The Stories from Elders

Full Moon Power

by Yvonne Swan

Grandmother Moon was rising turning another day into a cool autumn night. My eleven-year-old son, Darren, was outdoors with his friends in our Spokane neighborhood and the rest of us were sitting on the living room floor by the fireplace. Floyd was holding our little daughter, Chante’, who was happily playing with one of his braids and her four-year-old sister, Yvette, was sitting next to us on the floor.

“Look how long this hair is compared to this,” Floyd said as he held up some strands of Chante’s baby hair. “Don’t you think it needs to be trimmed a little? If I had some scissors, I could do it.”

I gave him the scissors and he trimmed the long hairs and handed them to me. Yvette was watching as I explained that Chante’ had been born during the full moon and we were going to offer a prayer for her as I burned the little pieces of hair in the fireplace. It was going to be a way to show our love and appreciation to the Creator for sending her to us.

I put some cedar flakes on the coals and the little flames turned into smoke and billowed upward. I told Yvette the cedar smudge was going to take our prayers to the Creator. I thanked the Creator for Grandmother Moon and Mother Earth. I put the hair on the hot coals and handed the cedar to Floyd and he said a short prayer in his Dakota language.

I asked the Creator to make Chante’ a strong person and to purify her path for a long life. Then I explained to Yvette that the trees were Mother Earth’s hair. She looked thoughtfully at the wood beneath the flames and asked, “Why don’t you pray for Mother Earth, too?”

I said, “Okay, that’s a great idea!” I put more cedar on the coals and said, “There, that is for Mother Earth.” I watched the little flames of the burning cedar particles quickly turn to smudge and marveled at Yvette’s big heart. She was only four and concerned for Mother Earth’s life.

Then behind us we heard the front door close and Darren walked over and asked excitedly, “Did you guys see that lightning?”

We looked at him wondering what he was talking about.

“It struck the tree in our front yard.”

He said, “Come on, I’ll show you”, and we followed him over to the front window and looked out. He pointed to the tree, to a huge branch hanging to the ground.

“When did that happen?” we asked.

He said, “Just now.”

“Just now?”

“Yeah, I was just about in the yard when the lightning cracked right in front of me! It hit the tree and broke that branch. See it hanging there?”

We had been so engrossed in our prayers by the fireplace we hadn’t heard a sound.

As a mother, my first thought was for the safety of my young son. That tree was strong and that branch was big. He could have been seriously injured if it had fallen on him. But it didn’t fall on him. Nor had he been frightened. The timing of everything that night forced me to think of the Creator as all powerful, all knowing. It made me wonder if the lightning strike was acknowledgement of our prayers. It certainly seemed as though it was a powerful exclamation point that followed the final prayer, the prayer of a four-year-old girl. And my son was the witness.