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that. When my questions became more pointed, more direct and probing, he figured that I had learned enough to understand at a deeper level and he started to teach me about ceremony.
    A ceremony is a very simple thing, I remember him telling me. It’s a way of talking to the Creator
—Gitchee Manitou
in the Ojibway language. It’s a way to line up your life and how you live it with the simple way of the heart.
    Before he explained this to me I had believed that a ceremony was something that would intimidate me, something that would make me feel small, something I should fear. But I learned that a ceremony makes you bigger. It gives you power. It clears your heart, mind, spirit, eyes, ears, and mouth so you can experience the world as it is, not as it’s taught to you or as it seems to be sometimes. A ceremony is an act of love, John said. Ojibway ceremonies, when they’re done the right way with the right intention, aremeant to help you know and understand yourself and your place in the universe.
    To get me ready for the arrival of ceremony in my life, John explained the Medicine Wheel. I’d heard of it before, but like so many of the traditional ways of my people, I really had no idea of what it meant. I had some vague, romantic notion that it was an item of regalia to be worn on my chest, a tattoo maybe, or some mysterious object to hang on my wall that would protect me from all kinds of evil things.
    “A Medicine Wheel is like a map,” he said.
    “To lead me where?” I asked.
    “To where you live.”
    “You mean my home?”
    “Yes. Where you live. Your insides. The Medicine Wheel acts like a guide to take you there,” he replied.
    “And why would I need a map for that? Can’t I just find the way on my own?”
    “Well, we human beings like to think we can,” he said. “We all like to believe that we can discover the necessary truths on our own—but we can’t. Like it or nor not, we need help, and the Medicine Wheel is one of the greatest tools our people have to help us find our individual truths.”
    He went on to explain that a Medicine Wheel was a circle divided into four segments, each representing adirection from the physical world, our Mother Earth. The east, the direction of the rising sun, is the place of illumination, and its gift is innocence. The south is the direction that receives the most light from the sun and is the place of growth. Its gift is humility and trust. In the west, the sun sets and is the place where introspection happens in the long night to follow. The gift of the west is honesty. The north is the place of truth. After travelling the other three directions and looking at his life, the traveller who arrives in the north is graced with the gift of wisdom.
    “You look at your life, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, how you felt about it all. That’s how you travel the Medicine Wheel,” John said. “The four directions also represent body, emotions, mind, and spirit. When you look back over your life, you look at the four parts of yourself and you gain wisdom. You find your truth.”
    “I don’t get it. Where is this Wheel? Do I have to go somewhere to start making my way around it?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “You can use the Wheel and its teachings anywhere. It’s inside you where all truth is. You just need to be willing to look for it. If you want to learn about yourself and your life you can walk the Wheel anywhere. And that’s exactly what I have in mind for you.”
    He went on to tell me that it was important for me toperform a ceremony for myself, one that would enable me to experience what it was like to use the Medicine Wheel and its teachings in my life. Rather than spend an agonizing time talking about these life teachings and how they applied to me, John wanted me to do a ceremony on my own that would make the Medicine Wheel clear to me. I was to gather a yard of white cotton cloth that I would cut into as many small squares as possible. Then, I