Sacred Fire Magazine Issue 4 by Sacred Fire Foundation

MONEY MAGIC

WHO’S FOOD FOR WHOM?

BORN TO THE MEDICINE

The Experience of Spiritual Connection

Issue Four

Why whites are the lost people THOM HARTMANN

Living native wisdom in a science world LEWIS MEHL-MADRONA

When life burns to the ground BRANDON BAYS

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Wonderment JONATHAN MERRITT

hen my eldest daughter was little, I would hear her in the early morning chanting softly in her bed, “Today! Today! Today!” Her voice was full of excitement and expectation. Then she would go through her day alive in the present moment, joyfully going from one thing to the next. She was living, essentially, in a state of wonderment. It’s not as if she was living in Disneyland with a thousand manufactured distractions. She had the grief caused by the separation between her mother and me. She was aware of my tension about our relative financial uncertainty. And, of course, she had to deal with my instability and depression. Still, the world that presented itself to her at each moment was filled with delights. Her heart was so open that the creative energies flowed freely through her. Nothing could hold her back from her pure enjoyment—even of the uncertainty and grief. To a large extent, she still carries that sense of wonderment with her, though she has had to temper it a bit so that she can “get along.” She carries, though, a quiet exuberance in everything she does. Her sparkling energy infects the world around her. She has grown very popular. She is beautiful and wholly alive. For many people like me, a “Wednesday’s child full of woe,” wonderment doesn’t come so easily. For myself, I’ve found that it takes many little steps, small exercises and constant listening. Start with simply paying attention to the world as much as possible. Notice the beauty and intricacy of the world and its relationships. For instance, you might be walking down a neighborhood street when you hear a flute from some blank window, its trills and leaps and runs, the pure tones raining on the crooked fences and haphazard lawns, on the laundry shimmering in the sun. This is good practice because, as you begin to notice the instances of beauty around you, you begin to notice that beauty is everywhere in the particulars of the world. Pretty soon, your attention goes beyond the simple and obvious examples of beauty and into the intricate connectedness between things. For instance, a jet roars overhead and a crow answers it with screeches. A crow in the distance calls and a robin, a lark, a whippoorwill and a few sparrows all comment. The wind soughs through the trees, carrying the sounds of the freeway where all these people are going somewhere in the early morning. Most are headed to the same place they go everyday, but some are on an adventure. Maybe someone from Nebraska, someone young and excited, is on her way to see the ocean for the first time, her heart singing as the sun spreads its light through the overcast. Even those who are tired, who loathe their jobs but go anyway out of habit and obligation, even they, when they see the lightening of the sky, are lifted a little, are touched by a spark of wonderment as the sun spreads its light to the rich greens of the fir and cedar and pine that line the freeway.

So, too, is the raccoon sparked as she ﬁnds her way through the forest to her daytime nest. So, too, for the squirrel who emerges in the pines and, scurrying across a branch, kicks loose a needle which, improbably, sticks upright in the dewy mass of needles and leaves beneath the pine until the wind, ever so gently but without really caring, pushes it over into the mat that, eventually, will become the loam that feeds the great tree. As you begin to notice this intricacy and begin to see your place in the mix and begin to recognize the paradox of utter randomness and intricate connection, the sense of wonderment begins. And, as you go into the world, as you do the things that are before you to do—though you might not understand why you are doing them—you get the sense that there are much larger forces at work, beings beyond your comprehension at play in the world. The world is their play, the play of the Divine, and you are a presence in that play.You begin to see your role. And though you may not be Hamlet—and hope not to be—you play your role with an everincreasing exuberance. Even though you may be just a tinker off to the left in a crowd scene, you recognize that the set and costume and props of this moment are beautiful. As you set your wares out on the back of your cart, you shine in your role.You play it with your whole heart because, ultimately, nothing else makes sense.

Artwork by John Dixon

Contributors Brandon Bays is the international bestselling author of The Journey. She pioneered

her transformational work through her own experience of healing naturally from a large tumor. www.thejourney.com. A media development consultant, student of the ﬁre, and publisher of Sacred Fire, Sharon Brown lives near the ocean in Santa Cruz, CA with her husband and two daughters. Richo Cech is the founder of Horizon Herbs, whose mission is: “Sowing seeds

Number Four 2006 www.sacredﬁremagazine.com Publisher Sharon Brown Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Merritt Managing Editor Louise Berliner Column Editors Mark Blessington, Rita Lynn Kesler, Mary Lane Art Director Helen Granger

worldwide for people, plants and the planet.” www.horizonherbs.com

Operations Manager Sherry Morgan

A mysterious species, the wild variety of Sharon Cohen can be found by forests, rivers, and ﬁres. The cultivated form runs Native Design, an ecological design and installation company, and is writing a book on native plants and place.

Proofreaders Julie Bete, Jackie Robinson, Dianna Seale

Submissions Manager Stephen Michael Scott

Advertising Sales Manager Kateri McCue

Graphic artist and designer John Andrew Dixon explores the universal synchronicity of symbolic communication by intuitively blending iconic images with ordinary found material.

Ad Design and Production Maxima Kahn

Nationally syndicated Air America radio host Thom Hartmann is the bestselling author of 17 books including his latest: Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class-And What We Can Do About It.

Distribution Account Manager Theresa Arico

Nora Harms spends her time in the red dirt and alpine meadows of western

Colorado. She has given up trying to stay out of trouble. Jai Keller plays with art as medicine, art as transformation, art as life, as devotion,

as spirit playing with us. Shaun Lynch has work on exhibit at Bush Gallery in Boston, which is also

publishing a book of his photographs. lyncharchitect@aol.com Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom, and the forthcoming Narrative Medicine (July 2007).

The weathered voice behind the shapeshifting musical congregation known as Campo Bravo, Mark Matos lives in San Francisco with his two guitars, mandolin and dad’s old leather jacket. www.keeprecordings.com/campobravo.htm, www. myspace.com/campobravo Sherry Morgan teaches a program called “Exploring the Phenomenon of Prayer.” She is operations manager for Sacred Fire and president of the newly formed Sacred Fire Foundation. Craig Sadler is a photographer/musician in Southern California who loves to capture the beauty of nature in photograph and song. www.pbase.com/crs SkyFox enjoys dreaming life and occasionally painting in the Sonoran Desert. Douglas Stevenson hosts workshops on the spiritual path of environmental and

political activism from The Farm in Summertown, TN. A new granddaughter gladdens his heart and brightens his day. www.swantrust.org, www.thefarmcommunity.com

Subscription Sales Manager Jill Jacobs Subscription List Manager Andye Murphy Public Relations Manager Jane Smith Festivals Manager Erika Dietrich Marketing Communications Julie Bete Web Support Dan Cernese Advisory Board Karen Aberle, Jeff Baker, Tucker Farley, Lisa Goren, Susan Skinner Sacred Fire is published seasonally by the Sacred Fire Community. The purpose of the Sacred Fire Community is to foster a global community that rekindles our relationship to each other and the world through the universal and sacred spirit of Fire. www.sacredfirecommunity.org. Where to write: feedback@sacredfiremagazine.com, or Sacred Fire 10720 NW Lost Park Dr., Portland, OR 97229. For submission guidelines: www.sacredfiremagazine.com. We welcome unsolicited submissions.

