Father Knows Best?(Nunzio FireHeart) #16) Father Knows Best?

Dear Dad . . .

About a week after returning home from the Sun Dance I wrote about in my last letter, I drove an hour north to a rural Sonoma County homestead for an all-night Native American Church (NAC) tipi ceremony. After parking in a field next to a dozen or so other vehicles, I got out and walked around looking for someone I knew. I’d been told about this ceremony by Jim, a fire tender at my Sun Dance, so I was hoping to see a familiar face or two from the dance, but all I saw were strangers.

I saw a woman sitting behind a table writing on a clipboard, who looked as though she might know what was going on around there. When I went over and asked for Jim, she told me he was out of town and wouldn’t be at this meeting. Then she asked who I was and how I knew Jim. Satisfied with my response, she said I was welcome to stay. She told me two young parents named David and Katie were sponsoring the meeting as a prayer for their son, Seth, who would celebrate his first birthday at midnight in the tipi.

As is usually the case, the sponsors (David and Katie) spent some time early in the ceremony explaining why they had invited their community to come together and support this prayer. They told us about how they’d come together as a couple and about the love for each other that had created their son. They talked about how much they had learned from Seth since he’d been born. As David spoke about important lessons he was learning as a new father, I couldn’t help thinking about you and wondering what kinds of things you learned about yourself during my first year of life. David was young enough to have been my son, so it was almost surreal listening to this young man who was about the same age you were when I was a year old. You had always seemed so much older than me that it was difficult to imagine you as a father at such a young age.

David said his most difficult challenge was acknowledging when he made a mistake. He thought he had to be a perfect father and was frustrated with himself when he didn’t think he was doing a good enough job. Finally, he had realized there was no way he could achieve perfection in the demands of raising his son. He said that, for him, accepting the fact that he was human and would make mistakes as a father was a great revelation. It meant that he didn’t have to keep psychologically beating himself up for falling short of perfection. In that moment I understood viscerally something I’ve known in my head for a long time: It’s okay to make a mistake. For as long as I can remember I haven’t allowed myself to be anything less than perfect without beating myself up for it. I cried silently in the tipi when I realized how much I’d deprived myself of in life by not allowing myself to make mistakes without punishing myself for them.

Throughout my years of attending all-night Native American Church tipi ceremonies, I’ve never sung and shaken the gourd rattle when it came around the circle to me. Even though I’ve practiced many of the songs at home and with friends for years, I never led a song in an actual NAC ceremony because I was afraid of making a mistake and not singing my songs perfectly. After hearing David’s words about it being okay to make mistakes, I decided to sing the next time I got a chance. When the gourd and staff finally came around to me, I closed my eyes and shook the rattle, hoping a song would come to me. When it finally did, I opened my mouth and began singing. Suddenly the words of a song I knew by heart disappeared from my mind. I kept shaking the rattle as I lowered my voice so no one could make out the words I was mumbling as I struggled to find the ones I knew so well. I put my heart and energy into a song I didn’t have words for.

Before passing the gourd and staff to the next person, I spoke to David and the circle. I thanked him for speaking the words that had given me the courage to sing. I told him that for the first time in my life I really understood that I was no less a person when I made a mistake, and that making mistakes was part of the learning process. My whole body shook as I spoke. It was as though the vibrations of the song I’d just sung had shaken loose more energy that had been blocked up in my body for many years. I felt energy surging through me, much as I had experienced during my recent Sun Dance.

In spite of my words, a part of my psyche still tried to make me feel bad for not remembering the words and mumbling my way through the song. When the staff came around to the Roadman (the person leading the ceremony), he looked directly into my eyes and thanked me for my beautiful song. All around the tipi, people echoed his affirmation. I was surprised. While I had been overly critical of my performance, everyone else had not been as interested in the words as they were in the spirit of my song. In that moment, with the support of all those around me, I was able to release another layer of self-criticism and accept myself in a way I’d never been able to before.

Some time later I felt my stomach tensing up and I began to breathe deeply in an attempt to relax. My guts felt as though someone was wringing them out like a wet sponge. I knew something was trying to come up, but there was a part of me that didn’t want to let it go. I doubled over and began gagging, going through the motions of vomiting, dry heaving, but nothing came out. It was as though opposing forces were fighting a life-and-death struggle within me. Finally I let go of a little bit of phlegm on the dirt in front of me. I knew there was more, so I kept trying. With the extra effort I was able to let go of a little more. I sensed that I was letting go of more of my hypercritical nature. As I struggled to purge these tendencies, a small voice inside said it would be unwise to get rid of everything, because the ability to think critically can prove a useful ally in dealing with everyday life challenges.

Around midway through the night I had to leave for a bathroom break. On my way back to the tipi I stopped to look up at the stars. Standing in the darkness, gazing out into the heavens, I felt very small, very insignificant. I wondered how someone as insignificant as myself could have even the tiniest influence on anything in such a seemingly infinite Cosmos.

