Rites of Renewal : Chumash Ceremony Starts the Healing

What’s left after homes are aired out, damage assessed and insurance papers duly filed? For some Southern Californians recovering from the recent, devastating wildfires, there’s still something missing, some final act left undone.

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And in this land of self-made mystics and spiritual invention, that calls for a ritual.

Accordingly, about two dozen people gathered on the blackened slopes of Cold Creek Preserve early Saturday for what was billed as an American Indian renewal ceremony.

The ceremony was to be led by a Chumash Indian Master of Fire, Qun’Tan Shup of Ventura. Shup had been invited by the Mountains Restoration Trust to celebrate healing in the preserve, which the fires reduced to cinders.

But as the group waited by the roadside, an acrid smell of smoke all around, it became obvious that Shup was not going to show up.

At long last, trust program director Jo Kitz gave one last hopeful look down the mountain, and turned back to the group.

“Looks like we are going to have to improvise,” she said with resolve.

After all, the occasion seemed to call for a ceremony, some sort of ceremony, and these people were not the sort to be at a loss in such circumstances.

Hasty preparations were made, and the group trooped down the charred footpath for what promised to be an eclectic affair--blending Quakerism, shamanism and botany.

“Don’t be afraid of your emotions,” Kitz instructed as they started down the path.

The blackening of the preserve “is not a death,” she added. “This is not a loss. This has to be here.”

Kitz, who grew teary-eyed as she spoke, made it clear the celebration was not meant to minimize the fear and loss endured by many who lost homes and property in the fire.

Indeed, many in the group were residents of the canyons nearby, and lived directly in the fire’s path. Some said their homes were threatened or damaged by the fast-moving blaze.

Joanna Karalekas, who spent a terrifying night watching flames come within yards of her Topanga-area mobile home, said she came to the ceremony because she felt “it is time to heal.”

Julie Airale, a Malibu resident, said she was evacuated the night of the fire. She returned to find her home intact, but the landscape around it uglified.

A healing ceremony seemed just the thing, she said.

“I was feeling a lot of sorrow and I wanted to humble myself,” she said.

Karalekas, Airale and others in the group formed a circle a few paces down the footpath.

Flies buzzed. Cars roared by on the road below.

Malibu resident and Cold Creek docent Peter Rice came equipped with rattles and carved sticks, accouterments of Chumash Indian ceremonies--”just in case.”

“This is a time of rejuvenation and cleansing,” Rice began, as a helicopter flew overhead, drowning out the gurgle of the creek below.

Rice led the group in what he said was a traditional Chumash “welcome song,” celebrating rocks, water and the human spirit.

He wasn’t the only one to come prepared. Someone else produced a zip-lock sandwich bag full of cornmeal that was passed so everyone could sprinkle some on the ground. A symbol of rebirth, some said. An offering, said others.

Either way. Renewal, it seems, can be improvised.

Most of the group joined enthusiastically in what turned out to be a hodgepodge of singing, hand-holding, silence and invocations of Mother Earth.

Finally, Rice produced two tightly wrapped bundles of white sage and lighted them with a cigarette lighter.

“A visible prayer,” he said, as the white smoke curled upward. “To bless everyone and purify the canyon.”

The participants headed for their cars. The ceremony had brought “understanding, resolution,” said Kitz happily. “The first day after the fire I was totally awe-struck. Now it looks very natural too me.”

Blackbird Willow, a young Venice woman wearing bead earrings, paused thoughtfully before summing up her impression of the morning: “I think we did good,”