Subscriptions: One year, $27.80. Single issue, $7.95 (U.S. dollars). Change of address: Postmaster: Please send address changes to Sacred Fire, P.O. Box 30645, Albuquerque, NM 87190-0645 Subscribers: Please notify us of your new address at least six weeks before you move (the post office does not typically forward magazines), and be sure to include your old address. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written consent of the Sacred Fire Community. Any requests to reprint material appearing in Sacred Fire must be made in writing and sent to feedback@sacredfiremagazine.com. The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Sacred Fire Community. Huge gratitude to Susan Skinner, Tess Horan, Steve Skinner, Nathalie Worthington and all those new sparkly Sparks. Plus our long-suffering families and our guiding light Grandfather Fire.

THANK YOU!

The views and opinions expressed by Sacred Fire contributors are not necessarily those of Sacred Fire magazine, the Sacred Fire Community, the Sacred Fire Foundation, or their respective staffs. Copyright ©2006 by the Sacred Fire Community. All rights reserved.

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Number Four

Letters Hola Dear Editors of Fire!! I just want ya all to know that the stories that are going into this magazine are terriﬁc!I loved the one about the steelhead ﬁsh, and the one on how David Wiley became a speaker for Grandfather. I love the color...and the way the front page is showing the birthing of this magazine. My hubby bought a subscription for me as a gift for my B-Day, recently! I was a very happy howling wolf woman that day!!!! Many Happy & Grateful Howls to all of the Staff!! Trinity Star Wolf Divine Nourishment

Editors, A friend recently sent me a copy of your magazine, Issue Number Two. As I sat randomly leafing through it, I noticed references to “eggs Benedict” and to using vegetable or CHICKEN (!) broth in a recipe. I am a vegan for ethical and spiritual reasons, and find it difficult to take your magazine seriously, or “spiritual seekers” seriously, if they haven’t yet made the connection between food choices and healing the planet. Savannah Scarborough Dear Savannah Scarborough, Thank you for your letter and the provocative question that it raises. For the most part we agree with you and we honor the sacrifice that you are making for the sake of the planet. There is no doubt that one of the most serious problems confronting Western culture lies in our relationship to animals and plants who provide food for humans. The industrial production of meat, from the birthing barns to the feedlots to the slaughterhouse to the plastic packaging in supermarkets, is a serious insult against these animals—particularly chickens, cattle, swine and sheep—who give their lives to feed us. Line trawling in the ocean for fish, with its great destruction and waste of species that will not be eats, is an even greater travesty. And the farming of fish—mechanically breeding and feeding them, introducing antibiotics and hormones, penning steelhead, salmon and other fish who are meant to swim in great schools thousands of miles through the seas, slaughtering them in production lines and injecting dye into their flesh—is no better. Similarly, modern agricultural practices—from the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides which deplete the soil and destroy the many species who have lived forever in harmonious relationship with the earth, to the mechanical harvesting and processing of the fruits, vegetables, roots and grains, to the burning of the fields by spreading petroleum across the ground—are tremendous insults. For plants, too, are sensitive and sentient beings imbued with Divine Essence. Add to that the use of cloning and genetic engineering and we have a nearly complete violation of the spirits of these plants who have given themselves to us from the beginning of time. The problem is one of relationship and connection. Since few of us are involved in raising food—and most of those who work in the barns and fields and factories and slaughterhouses are treated

terribly with difficult working conditions, substandard wages and little respect—we have, for the most part, no relationship to the plants and animals who feed us. We have virtually no understanding of the great sacrifice that they make for our sakes. We seldom honor that sacrifice with prayers of gratitude and sacrifices of our own for the sake of those beings. Consequently, many of the diseases that plague our people are a result of these broken relationships. But to say that anyone who eats meat or uses animal products cannot be a serious “spiritual seeker” goes too far. This casts the casts the animals who give us food purely in the role of victims and people who eat them as mindless abusers. It is not so simple. Many people still living in intimate connection with the plants and animals they eat and honor the ancient agreements that govern these relationships. Are they, too, ignorant? Much of this issue is devoted to this question of our relationships to plants and animals and to the intricate and beautiful realm we live in. It looks at our loss of and longing for and rediscovery of the ancestral wisdom that has always guided us in these relationships. We hope that you find in these pages a sense of connection, a way of being in the world. The Editors

We would love to hear from you! Write to the editor at: jmerritt@sacredﬁremagazine.com

IN OUR NEXT ISSUE Tibetan Lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche “Relating to the Sacred” An Interview with Eliot Cowan, Huichol Tsaurirrikame Sangoma Colin Campbell “Nature Spirits, Ancestors and the Sangoma in the Modern World.” Richard Reoch, President of the Shambala Lineage “Spiritual Practice in a World at War”

G A T H E R I N G

S E E D S

RI CHO C E C H The air hung as limp as weeping willows over a muddy creek. Kentucky can be like that, the oxygen dense, rising from the blue-green hardwood forest, the daylight slow and full like a southern drawl. Called out by the lure of seed collecting, I stood at the edge of a fallow, overgrown ďŹ eld bordered by rank elder and poke, my plastic bucket in hand. I could already distinguish the dried tops of boneset and blue vervain among the grasses, draped over in places by the limp leaves of passionďŹ&#x201A;ower that promised green, wrinkled fruits that would pop underfoot once I waded in. The twin pods of dogbane were snarled at knee level, and the whole array was lorded over

A RT WO R K BY SKYFOX

by the billowing heads of gravelroot in island-like patches and more abundant at the lower, presumably damper margins of the field. The early summer grasses would have been made into hay, disallowing the later development of this diverse array of interesting medicinal weeds except for the foresight of my friend, Charles, who had decided to let it go unharvested in anticipation of my coming. When he told me how he’d saved the field for me, I looked him in the eyes and said, “Charles, that’s about the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.” Now, feeling a bit sheepish that I had so little time to make use of such a large gift, I nonetheless made ready to collect what I could. Before I harvest seeds, I like to rest my mind and have a little one-sided conversation with the plants, which usually goes something like, “Greetings plants. I love you! I have come to spread your seeds here in this place, and to take them away for myself and for other people to grow for plant medicine. Thanks for this. I will take care of you…” This time, as I began to quiet my mind, I felt a thrill up my spine and cocked my head to the side to listen. As if conducted into chorus by the tentative chirrup of a single cricket, the plants began to sing to me in high, ecstatic voices. A slow, inexorable smile interrupted the path of sweat that worked its way from under my hatband down into my tee shirt. The plants were singing all right, now in full force, the boneset and the blue vervain, the passionflower and the gravel root, even the baying voice of the dogbane joining in. The words of the song came to me freely. “Glee!” they sang. “Glee, glee, glee! We are happy here in this place. We were not cut for hay. Now we can spread our seeds. This would not have happened except for you! Glee, glee, glee!” My smile accompanied me as I broke from this beautiful reverie and began to shake the seed heads into the bucket. It has remained as an inner smile ever since. I know that all beings are looking for happiness, the plants included. I remain convinced that when we assist plants to survive and prosper, they willingly and consciously reciprocate by giving us their bodies, their oxygen and their medicine so that we can live well on this earth.