Then I heard the gourd rattle and water drum signal the beginning of a new song. I looked toward the tipi as voices began singing. Silhouettes of people inside were projected on the canvas by the roaring blaze within. As the song’s energy increased, the tipi began to vibrate. I saw waves of vibrations rise up the sides of the tipi to the apex, where the poles supporting it were tied together. Then, just as the poles spread out and reached into the sky from where they had all come together, so too, the vibrations rose and spread out into the Cosmos. It looked as though the tipi was a transmitter broadcasting a vibration of Love into the universe. I saw bright white light flowing out the top of the tipi and up into the heavens. It was much brighter than just the light from the fire inside. At that moment I realized that instead of being an insignificant speck in creation, that I was a part of this ceremony transmitting Love and raising the vibrational frequency of All That Is. I was part of this ceremony consciously creating a new reality for each of our lives.

After walking back to the tipi, I stood outside until the singer finished her song. While waiting, I looked inside through a space above the hanging canvas door. With firelight reflecting on the faces of those sitting around the fire I saw them all as the divine beings they are. When I returned to my seat, I looked at the faces of all those in the circle. As the next song increased its intensity, I saw vibrations and white light emanating from everyone who was singing. Spreading out from each person, all the vibrations and light began to intermix, merging together as one, rising up to the top of the tipi and out into the sky.

I remembered reading Genesis in the Bible: “In the beginning was the Word…” —the Word being the initial vibration of Creation. Here we were, sitting around in a tipi co-creating through the manifestation of new vibrations. I remembered reading about God saying, “I am the Light,” and “I am within you.” The light I was seeing in the tipi was the light of the Creator, God, Great Spirit, etc. manifested in all those present.

Suddenly I realized for the first time in my life something I’d known for a long time on an intellectual level. I realized that we are all connected to each other. I saw the manifestation of the Creator in every person sitting in this circle. I saw that the illusion of separation is the Creator’s way of experiencing creation in all its manifestations and complexity. It’s as though we’re all parts of one larger being experiencing different aspects of our larger self, like a baby exploring its body and discovering how it works and what it can do. As I looked around this tipi full of strangers, I not only saw that we were all one, and we were all God — but I also felt it throughout my being.

As we passed the staff and gourd around our circle, I was touched by the support everyone offered this young family who had sponsored the meeting. They were surrounded by an extended family willing to help them with the difficult job of raising a child. Now I understood what the meaning of, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Several years ago I sat at the table of a large communal feast after an all-night tipi meeting with a group of people I consider my spiritual family. We talked about our birth families and the difficulties most of us had with our respective ones. Someone commented, “Many of us are born into one family and choose another.” While sitting with David and Katie in their ceremony, I realized they are part of such a chosen “family” that supports one another.

I thought about how I’d felt when our family moved across half a continent, away from Minnesota and all my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, just before my tenth birthday. At the time, I remembered feeling a great sense of loss, as though I was a plant ripped out of the ground and replanted in foreign soil. Sitting in the tipi that night, a stranger in a family gathering, I realized how much had been taken from me when we moved to Southern California. I also realized how much you had left behind — especially all the friends you and mom had grown up with and known most of your lives.

We were all strangers in a strange land. We didn’t have the support of our extended family or a network of longtime friends. With very little notice, all the relatives who had been part of my life since birth were gone. We moved into our new house, and I started fifth grade a few weeks after the academic year had begun. I felt like a freak. Not only was I a hick from the Midwest, but I’d also arrived several weeks into the new school year. Since you lived in and went to school from elementary through high school in the same local area, you probably don’t have any idea how these experiences traumatized me. To make matters worse, instead of sending me to the Catholic school closest to our home, because there were so many “Mexicans” attending it, you made special arrangements to send me to a Catholic school two-and-a-half miles away full of mostly rich (compared to us) White kids I had little in common with. I never fit in with them because our socioeconomic backgrounds were so different. I probably would’ve felt more at home with the “Mexicans” whose parents struggled as much as you did to pay for their kids’ private school educations.

As I witnessed the love shared in the tipi throughout the night, I thought about how different both of our lives might have been had we been brought up in this church with its ceremonial connection to a loving, benevolent Creator instead of the Roman Catholic Church with its angry, vengeful, patriarchal male God hailing down fire and brimstone upon the wicked sinners He had created.

In the Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion I was taught that the bread and wine represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. (However, only the priest got to drink the blood.) But, no matter how hard I tried, I never experienced anything beyond the physical sensation of the unleavened bread wafer in my mouth and the taste of the priest’s aftershave lotion. I always wondered if I was missing this divine connection to God because I wasn’t holy enough to receive “Him.”

