on many levels.<\/p>\n
Maria explained that Winter Ceremony is a time of acknowledging, thanking and receiving the blessings of our ancestors and in so doing helping health and bring benefit to not only those souls and our own but those to come in the future.\u00a0 Those who came to this particular Earth Walks included a mother and her three daughters whose husband\/father has passed about a year before and people from Indigenous, Hispanic as well as Anglo ancestry.\u00a0 We did several rituals with Maria Elena which were to “purify the mind,\u201d and created an altar for our loved ones with their pictures, sharing flowers, candles and prayers.\u00a0 Dinner was delicious, a portion of which was first brought to the altar with a prayer by Maria Elena.<\/p>\n
After the evening concluded, I felt a deep sense of peace not only for myself and the others but for the land we were on.\u00a0 It was my sense that this valley with its relatively constant source of water had been a place of intense struggle and conflict over time, at least since the coming of Europeans.\u00a0 When I first moved to Santa Fe, I was told as an outsider Anglo I would not be welcome.\u00a0 There had unfortunately also been a history of drug and alcohol abuse in the valley.\u00a0 By the time I moved here, much of that had changed, but I felt that the sad part of its history lingered in dark shadows and recesses.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/earthwalks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Rio-en-Medio-church.jpg\")
<\/a>Album Cover for USA for Africa<\/p><\/div>\n
After the ceremony and all had gone to sleep, I walked into the open field below the house.\u00a0 The clouds parted and the moon emerged.\u00a0 I felt so positive about what had happened that I spontaneously broke into the song, “We Are the World.”\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=M9BNoNFKCBI<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0It truly felt that the Winter Ceremony had helped to lift at least some of the disturbing energies of the valley that night. As Maria Elena said, \u201cwe helped open a portal through which these and other souls may be with God.\u201d\u00a0 Just before that time, my father had passed and I felt the ceremony helped Daddy on his journey.\u00a0 It was the week of my birthday as well and I felt thankful for the gatherings with Earth Walks participants that had occurred and those that were to come. We are the world indeed and I prayed that the healing work that night in some way might be of benefit to others.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We Are the World I did not want to host the Earth Walks at my home that November 2 in 1998. As an Indigenous friend who had considered moving in as a housemate had said, there were \u201cspirits\u201d there that … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n