This piece was ﬁrst printed in the Fall 2000 issue of United Plant Savers’ Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation. United Plant Savers is a non-proﬁt education corporation dedicated to preserving native medicinal plants.

Born to the

catch Eneke-Alish making tobacco prayer ties to put in her doorway. “I’ve always done this, wherever Grandfather and I resided,” she says. “It’s for protection and prayers of health and happiness. Abundance. Blessings for anyone who comes into the home.” “Grandfather” is what everyone calls her late husband, Grandfather Semu Huaute, who passed on November 11, 2004 at 96 years of age. Huaute is his Chumash medicine name, which means “Brave Wise Like Owl.” He was of the Owl Clan, his Cahuilla mother’s people. Grandfather was born near Santa Barbara in 1908 in “the painted cave,” and on that stormy night an Old Woman appeared. She walked into the cave, dry, though the rain was pounding, helped with the delivery and foretold his story. Semu was born to be a leader, a healer, a communicator with the ancestors. I met Grandfather and Eneke-Alish six years ago, at a spiritual gathering near Santa Barbara. I was there, in part, to receive a healing treatment from him, a Genetic Cord Cutting Ceremony. I had heard that it could break the chain of dysfunction that often flows through families, generation after generation. Alienation and emotional abuse had run deep in my clan. I figured it might help. Before my cord cutting ceremony, I spoke with Grandfather for about a half hour. Eneke-Alish was there, but in the background. As he and I spoke of the conquest of the virgin Americas and of the brutality of Christianity’s crucifix, she puttered about preparing items for the ceremony.

Medicine SHARON BROWN

I remember babbling about how I’d never been able to comprehend the genocidal destruction of the Native Americans. My own family tree includes early French Huguenots, who crossed the Appalachians in the 1700s to settle the lands of Kentucky and Tennessee. They were involved in the eradication of the native peoples there, which culminated in the Trail of Tears. Admitting my horror and sadness to this man felt something like a confessional, and gave voice to feelings of anonymous guilt from deep inside. Eneke-Alish let us know when it was time to begin. Although Grandfather performed the ceremony, it was she who kept things moving, and who sometimes had to remind the 93-year-old of what came next. When it was over, what did I feel? Did the ceremony “work?” Recognizing a spiritual shift is not always easy for the mind. Spirit is subtle, and noticing a shift in the heart can be as difﬁcult as sensing our own heart beat. It’s there, all the time, but we rarely feel it. In the years that have passed since my cord cutting, there is no question that I’ve changed. My path has become more spiritual, and my family relationships have improved, in many ways dramatically. Did the cord cutting ceremony have anything at all to do with it? I wasn’t sure, until I spent some time with Eneke-Alish. Eneke-Alish was born in Covina, CA. Her family tree features stout Anglo names like Trinkle, Pyke and Beadle. Eneke-Alish, who was given her name, which means “Daughter of the Sun,” by Grandfather, has the pale skin and russet hair of an Irish woman. She hasn’t a drop of Native American in her blood. When she was a young girl, her father bought two and a half acres in the heights outside of Los Fuentes, over the mountains from Whittier. In those mountains, Eneke-Alish began to recognize her deep connection to spirit. “I could smell the ocean even though we were miles away. It was absolutely magical to me. When I was about ten or eleven, I used to go and pray on a rock. I could communicate with nature. I would talk to the wind. I loved all of these things and so that’s where I prayed for the people.”

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“I held myself back so much because I felt that I would Eneke-Alish pours out story after story of her experiences in the mountains. About the huge lizard (“a grandma or grandpa”) that always appeared when she was troubled to cheer her up. About staying up there so late in the day that her mother threatened to restrict her. About how the buzzards would start circling above her to signal it was time to go, so she was never punished.

have to be born Native American to do the work.”

“Once I thought, ‘Gee, I’ll go a little bit further. Maybe I can find another place to do my prayers’. I looked and saw an old man with a walking stick, Levis, a straw hat and a long white beard. He was dark and his hair was gray. He was facing the south, but he turned his head and held his walking stick and looked. I wasn’t afraid. I thought, ‘There’s no one who lives up here, no cabins. I have a feeling if I go toward him he’ll disappear, so I think he’s telling me not to go that way, to return where I always go’.” “I felt that he was protecting me. So I looked at him and mentally told him, ‘Okay and thank you’. Then I turned and didn’t look back.” Years later, Grandfather Semu told her she’d seen the Old Man in the Mountain, an Old One who comes to guide and help. Eneke-Alish moved to Northern California in the late ‘60s. “I went out into the world to find out why I was different. I couldn’t handle the imbalance between nature and the people. It was so bad, I felt like going into the desert and lying down to feed a buzzard. At least that would be constructive.” Almost a year later, she met Semu at San Antonio de Padua, a mission near King City, CA. It was 1970, and across North America the American Indian Movement was stirring. Grandfather Semu and a group of Natives and non-Natives had set up camp at the mission to ask for the return of the land. When the Spanish missionaries first entered the Chumash lands, they built on the sacred sites and enslaved the people. They told the natives that when they became civilized, they could have their land back. Semu had come to claim that right. “The priest was being spunky with Grandfather,” says Eneke-Alish, who watched events unfold. “He said, ‘What makes you think you’re civilized?’ and Semu said, ‘Well, we have TB, we have diabetes,’ and he started naming the diseases. Then he said, ‘I think we’re civilized.’” “The priest had this big cross,” she continues. “The priests used to try to scare the Indians, Semu’s people, by putting the cross to their faces. So he did this. So Grandpa took his big owl walking stick and put it in the priest’s face. There was nothing that Semu was afraid of.” When Eneke-Alish first saw Semu, she “recognized him. I felt like I was going home.” Semu himself had dreamed of Eneke-Alish riding a bike on the streets of San Francisco. She joined him in his travels, first to Washington State where he was helping the Nisqually tribe regain fishing rights, and later into Canada. While in Canada, Semu kept Eneke-Alish close to him at all times. Although she braided her hair and had brown eyes and might have passed for an Indian since many Iroquois have fair skin, this was the time of AIM, and Wounded Knee, a time when non-Natives could not always be trusted.