As I’ve learned in the Native American Church, the sacrament of Communion is the sacred peyote cactus that grows in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Peyote is eaten as an integral part of the tipi ritual, and it has helped me experience the direct communion with God that I sought but never found in any of the Catholic rituals. From what I’ve been told, as well as what I’ve experienced, peyote is heart medicine that works with the heart chakra to heal wounded and broken hearts. It has also opened my heart to experience divine love and a conscious connection to All That Is in a way that nothing else ever has. At one time during the night, I noticed the tip of a burning log facing me. The end had a big crack through its diameter. As a watched, the circular tip turned into a big green peyote cactus as green flames swirled around it. Then the burning peyote turned into the shape of a glowing red heart with the crack showing where it had been broken. Green flames the color of fresh peyote licked through and around the crack. As I watched, I had the distinct impression that I was witnessing the spirit of peyote healing a broken heart. Then the image changed back to the peyote cactus I’d originally seen burning as the healing image was impressed into my consciousness. Later, while conversing with the roadman about what I’d seen, he told me that when the fire burns with green flames like the ones I’d seen, it is doing healing work on people in the ceremony.


Seth woke up early in the morning. He was excited, full of energy, and drawn to the fire burning in the center of our prayer circle. As I watched his mother constantly struggle to restrain him, I thought about how much energy all children have. I thought about the limitless potential we’re all born with and how often adults snuff it out in children — just as that same potential was snuffed out in them years ago. I thought about the potential you had as a child and how it was thwarted by your family’s struggles.

Throughout the night, David kept saying, “Nothing but the best for my son.” Every time he did, I thought about how you probably wanted the same for me as your first-born child. I thought about how much different what you thought was best for me and what I thought was best were. I looked at that infant and saw so much potential; I looked at the father and saw so much love. I prayed that this son would not have to suffer the way I have in trying to live up to his father’s best intentions and unspoken expectations.


After returning home from the tipi meeting, I watched a video made from our family’s old home movies. I cried, watching myself on camera as an infant and toddler — much like Seth — so full of life, so full of enthusiasm, so full of promise. I cried for the loss of my childhood spontaneity and excitement. I cried as I realized those parts of me that had once been filled with joy in being alive had long since been emptied of happiness and replaced with pain, anger, and self-hatred.

In the beginning, I saw how much that little boy loved the camera’s attention. Then I witnessed his transformation from an excited, enthusiastic, exuberant child who thrived in the spotlight, to the boy who mysteriously disappeared from sight. I was nowhere to be seen, as though I was no longer part of the family. (For much of my childhood I felt like I wasn’t really a part of the family, or that I had been born into the wrong family.) Suddenly, in one quick camera pan, I was caught on film hiding in a dimly lit, secluded corner. When the bright movie lights lit up my hiding place, I looked directly at the camera and made a hideous face. Watching this scene as an adult sent chills through me. I immediately realized that I wasn’t making a face at the camera — I was making it at you, the man holding the camera.

I wondered what had happened between the times when I was a happy child and this moment. Seeing the dramatic change in myself over a period of years compressed into a matter of minutes shocked me. At first I wondered what had happened in my life to transform me from an infant who thrived on the exposure of the spotlight to a young boy who learned how to disappear. Then I realized that I started becoming invisible when you started beating me. Maybe I thought that if I couldn’t be seen, you wouldn’t notice me and I would be safe. To this day I’m still able to become “invisible” in many situations when I feel a need to; it’s especially easy to do so in crowds.

My disappearance from the movies documenting our family history was my way of disassociating myself from the family and hiding from you, because you were usually behind the camera. At the time, withholding my participation in your family movies was the only way I had to get back at you. As the video went on, I also noticed how increasingly stiff and mechanical my body movements became; my face gradually began to look as though I was in pain on those occasions when I half-heartedly smiled. It seemed that I was losing my human qualities and becoming some kind of unfeeling robot. I watched my body subconsciously build up armoring in an unsuccessful attempt to protect itself from physical trauma.


The next time I saw my lover, I told her about the Birthday celebration I’d been a part of. As she lovingly held my head in her arms, I cried and told her how much that little boy in the tipi reminded me of the little boy I had seen in the family movies recorded so many years ago. I grieved for the loss of my childhood innocence, my joy at being alive. I’m still grieving that loss. These letters are a part of my grieving process.


Throughout the night of Seth’s Birthday ceremony I had been touched to see the love David and Katie had for their first-born child. It was easy to imagine you and mom in their place, and me in the place of their son. I now realize how much you both loved me when I was young, but I haven’t known how you feel about me for a long time — especially since I’ve been writing these letters. As for me, I just feel numbness when I think about my feelings for you other than anger and rage. It seems as though I’ve had to block out all my feelings in order to numb my pain. Unfortunately, this numbing has also subdued the pleasurable feelings and memories as well. Joyful memories of my early life have been overshadowed by the anxiety and fear of pain that became the dominant theme during my childhood through adolescence and still affects me as an adult. I often find myself wondering what went wrong between us, and why things got so ugly. I wonder how and when — if ever — we’ll find some common ground to walk upon.

Sincerely, your son,

Nunzio FireHeart


This letter was taken from a book in progress,
"Dear Dad: Letters of Healing from a Son to His Father," © 6/11/11 by Nunzio FireHeart

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