Bad Spirits Ousted from Colorado Town Hall

Fox News, Tuesday, August 13, 2002
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60292,00.html

TELLURIDE, Colo. — A Town Council known for some downright nasty squabbling has been setting town policy in occasional harmony since calling on a shaman to rid its meeting hall of bad vibes.

Shaman Christopher Beaver conducted a smudging ceremony in the Telluride Town Council chambers earlier this summer after he declared the basement room full of negative, even violent, energy.

Town leaders are reluctant to attribute the more agreeable atmosphere to Beaver’s ceremony, which included burning imported menthol and wafting the smoke into every corner of the hall. But they say it opened their minds.

“I’m not saying there is a connection,” said Mayor John Steel, a 67-year-old, cowboy-hat-wearing attorney. “What it really did maybe was to focus people’s minds on trying to seek higher ground.”

Telluride is a mountain town where Tibetan prayer flags flutter from Victorian porches and American Indian medicine men bless the ski slopes.

Its town leaders have other unusual practices among Colorado municipal boards. They open meetings with a poetry reading and a moment of silence.

Steel said he started that as another way of clearing council members’ minds before they get down to business.

There is so much communicating going on now that council business regularly stretches meetings to nine or 10 hours. Two extra meetings have been added every month. Steel said the open-minded town council may be open to whatever else might bring and keep harmony.

“We haven’t gone to a sweat lodge yet,” he said. “Maybe that will be the next step.”
[...]

White said she believes smudging, which is used in different forms by many Christian religions as well as by American Indians, should be done regularly. She lights little sage sticks when she arrives early for council meetings.

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