Indeed, Eneke-Alish was not even sure that she could trust herself—her spiritual self. She was not an Indian. How could she possibly be part of a Native spiritual tradition? She doubted her spiritual connections, even though those connections sustained her, because she was born white.

However, she was surrounded by signs that pointed to a path of Native wisdom. One night, as she and Semu were camping in a special oak grove at Big Sur’s Point 16, Grandfather looked up, surprised. “I didn’t say anything. I figured that it was spirit. Then he was okay, and then all of a sudden he looked up again. Later, he told me there was a hunting party of Chumash in the spirit world heading out to the point. They saw us. One other time he had been on his ancestral land with someone who was not native and the spirits chased them out of the territory. He didn’t know if this was going to happen again. The hunting party left, then came back with an Old One. The Old One spoke to them in their language and told Grandfather that they accepted me.” Later, Semu told Eneke-Alish that the Old One had not said that she was accepted, but that she was “the chosen one.” “I’m kind of embarrassed to use the words ‘the chosen one’,” she quickly continues. “‘Chosen one’ meant that I was born for him, to do what we had to do. That I was born with the medicine.” Eneke-Alish lived with Semu at Red Wind, an inter-tribal, inter-racial community on 160 acres at Black Mountain near San Luis Obispo, CA. Seed money for the center came as a result of Semu’s meetings with the priest at Mission San Antonio Padua. The center was dedicated to preserving the cultural and religious heritage of the Chumash and other American Indians. During her years of spiritual questing, Eneke-Alish worked hard at Red Wind, hauling water from the well, cooking for many people, grinding the herbs that Grandfather used for his medicine. Helping the non-profit succeed filled her days. There were many idyllic moments of dancing by the campfire (“caressing Mother Earth with our feet”) and making crafts in community, but there were also the politics and jealousies that arise when seventy human beings cohabit. Eneke-Alish spent eight years preparing to become Semu’s wife and to use her medicine. It was, as she says, a teaching of endurance. “I just lived each day and learned. I went on fasts. I had visions. I let the energy in spirit work, let it move in its own time.” She would often see fire balls fly through the air as Grandfather practiced his medicine. Grandfather awakened her gifts. “All of these things came very easily. I understood everything. I wasn’t afraid.” Even as her gifts began to manifest, she had doubts and wrestled with her role as a spiritual “go-between.” “I was so hard on myself. I didn’t feel worthy. I held myself back so much because I felt that I would have to be born Native American to do the work.” But during these times, Semu would tell her that many non-Indian people have Indian spirits. He explained that if an Indian spirit, an Old One, was present when a baby drew its first breath, the spirit would enter the baby. While she never considered herself an apprentice or even that she was even being “trained,” her spiritual development included many of the tasks

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and trials that had tested Semu himself during his youth, including vision quests, learning the sacred language, making a journey with Talvachi (the sacred Chumash name for jimsonweed) and her ﬁnal test, branding. A brand is a shield. If anything bad “comes in” to someone protected by this shield, it will bounce off. A few months prior to her test, Grandfather had shown Eneke-Alish a breathing technique, without explaining its purpose. One day, she thought about the technique and began to practice it. Suddenly she could not move or feel her body. Although she wasn’t afraid, she thought, “Semu, wherever you are, you’d better get over here because I don’t know what’s going on.” Semu came trotting in and said, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.” He took a sacred pipestone pipe, lit it, and branded her face, which she felt though it did not bother her.

not been burned with his things. A lot of his medicine was there, protected. It took thirty years of preparation, but, at last, she was doing her work. “When I do the genetic cord cutting, Grandfather does it through me,” she says. “And I am completely protected. The ﬁrst cord cutting was very powerful. I was there to do the work and the medicine took over, like putting on a cloak. And after the ceremony was over, I became myself again.” She speaks of kleptomaniacs and alcoholics who have found profound healing from the ceremony. “They just don’t have the genetic memory to do it anymore. And in this cutting of the genetic memory, it frees up the ancestors. It frees them—they don’t have to be imprisoned or used anymore.”

It was her ﬁnal test. Not much later, she married Semu in a traditional Chumash ceremony. She was his once-in-a-lifetime traditional bride.

I ponder this. Could a cord cutting inadvertently remove a life lesson? Could it cause harm by erasing an opportunity for a needed kick in the pants? Does it erase karma?

As I listen to Eneke-Alish’s words, I’m struck by the contrast between her conﬁdence and her fear. Clearly she was born with perceptive gifts, and her knowledge of spiritual connection is unshakable. At the same time, taking ownership of these gifts and the responsibility (and attention) they bring has been a challenge.

Eneke-Alish points out the difference between genetic memory and the soul. Cord cutting affects only the genetic memory—painful, hurtful or disharmonious patterns that arose from one’s genetic lineage, the family tree. The soul, the spirit, may not have come from the genetic lineage. The soul is not affected.

Eneke Alish believes it’s the lack of Grandmothers that leads to this kind of spiritual disconnection. “Grandfather always said that the power is with the women, the mothers, the clan mothers,” she says. “In the old times, the Grandmothers had the knowledge.” But at Red Wind and among her spiritual circle it was just Grandfather. He couldn’t sit down with her and talk to her about her gifts the way a Grandmother would.

Eneke-Alish says the cord cutting ceremony is helping to rebalance the earth. “We were all tribal once,” she says. “We were all connected to Mother Earth. But whenever things got out of hand, she would cleanse herself. This is why all of this is so important.” The cord cutting ceremony, by breaking chains of greed, destruction or domination, frees the ancestors and the living to move on to more balanced ways of being. Assumably, so Mother Earth doesn’t have to shake us all out like a bad case of dandruff.

