Buffalo is also a metaphor. How can we find the symbolic "buffalo" to give us strength and endurance for surviving and even thriving in the face of adversity or challenge, for overcoming obstacles?
In our Winter Buffalo Ceremony, we explore how to enter the New Year, express gratitude, ask for what we need in our lives, and engage in a dialogue of manifestation. The emphasis here is on dialogue and discovering with whom we should dialogue. If it is no longer the animals, then whom is it? The "New Age" mistake was to think that we could demand what one want from the universe and that it would appear, rather than having to engage in a dialogue with everyone and everything in which the balance of resources might change. Also, that we can ask without giving; that we can gain sustenance without any sacrifice or pledge of any kind. Our contemporary Winter Buffalo Ceremony is about engaging into a dialogue with the forces at work in hopes of gaining cooperation and assistance.
We have done this event each winter now for the past four years and each year we learn more about dialogue, nature, spirit, and collaboration. I will blog afterwards about what we learn this year as I have in previous years. With whom will we speak this year?
1. Rudy, C., If We Could Talk to the Animals: On Changing the (Post) Human Subject, in Speaking for Animals: Animal Autobiographical Writing, M. DeMello, Editor. 2012, Routledge: London, UK. p. 149-160.
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