“It’s five o’clock, it’s getting late!”

Those words sounded familiar.

This was the way my Grandma usually woke me up.

This time, however, they were coming from my mother.

I was visiting my mother, in southern Arizona, and this was to turn into a memorable day.

A few minutes later, I found myself following my mother through a dry creek.

Cactus and mesquite trees where along the way. Birds of different colors were greeting the sun.

“Here” my mother said, stopping by a small mountain.

I did what I usually do with her. Some ancestral Mayan breathing exercises in combination with postures and slow motions.

We stood there, in silence, taking in the first rays of the sun, and storing them in the “sun place” in the body, that region just above the navel, a place refereed to by the Mayas as “Kinab” which means “the place of the inner sun.”

It was believed by ancient healers, that this center in the body was the regulator of the human energy, which is taken from the sun.

My mother then pointed to the branch of a large tree that grew near the top of the hill.

“What” I asked, not finding there what she meant.

“Lechusa” (Owl) she said.

And then I saw it. A big horned owl staring right at us.

“It’s a good sign” my mother said, “The bird of wisdom is greeting the sun just like us.”

And I remembered reading in the books of Homer that the ancient Greeks refereed to Athena their goddess of wisdom as “the one with eyes like an owl.”

Then my mother began to walk north, and I followed her.

“Here” my mother said again, stopping at a large set of rocks.

They seemed to form a natural altar. One bed-like rock within our reach, and another one on top of that one bathed completely by the sunlight.

This second rock also had some glyphs left thousands of years ago by the “wise ones” of the past, known to us as Anasasi.

The top glyph had two suns. One of them represented the growing sun, the beginning of the longer light for the year (Spring), the other one the one when the light decreases (Winter).

The next glyph was a person standing in the same position that my mother and I had just made as we greeted the sun. This person was directing many figures around it, among them children, adults, the living and the dead. This last one was represented with the eyes wide open, which meant that they had completed their earthly life, and had reached their highest peak of awareness as they entered the other world.

Every figure in the rock was in a circle.

My mother reflected on how we, as a society, have lost the circle, our sense of community. We have youngsters, coming to age, without direction, without a circle, without guidance and appreciation. It is no wonder we loose so many to gangs, violence, and drugs.

My mother then gathered some yellow wild flowers from the area and set them in a circle around the altar.

I closed my eyes and imagined that these ancient people have done the same. Through the eyes of eternity I could see many things, all of them precious and good to my heart: a people, a community gathering in this place, supporting and loving each other. This altar seemed to me much more beautiful than the golden laden altars I have seen in the cathedrals of the world. This altar spoke of what was of value to these ancient souls, what is still more valuable than gold or opulence, our family, our community. And an uncontainable joy took over me, as if a fountain of everything that is good had just irrupted from the rock beneath me, and was flowing through me into the dry creek and filling it with all it’s love. And then I felt that love growing and bursting out of the creek, covering everything within my sight. With renewed peace in my heart I walked back with my mother, in silence. As I left that place, I thought of the ceremonies of the ancient ones, of how they believed that the sun was born in the community, and how each and every one of them was responsible for keeping the sun alive and moving. We too are given this task by life. The task to see that every one of us is relevant to the circle, every one of us wanted, every one of us appreciated. If we are able to do this, then we will find that the sun shines bright in the eyes of all of us. That energy flows harmoniously from one to the other, that the sun and us are indeed one.