In his final years, Grandfather and other elders told Eneke-Alish that she would need to continue his medicine after he passed on. Indeed, she had been setting up and prompting him during the cord cuttings and wedding ceremonies for years. But she resisted. “I had forgotten all the tests and everything I had been through,” she says. Instead, she focused on her fear of both failure, and success. Late in 2004, Grandfather passed over. He and his things were cremated. “I was very deep in emotion and stillness,” she says. Ceremonially, she took some unfinished wooden snakes that Grandfather had been working on, finished the carving and decorated them, then sent them to friends as a way of honoring him. But she was filled with loss and fear. She prayed for guidance continuously. And it appeared when Semu contacted a psychic healer with messages for Eneke-Alish. “To a Western mind, this could appear fantastical, unbelievable,” she says. “So many people think this is voodoo, a cult—but this is not an Ouija board. When I communicate with Grandfather, I can hear him through her. And I get confirmation, visions, and the spirit lights over here.” “I went through a lot of ceremony once Grandfather made contact with me,” she continues. “When he and the elders started communicating with me, they had to shape me up. I had to let go of my fears and accept my role as a healer. Moments of clarity and reality and getting myself out of the illusions wasn’t easy. We cling and find comfort in the illusion in that way, when it’s destruction, really. But I got determined. I knew I had to start conducting the Genetic Cord Cutting Ceremony.” Grandfather instructed her how to create the fetishes and tools she would need for the ceremony. She discovered two old chests of his that had

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“That’s why there are so many non-Native people that understand,” she says. “Grandfather, and his father, and the ancestors are helping my own people.” Meaning, perhaps, that there is a purpose in her being a “white” medicine woman after all. The conversation with Eneke-Alish energizes me. While we speak, she comments that she sees blue spirit lights; she says that Grandfather is with us. I listen deeply with my heart, and my mind stops equating spiritual connection with linear clarity. I forget about wanting proof that my own cord cutting had “worked” and simply take her words as she presents them. The next morning, I slowly wake from a dream... I’m standing at the base of a huge tree bathed in bright golden light. It has a massive, towering crown. All around me, people are crafting little shelters out of wooden pallets. These cubicles circle the trunk, and stack atop each other, like temporary housing made from the ﬂesh of the tree itself... like a family tree... And we’re pouring clean water over the tree, rubbing it over the trunk with our hands, as a fair-skinned, dark-haired woman sings melodically... “Lavage! Lavage! Lavage!” It takes my mind a minute to remember the deﬁnition of “lavage,” a word I never remember using. It’s French. And it means, “therapeutic cleansing.”

Visit Eneke-Alish’s website www.grandfathersemu.com or email her at taybla@sbcglobal.net

raspberries remember where we come from. denizens of the deep forest, prickly brambles lulled and awakened by thin mountain streams, trickling and gushing and turning to ice again, ice over a secret world of ﬂowing blue under cover of snow and silence. birds in the morning. deer in the afternoon sunlight, dappled and dazzling, nuzzling ripe red globes with gentle pink tongues. ravens at night. eating a raspberry is eating the forest, the marmots and aspen and lichen on stone, wild ginger, sharp stars on a vast winter night. rubies of rabbit blood and rose-hips in frost. eating a raspberry is touching tongues with deer.

Photograph © Colin Stitt. Image from BigStockPhoto.com.

—Nora Harms

Divine Nourishment

Mary Lane

Encounter with the Owl

He asked me to accept his fate, as he was gracefully trying to do before I showed up.

very morning I drive to work on a beautiful back road that winds through pristine rolling hills spotted with majestic oak trees alongside megalithic rocks. I see scenes that make my heart sing. Sometimes I see a community of black and white cows huddled closely together in the shade of one lone ancient tree. Sometimes I see a green ďŹ eld speckled with a family of bouncing deer. Other times I see wild gobbling turkeys scrambling across the road, or a red-tailed hawk soaring above my car. I feel so grateful that I have this commute instead of a journey through freeway gridlock with nothing to gaze at but the exhaust pipes of the cars in front of me. One early morning, as I embraced this visual feast, I drove upon a scene that made me come to a screeching halt. On the side of the road there was a huge barn owl with a broken wing. Crows surrounded and attacked it. Without thinking, I got out of my car and walked toward the owl, determined to save it. It scrambled up into a nearby tree with its broken wing, using its last ounce of life force. It hung upside down in the tree just out of reach with a fence between us. The crows gave a wider birth, but continued to circle the owl and me, squawking impatiently. The owl just hung there staring at me. I had never been that close to one before. His deep brown eyes were as big as mine. We stared at one another, motionless. I stood there for a long time. His gaze penetrated me. We both knew that as soon as I left, the crows would kill him. He asked me to accept his fate, as he was gracefully trying to do before I showed up. I had an instant of hating the crows, but they had no way of being anything other than crows. Something happened in my heart in that moment. I had to accept this scene without interfering.

Divine Nourishment

For many years I have focused on deepening my relationship with Mother Nature. I have lived by her wisdom from season to season, honoring her, spending time with her, looking to her as my teacher. There is always more to learn and accept. I saw the perfect natural order in her design. The crows’ attack on the owl was just her way of keeping balance and order in her home. I just didn’t like the way it looked. This side of Mother Nature has never been easy for me to accept.

suffers from being raised in abusive ways, in ways that destroy our environment. And little thought is given to the ancient agreements that governed the relationships between humans and plants. Most of us in Western Culture have completely lost touch with where our food comes from. We are ignorant of the true costs, the soil depletion and oil consumption that it takes to put that food on our plate. This is true of our vegetables as well as our meat.

There is a growing awareness of the need to honor our Mother Earth and live in right relationship with her according to her rules. Just as the owl and crow had their agreement about who was food for another on that day, humans have the same agreement with the animal kingdom. However, in the past, more people honored and respected that exchange.

I have learned that no diet will nourish body and spirit if it is not grounded in a deep understanding, respect and gratitude for the exchange and sacriﬁce that these conscious beings offer up. Balance cannot be maintained without embracing our Mother’s rules in their entirety. This seems to be difﬁcult for many to accept, just as it was for me when I witnessed the encounter between the owl and crows. However, this is a necessary step toward restoring balance and harmony in our Mother’s home.

Times have changed from when we lived in the awareness of this natural order, of the life and death balance. Today animals are treated with abuse and disregard, as many people chow down with a sense of entitlement, without gratitude, without reverence for the exchange taking place. The intense appetite for meat has created extensive damage to the environment, including the deforestation of the most fertile medicinal terrain in the world. There are many problems caused by the raising and housing of huge numbers of animals for food. Animals are forced to eat diets that are unnatural to them and to live lives that do not support their essential natures. This results in illness and the need for medication.

Recipe There are many small steps that each of us can take to help restore balance in our relationships with plants, animals and Mother Nature. Imagine what would happen if: • we only ate food that was grown or raised in a conscious, respectful way in or near our community.

Some people have taken to eating only animals that have been humanely raised. Some are raising and caring for the animals themselves, stewarding them through lives that include honor, respect, and gratitude for the animal’s sacriﬁce. Many people have quit eating meat in honor of our planet and the life of the animals.

• we bought food from the local farmers’ markets, joined a community-supported farm, joined a food coop run by our neighbors to feed our community.

It’s easy to get up on a pulpit and condemn anyone who eats meat to be an unconscious heathen. But when I witness the way nature has set up the balance in her home, I wonder. She obviously created some animals who were meat eaters and others who were not. They all interconnect in a way that allows life to continue. The issue is not whether we are meant to eat meat, but whether we have gone so far from a balanced respectful relationship that we need to give up meat in order to reverse the damage to our planet and repair our relationships with the animals.

