Hopedance

"Sage the House"
by Bob Banner

“Again I wake in some strange terror, not physical…"

After I wrote the above unfinished sentence, I received a flash that what I needed to do was to "Sage the house." So I rose from the typical writing posture, lying in bed, and began the not so difficult search for the two kinds of sages that a friend had given me for my birthday last year. I found the two sages, wrapped in fine twine laying inside a seashell. I became full of reverence, which is rare. I knew she had also given me a note that described the two different kinds of sage, but I lost that note. I decided which one to burn, found the matches and began with profound appreciation to light the one sage. I recall seeing what Jonathan did when he saged his house in a film called "Wake Up." In the film he admitted that he would never be involved in such “New Age” practices if he hadn't really seen various spirits actually move out through the walls and through the windows in their flight to leave. So I said to myself, let's try it. So I went from room to room with the smoking sage in hand and started by saging myself as well as each and every room and making the sign of the cross with the sage in the corners of each room, as Jonathan also did. Like I said before, I rarely do this. I rarely feel moments of reverence except in times of mind altercations while in nature, but yet those have been rare as well. But perhaps it was because of that fear, that terror that I had been feeling almost every morning for two weeks that something was requiring of me to make a shift. And because I heard something from somewhere suggesting to sage, I surrendered to it and was actually glad to do something else besides bemoaning the omnipresent fear over and over again.

As I was walking through the house I found myself speaking out loud saying things like “I bless you,” or “I want you to leave this house” in each room and found myself singing some sounds to go along with the reverence that I was feeling. It was about me and my initiation as much as it was for cleaning out negative spirits from the house. With each gentle movement of the sage, I was also making the sign of the cross in each corner of the room (once again as I saw Jonathan do it in the film). I felt more at ease. After I completed saging the house, I found myself in the living room to sit on the meditation bench. I turned off all the lights, grabbed my Indian shawl, draped myself with it, sat on the wooden meditation bench, and simply sat still.

As I sat, I felt this energy in my heart, simple energy in my heart area pulsating, vibrating, acknowledging. I recall saying a prayer that went something like “please bless this home and give me the courage to receive and to give love.” And then it gushed from me that I almost forgot about; but spontaneously I invoked my family, some deceased relatives and friends. I spoke their names aloud and through my tears I called out to them. Cathy, my sister who died two decades ago, my deceased mother and father, my two alive brothers who I don't talk with and names of friends and relatives just eased from my tongue who have touched me while tears fell onto my lap. Each name seemed to evoke love. Some more easily than others but the tears were like a gateway to the opening of the heart for this energy to sprout out into the living room.. and into other rooms. I could feel its immensity, its power. I could feel an opening but it seemed it was only through the tears that the portal to my heart was activated.

With the crying and the evocation I felt more heart energy as if my heart was going to break wide open. I simply felt alive and juicy and energized and complete. I felt the courage and love that I called upon the spirits for. And it was all good.

And to finish the experience, I lit a candle, lied in bed and wrote this piece.