Julie Tallard Johnson - The Thundering Years. Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens

This book is dedicated to my daughter, Lydia, and her Thundering Years, and to your thunder may it wake us all up from our sleep.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to all those who contributed their wisdom and creativity to this book: the many teenagers and Wisdomkeepers whose words fill up each page. Likewise, I am indebted to the spiritual teachers who have helped me along the way, and who have kept me on the path of the Spiritual Warrior.

Thank you Laurel Reinhardt, Shannon King, Tamara Truer, and Joan Oliver Goldsmith, for being containers of hope and inspiration; Colleen Brenzy and Davis Taylor for your sacred wisdom and guidance; Andrea Wunnicke and Eric Amlie for helping me through my Thundering Years with my humor and strength in tact; Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser for offering another home during those teen years; the Haygoods for offering me their country get-away; to my seventh grade English teacher whose name I have forgotten but whose kindness remains with me; to Shabazz (Alternative) High School for giving me another chance; and to my high school sweetheart, Bill Ishmael.

Thank you to Jon Graham for seeing the value in the book and getting it to a most talented editor, Jeanie Levitan; to Nancy Yeilding, Janet Jesso, Priscilla Baker, and Peri Champine for their creative touch to the bookeach page holds within it their thunder.

And finally to Spirit who helped get this book into your hands.

Royalties from this book will be donated to International Campaign for Tibet, to help keep this indigenous spirit alive, and to Honor the Earth, to protect Native American communities and their sacred sites.

Introduction

Listening to the Thunder

The Thunder releases the water, and the water is medicine for everything. Water is the medicine of Creation. The Thunder roars and makes people frightened, but it brings the rains that purify and nourish everything. So bring us your Thunder, so the RAINS will come.

FLAMING RAINBOW WOMAN,
SPIRITUAL WARRIOR

S OME FIND A PASSAGE in a book. Or, a stranger says something that sticks with us; a story touches our soul and opens a new door; an oracle guides us on the right path; or we have a dream that wont let go. Through chance and synchronicities we find our way to what we need. And then, we usually discover we want more, more from our experiences and more from ourselves. Just more. Sometimes it is our longing for one thing that leads us to another.

The Thundering Years mark our journey into adulthooda time of longing, of lost and found, of power, and of crossroads. Sacred wisdom refers to it as a heroic journey, full of pitfalls and magic. Many of us know someone who did not make it through. Ultimately, the Thundering Years are a time of choices.

It is as if we begin gathering into an invisible medicine bag a collection of experiences, beliefs, fears, relationships, choices, dreams, and synchronicities that become the basis of who we will be in life. Whatever we fill our medicine bags with during our Thundering Years becomes part of our lifes medicine. Everything in this book is offered to you as a possibility for your medicine bagdream weaving, sacred and native wisdom, meditation practices, rituals, stories and myths, proverbs, elders, mentors, poetry, drumming, and nature medicine.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours....

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, AMERICAN ESSAYIST, NATURALIST, AND AUTHOR OF WALDEN

I journeyed through my Thundering Years long ago but still hold on to the medicine I gained during those years. Now, as an author and psychotherapist for teens and young adults, I put this book together in hopes of offering you more for your medicine bag. The wisdom contained in this book is borrowed wisdom, borrowed from ancient traditions, and from such Wisdomkeepers of today as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Sobonfu Som, a female African shaman.

Native American peoples use the words medicine and power interchange-ably. The power of something is its medicine. Sacred wisdom shows us that we all contain within ourselves an original medicine, our own unique personal power. This is called by many names: our Buddha or Christ nature, the Atman, the Authentic Self, and the Self within the self. No one has the exact same medicine. We are all meant to bring our uniqueness into the world. Even while considering the ideas, sacred practices, and rituals of other traditions shown in this book, we are not meant to compare ourselves to others or try to be like someone else. The passage through our Thundering Years is about opening up to who we are as individuals, and beginning to fulfill our particular and valued purpose on earth. Its about listening to our THUNDERour inner truth, dreams, and desires. Its about understanding our fears. Sacred wisdom can help us do this, as it has helped others for thousands and thousands of years, because it is not about giving answers. It is about opening ourselves to our own inner visionso we have the self-awareness and self-acceptance to choose the road we want to travel.

Sacred wisdom will help you to know that you dont have to be afraid of who you are, or of who you think you are not. Remember, you can choose at any time who you want to be and how you want to live. It is my hope that the meditations, rituals, and teachings in this book will help you the way they have helped me in the past and still continue to help me today.

The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.

BARBARA DE ANGELIS, AUTHOR OF PASSION

Lift up your eyes upon this day breaking for you. Give birth to the dream.

MAYA ANGELOU, AFRICAN AMERICAN POET,
AUTHOR OF I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

MIRACLE

Listen.

Do you hear It?
I do.
I can feel it.
I expect a miracle is coming.
It has set loose this restlessness
inside of me.

Expect it.
Dream about it.
Give birth to it in your being.
Know! Something good
is coming down the line.
Finding its way to you.

JEWEL,
SINGER, SONGWRITER, POET,
FROM A NIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR

Chapter One

The Way of the Spiritual Warrior

The Warrior demonstrates a willingness to take a stand. This is the capacity to let others know where we stand, where we dont stand, what we stand for, and how we stand for ourselves.

ANGELES ARRIEN, ANTHROPOLOGIST/AUTHOR,
FROM THE FOUR-FOLD WAY

Ajo ajo Journey, journey
Ajo mi re. This is my journey.
Kini lawa o? What are we?
Ajo ajo. Journey journey.

SHANGO SONG, TRINIDAD

T HE JOURNEY INTO ADULTHOOD is the intended time to claim the Warriors way. All the intensity, beauty, difficulty, and questions of the Thundering Years are de-signed to challenge us to determine what path we are going to take in life. Most Native cultures believe this