• we slowed down and took the time to tend the earth in our own small environment, raising a few fruits and vegetables with love and care, or ﬂowers for their beauty and herbs for medicine. Perhaps we might start with our own small piece of earth, whether a window box in the middle of the city, a patch of dirt around a small patio, a yard in a suburb, a mountaintop in a wilderness. Or we could join or create a community garden with neighbors.

But does it stop there? After my training in Plant Spirit Medicine deepened my relationship with the plant kingdom, I became aware that we don’t have any better relationship with the plants than we do with the animals. Many people who have chosen not to eat meat for their own health and the health of the planet are unaware that the plant kingdom

• we raised or bought meat knowing that the animal nourishing our body and spirit was treated with respect.

Imagine what it would feel like to walk through our day with gratitude, acceptance and honoring the rules our Mother has given us to live by. Imagine it, create it and allow yourself to be nourished by it. Mary Lane lives in the Asheville area of North Carolina. She provides cooking classes and private consultations to support people to align with the wisdom of nature through the sacred art of nourishing.

Sacred Fire

Number Four

The bluefish were jumping, throwing themselves out of the water with wild abandon. Two men, who had waited patiently all day with their fishing rods at the ready, ran down to the beach and cast towards the leaping fish. Within minutes, it seemed, a large fish was lying on the sand, tossed there by one of the fishermen. I stood there, with the rest of the onlookers, astounded by the speed of the events, and captivated by the writhing fish. An 8-year-old girl and I began to talk about how much we would like it if the fisherman would kill the fish, not leave it there. When asked, he said it would die eventually, but he lifted it and tossed it further up the beach, as if somehow that would handle our concerns. Feeling helpless, we crept closer and I remembered I had tobacco in my pocket. I took some and put it rather self-consciously on the fish and muttered my thanks for its sacrifice. My small companion was immediately on me. Had I thrown sand at the poor fish? I told her I had given the fish tobacco and tried feebly to explain. Later, her mother came up to me and said, “My daughter has been telling me that you gave the fish something as it was dying—did she say tobacco?” Uh-oh. It isn’t easy being Fringe. Later, as I reflected back on the afternoon, I was reminded of something our people have forgotten: the fish offer themselves willingly, and in return, they must be honored for their great sacrifice. That’s Divine Exchange. So we give tobacco or some other kind of recognized offering. We don’t grieve for the fish’s passing; we feel gratitude for its great gift. The next afternoon, the 8-year-old came looking for me and I spent the rest of the day with her family. As we packed up at the end of the day, her mother asked if she was planning to take a feather she’d found, that lay at our feet. She said, (almost belligerently!), “What about the tobacco?” I gave her some with huge joy in my heart. Later, her mother asked me where she could purchase more tobacco. All I could think of was how grateful I was for the bluefish that gave its life so that this young girl could touch my heart.

Who Sang You Awake, Father Sun? JONATHAN MERRITT

n the mountain village, the shaman wakes to the bray of donkeys and roosters crowing. Before sunrise, he leaves his bed, goes outside and raises his feathers to the east. “Come, Father Sun,” he sings. “The roosters and donkeys are calling. The eagle spreads his wings and the rabbits stir in their nests. Come, Father Sun. Look, the trees are anxious, stretching their leaves to glimpse you. Come, Father Sun. The mountain is waiting; the rivers are waiting. The sea, she yearns for you.” As the sun swells in the eastern sky, he shakes his feathers and sings, “Thank you, Grandfather Sun. Thank you for rising in your magnificence, for painting your colors on the horizon, for shining on the corn and the deer and on these people.” It’s a quaint picture, a man rising in the morning to stand among the livestock and wave some feathers—as if his prayers could have any effect on the thermonuclear reactions that generate the sun’s heat; as if the force of gravity that binds the planets to the sun would lose its effect without his feathers. We all know, and he knows, that the sun is immensely powerful and that the forces that govern its activities are greater still—though the language he uses to describe those forces, doesn’t quite jibe with the jargon of physics. For him, its the work of the Elemental and Pre-elemental Gods. And, while thousands of men and women in villages everywhere around the globe repeat this scene each morning so that the sun is welcomed every moment of its journey (except for the unpopulated expanse of the oceans), we loll in our beds, secure in our belief that the mechanics of the universe will grind on without us. The idea that everything just works due to the mechanical nature of being is a dangerous one. Sure, the sun ‘s been burning for billions of years, racing in its own orbit, pulling along the earth for so much time, sparking in the grasses and leaves, animating the insects and animals, shining down on the just and unjust longer than anyone has demanded justice. But that doesn’t mean that we can assume its presence, that we can ignore our relationship and obligation to the sun. Everything depends on the relationships between beings. And though human beings may seem insignificant in relation to the sun, we still have to do our part. Think of it in terms of the body—the digestive enzyme may seem insignificant in the vast biochemistry of the body, but it still plays an important role. Or consider the sperm, that insignificant little zygote.

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It’s a perspective really—this consciousness that the world is alive, that it relates to us at all times on every level of being. Sun, moon, sky, cloud, wind, water, stone, soil, fungus, root, stem, branch, leaf, flower, fruit, seed—all these are in relationship to us. And so it is with animals—those who allow us to eat them and those we must avoid; and with people—family, friends, lovers, teachers and adversaries. All of it is in relationship with us. What we do, how we relate, makes all the difference in the quality and richness of the relationship. The sun doesn’t ask for much—some recognition, a little gratitude. And, probably, if we ignore the sun, it will keep shining on the land—as it did long before humans arrived. But things will not go so well for us. If we look at the problems that have developed over the last century and increasingly over the last few years—specifically the increase in skin cancers related to sun exposure—we see that things are not going so well in regard to our relationship with the sun. A scientist might argue that this is due to the hole in the ozone layer that was caused by the use of chlorofluorocarbons in such things as hairspray, refrigerators and air conditioners. But what are these? Hairsprays to keep the hair from falling in the heat of the sun, refrigerators to protect food and air conditioners to mollify the effect of the sun’s heat—while these may provide excellent benefits in comfort and style, they are an utter insult to the being we call Sun. Further, to protect ourselves from the sun, we smear our skin with sunblock, even as we spend millions on bronzing our skin with artificial light in tanning salons. And think of how little time we spend outside these days—our short walks from our airconditioned homes to our cars—and the cars themselves throwing off gasses that block the sun’s rays—to our offices where we sit in artificial light all day, often without so much as a window to let us look out at the movement of the sun across the world. We shop in completely enclosed malls. Only the fancy ones have so much as an atrium that lets in a little light and even that light is filtered and cleverly dispersed so that the sun’s power is softened. On weekends, perhaps, we might engage in sun worship. But instead of moving about in the sunlight, animated by the sun’s generous energy, we lie beside pools or on beaches, drinking sweet liqueurs and absorbing the heat until we are sodden. Rarely, if ever, do we remember and give thanks for the marvelous work the sun does as it beams life into every living thing.

