Ongoing Struggles:Celebration of Prayer

Florence # 5 Crying and Praying

Two days before I was to visit Florence, I called to confirm our meeting. One of her sons answered the phone and told me that Florence was away and would not be back for a week. She, who rarely left the reservation, had gone to be with her grandson in a hospital fifty miles away. No one called to cancel my visit because everyone was focused on the events of the moment. I called a few weeks later, and we rescheduled our time together at her home on the Lakota Reservation in South Dakota.

During our interview, I asked Florence about her grandson who had been in the hospital when I first planned to visit. She told me that she had had to manage intense emotions during this time of his illness. She said:

“I just never gave up hope. It has something to do with spirituality. My kids learned that with the misery out there, our job is to try to keep things going. We know something about how to keep things going.

“My parents were Christians,” Florence said, “and I learned to rely on the Bible along with the Lakota traditions. The Bible pulls me through the hard times, and gets me through the day and just recently, I needed those prayers. It was very strong. My grandson, he is only sixteen, and he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. The week you were supposed to come they had to amputate his arm. I was there with him in the hospital, and I broke down. I only could pull myself together because I had to be strong for my son. I told him that they had to take that arm to save his boy’s life. Now my grandson is healing, but we don’t know what is going to happen. The boy and my son have to go back and forth for chemo. I cry, and I pray, and it gets me through. Once in a while I go to the church, but mostly, I pray at home.

“My dad taught me about the Bible. As an old man, he had diabetes, and they had to amputate his leg. He had his Bible with him, but he finally gave up, and he died. When he passed away, I was going to put his Bible in his coffin because he had thought so much of it. My conscience kept saying however, ‘Keep it. Just keep it.’ A cousin of mine came down for the funeral, and I asked her what I should do. She said. ‘Maybe he wants you to keep it.’ I listened to her, and I kept the Bible. A while later I looked through it, and I found notes my father had hidden in different sections. One note said, ‘If you get lonesome read this chapter.’ I thought then that he had meant for me to keep his Bible. I was real glad to have the Bible with me when my grandson got sick.

“The Christian tradition and the Lakota tradition go together because we all pray to one god. The Bible says to spread the word in all directions and this is what we believe too. In our dances, we acknowledge the four directions and this is similar to the Christian way.”

Crying and praying go together for Florence. The unity between her Christian
God and Lakota spirits comes together as naturally as breathing. In addition to her family stories, Florence’s religious beliefs provide her with a compass that shows her where to look for relief and what to do to prepare for what comes.

For those of us who do not share with Florence a formal set of beliefs sometimes we wonder if there is a spiritual path for us. I have come to believe that prayer takes many forms and that with each prayer we offer up solace and hope for us and for others. I ask people these days if they pray and I am often surprised to hear that many people have a practice of prayer that is not tied to a particular religion. Florence reminds us to give voice to our prayers and to celebrate them.