WHAT'S IN YOUR BUNDLE?

What's in YOUR bundle?

Every child I know has carried or collected at some time or other things that delighted the child, seemed important, even magical.  I was no different.  I kept my treasures in a small metal box.  They included things as various times like small pretty pebbles, a Chinese coin, a stamp from Hungary, a polished piece of cedar from my Grandfather Judd's carpentry shop,  beads, Cracker Jack prizes, a whistle, a tiny doll's size pair of scissors, a small tin bell I found on the ground, for belling a cat my great grandmother said.  My pockets might have contained anything.  My mother had to check before she did the wash.

I recently read about the Sacred Indian Bundle, which reminded me of the 'bundles' of treasures  that I carried around as a kid.  However, to Native Americans the bundles were sacred. 

From Wikipedia:

According to Patricia Deveraux, a member of the Blackfeet tribe in Alberta, "These are holy bundles given to us by the Creator to hold our people together... They're the same as the relics from the Catholic Church. They are a demonstration of the holy spirit. They can heal people."

Sacred bundles are a powerful part of Pawnee ceremonies linked to planting and harvesting. They contain tools necessary to those ceremonies, and the rituals and ceremonies associated with them are passed from generation to generation along with the bundles. Bundles are owned by women and inherited through the female line, but can be used by men only. According to Black Elk of the Oglala Lakota, the first woman chosen to care for the sacred bundle was Red Day Woman, and all women subsequently chosen to care for the sacred bundle were regarded as holy people. The bundles may contain smoking pipes, broken arrowheads, glass beads, bison leather strips- almost any object that had meaning for the life of the tribe.

To this day I still collect bundles of odd objects. Amazing to me the meaning that is evoked by things one happens upon. A shell, a bird bone, a granite  pebble made smooth by the sea.  There is wonder in all things in Creation.  As the psalmist records in Psalm 24: The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.

I hope someday to have nothing in my bundle but healing, faith, peace and love.

So, what's in your bundle?