And, probably, if we ignore the sun, it will keep shining on the land—as it did long before humans arrived. But things will not go so well for us. The village shaman, though, recognizes the beauty and inﬁnite grace of the sun. He knows that his life, the life of all the plants and animals and the life of his people are utterly dependent on the sun’s arrival, the pure generosity of its relentless work. He doesn’t forget his obligation, passed down to him through countless generations, to awaken the sun, to welcome it, to give thanks. And so, every morning, no matter whether it’s rainy or cold, he hears the roosters and donkeys calling him to his place. He rises, goes into the dark, raises his feathers and sings until the light spreads across the land.

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Sacred Fire

My song of place W

here I live the river is always near. Its song moves in me. In the black night of forest forms, the river’s sound shimmers in the air with the cicada, rattling from tree to tree through the forest to the forest beyond, connecting all that is wild under the stars. Where I live, rocks older than any human footprint are the roots and presence of the land. I live in a forest of oak, hickory, maple, fern and mountain laurel, whose ancestors also grew up out of this ground. To touch the oak here is to know tens of thousands of years of this place. It is to press into the rippling shadow within and feel the breeze of ancient trees moving hundreds of thousands of years ago in these woods. These plants do not just grow here; this place is made of their lineages. The deer can be found in these woods, traveling the same trails followed by the ancient herds back in the mists of time. The brook trout dwell in this river and feel the vibration of footsteps in the water as they did when tribes once fished at these shores. Grasping this soil I am holding rock, rains, bones, sun, plant bodies and stories of this land; the great mountains, eruptions from long ago, glacial runoff, the blood of animals, and thirty thousand years of leaves slowly gliding and spiraling to the ground. Ancient stories and ancestral energies, like the course of the river, flow through the earth to the beginning of this place. Here I dream and the wind touches me as it moves the life of the forest. Here I live the seasons of my heart. Here, is home. I come home from a world numb to place, no longer hearing its song or singing along. I come home from a world that dismantles the connections of the land. I come home from a world that no longer feels the soft forest floor under its feet. I come home from a paved, frantic world, set and reduced to the ticking of a clock. I return to a place beyond modern time. I live in two worlds but one is true in my core. I know timethrough shifting shadows on the ground and over the water, through the heat off the rocks, the growth of the trout, and the

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temperature of the deep swimming holes. I know time from the plants and their journey from bud to leaf to bloom to seed to fall. Time journeys from the skunk cabbage to the peepers and the rains they call; on to the bloodroot, fresh beaver chew and the arrival of the birds; to the trout lilies, fawns and mountain laurels; to the sun long in the sky, the serviceberries and the rising of the fireflies; to the milkweed with the butterflies and dragonflies; to lush green leaves glowing and rimmed in golden light, spider webs appearing and disappearing like portals in time; to the days of the giant ostrich fern rising and falling like great wings in the breeze; to the crickets and cicadas, bees and wasps and the crayfish propelling under rocks; to the towering turk’s cap lilies, blueberries ripening; to the black gum turning, nights lengthening and acorns dropping; to the asters, deer rutting, and the forest burning with color; on to the great shedding, the wind and bare trees; then to the witch hazel flowers; to the frost, frozen ground, blazing stars, quiet stillness, warm fires, and snow. I once came upon an arrowhead along this river. My body warmed with my fingers around it and then all time fell away. I knew something then—that the blood and mortar and beating heart of me are a part of this land melding into the sun, moss and pools as all life here does. I sought to ask the ancestors thick in the air how do I honor this place? Then in moments of dunking into the river and feeling its current come into me, everything fades to this: here is the spirit; here is place.

SHARON COHEN

Number Four

Sacred Fire

The

Lost People

THOM HARTMANN On the last weekend of September, 1998, Spirit of Change magazine sponsored the Harvest Gathering, near Mount Washington, Massachusetts. At this gathering, Native American elders met with several hundred White, Black, Asian, and mixed-race immigrants to this continent. (Most were White.) On the last day of the Harvest Gathering, a Council was held—essentially a talking circle—by the Native, Black, and White elders. Author Thom Hartmann was invited to participate in the circle as a White elder, but time was short and not all persons had an opportunity to speak…including Thom. Here are the words he intended to share with the Native Americans and others gathered in the Council circle, reprinted with his permission.

peaking to the Native American elders here in this circle and outside of it, I thank you very, very much for sharing with all of us immigrants to this land your traditional ways. Your teachings are vitally important for all humans on this planet, and I hope you have an opportunity to share them with more and more people over the coming years. You carry a message which could heal our world. During your talks and during the council talk, I heard several comments and truths which brought up in me strong feelings about Whites and Native Americans. These include the issues surrounding how “in” it is now to be sharing Native wisdom, the curious phenomena of White “Indian wannabes,” and the tragic ripping-off of your (and other aboriginal peoples’) cultures and ways by some White writers, lecturers and self-appointed “medicine men and women.” These are vital issues, and you brought them out into the open in a particularly forceful and compassionate way. For this I am very grateful. However, when you so correctly pointed out that Whites can never truly understand the ways of—and reasons for—all the aspects of Native spirituality, I realized in that moment that the reverse is also true. Native people often have an incomplete understanding of what it is to have grown up White in this White culture. And out of this incomplete understanding come a number of myths. Many of these myths are held by Whites (and Blacks, Hispanics, Orientals, and other non-European peoples living on this continent) as much as Natives, so I feel it is important to share a new understanding of these myths with you and others.

The Lost People As your wise Native American elders here have shared, you know your roots. You know the languages of your greatgrandmothers, from before the White Europeans arrived and murdered your people and stole their lands. You know the customs of your people that go back a thousand years, five thousand years, some of you to the time of the original settlement of this area, just as the glaciers receded, nine thousand years ago, and perhaps even tens of thousands of years before that. The ways of your people have been passed down all that time. Even during times of severe oppression, some of your wise elders were looking seven generations ahead and preserving the language, wisdom, teachings, and ways of your people. These included the eras when the U.S. Government made it illegal for your people to use their language or practice their religion, and your children were stolen from their families and sent to Christianchurch-run boarding schools. They extended through the times of mass murders

and when your ancestors were forcibly moved from place to place and torn from their homelands. Through all this and more, your elders preserved many of your ways and knowings. For this we must all be grateful. You are grateful, of course, because these wise ancestors and elders saw you in the future and held this for you, keeping your culture alive even in the darkest night of the coldest winter of oppression and genocide. My people must learn to be grateful because in the wisdom of your elders and the ways of your culture may lie the seeds of a survivable future, a way out of the mess we Whites have made of this world. Please imagine something with me for a moment. It may be painful, but it is only an imagination, and there is a deep lesson in it. While it does not pardon or make acceptable what Whites have done, it does help us understand why and how it happened. And, even more important, it also explains why today so many Whites are interested in your ways, some even desperate to become like you or one of you. Please follow this short story for a moment. Imagine that the White Europeans had been successful in their original plan. Imagine that the Christian Whites had successfully forced all of your ancestors to abandon their language and speak only English, Spanish, or French. Imagine that all of the ceremonies had been lost, so that today not even one single living person still remembers them or could teach them. Imagine that the White Christians from Europe had succeeded in ferreting out all the sacred places of your people and destroying every one, building churches or stores or houses over them, covering every last one with dirt or pavement or rocks, totally wiping them all out. Imagine that every written record of your people—both those written by your own people themselves (from cave paintings to those records kept by people such as the Hopi who had both oral and written traditions)—was found through a most rigorous and thorough effort by the Church and destroyed. None remained. Even the records of your ways which were recorded by the early Whites when they first came and observed your people were burned by the Church, because those records were “demonic,” according to the teachings of the Churches of Europe. Even Whites today could not read the voices of the first Whites to meet your people hundreds of years ago. If this had happened, there would not be a single Native American on this Turtle Island continent who spoke any one of the more than 400 still-living Native languages. All these languages would be dead and forgotten. There would not be a single Native who remembered that tobacco was a sacred plant, or the significance of the Four Directions.

Nobody would know how to sew a moccasin or prepare a spirit (sweat) lodge—or even know what it was. No elders would be alive who could tell stories or remember even five words of the Original Languages. Among all the “Red” people of North America, not even one single person would know what tribe he or she originally came from—all they know was that they have dark skin and black hair, and that they are a people different from the Whites from Europe. But different how? And why? In this imagination, nobody alive today knows. Nobody knows what the sacred ways of two hundred years ago were, or a thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago. Nobody remembers what plants can be eaten and which are to be avoided. Nobody remembers that the Earth is sacred, or where are located the most holy and the most dangerous places. Nobody knows how to call to the Great Spirit, the Creator, or even that there is one. Imagine if this—the dream and best effort of the White conquerors from Europe—was fulfilled. Imagine if there was not even one single Native American alive in the entire world who could speak a single sentence in Cree or Ojibwa or Apache or Lakota. Imagine if every Native American alive today, when thinking back to his or her ancestors and past, could only imagine a black-and-white world where people were mute and their ceremonies were mysterious and probably useless and primitive, having no meaning…and if they did have meaning, it didn’t matter anyway because it was now lost. A total forgetting of the past—all the ways and languages and memories and stories—destroyed by the people who had conquered your people. Every bit of your culture was burned in the fire of this conquest, and all was lost. All of your people knew the history of Greece and Rome and England, but nothing of the Cherokee or Dene or Iroquois people. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be? How empty and alone and frightened you and your people would feel? How easily they could be turned into slaves and robots by the dominators? How disconnected they would feel from the Earth and from each other? And how this disconnection could lead them to accept obscene behavior like wars and personal violence and the fouling of waters and air and soil as “normal?” Perhaps they would even celebrate this fouling in the name of “progress,” because they would have no memory of the Old Ways, no realization of the meaning or consequences of these actions.

Imagine if your people were no longer a people, no longer nations and tribes and clans, but only frightened individuals of a different race than their conquerors, speaking only the language of their conquerors, sharing only the memories of their conquerors, and living only to serve the richest of those conquerors. This is an almost unimaginable picture. The worst fate that could befall any people. The most horrific crime humans can commit against other humans. And this is what happened a few thousand years ago to my people, to the Whites of Europe, who for 70,000 years prior to that had lived tribally just as your elders did. It was done first by the Celts, who conquered and consolidated most of the tribal people of Europe 3000 years ago. It was then done more thoroughly by Julius Caesar of the pre-Christian Romans 2000 years ago. And it was absolutely finished by the iron-fisted “Christian” Romans 1000 years ago as their new Church sought out and destroyed all the ancient places, banned the old rituals, and tortured and murdered people who practiced the ancient European tribal religions. They even converted all alphabets to the Roman alphabet, and forced European people to change their holy days, calendars, and even the date (the year 1 or “beginning of time”) to one that marked the beginning of the Roman Christian Empire’s history. This massive and thorough stripping of their identity and ancient ways—this “great forgetting,” as the Australian Aborigines refer to it—is why my people often behave as if they are “insane.” It is why they are disrespectful of our Mother the Earth and the life on Her. It is why so many of my people want to be like you and your people, to the point of dressing in buckskin and carrying medicine pouches and building sweat lodges from California to Maine to Germany. It is why we have hundreds of “odd” religions and paths, and why so many of my people flit from Hinduism to Buddhism to Paganism like a butterfly going from flower to flower: they have no roots, no tribe, no elders, no path of their own. All were systematically destroyed by the Celts, the Romans, and then the Roman Catholics. Whites in America and Europe—and Blacks who were brought to America as slaves and have since lost their ancient ways and languages—are a people bereft. They are alone and isolated from their ancient clans and tribes. Broken apart from the Earth, they are unable to reclaim their ancient languages, practices, and medicine…because these are gone, totally destroyed, even to the last traces.

Sacred Fire

Number Four

The Lost People

For over a thousand years, the soldiers and inquisitors of the Holy Roman Catholic Church spread across Europe and destroyed the native people’s sacred sites, forbade them to practice their religions, and hunted down and killed those who spoke the Old Languages or practiced the healing or ancient arts. Stones with written histories on them were smashed to dust. Ancient temples and libraries were torn down or set aﬁre, and Roman churches were built atop them. The few elders who tried to preserve the Old Ways were called “witches” and “pagans” and “heathens,” and were imprisoned, tortured, hung, beheaded, impaled, or burned alive. Their sacred groves of trees were burned, and if their children went into the forest to pray they were arrested and executed. God was taken from the natural world and put into the box of a church, and Nature was no longer regarded as sacred but, instead, as evil and dangerous, something to be subdued and dominated. For a thousand years—continuously—the conquerors of the Roman Ofﬁcial (Catholic) Church did this to the tribal people of Europe. As a result, today not a single European remembers the Old Ways or can speak the Ancient Languages. Not a single elder is left who knows of sacred sites, healing plants, or how to pronounce the names of his ancestors’ gods. None remember the time—which the archeological record indicates was probably at least twenty thousand years long, and perhaps as much as seventy thousand years long—when tribes lived peacefully and harmoniously in much of what we now call Europe. None remember the ways of the tribes, their ceremonies, their rituals of courtship, marriage, birth, death, healing, bringing rain, speaking to the plants and animals and stones of our Mother the Earth. Not one single person alive still carries this knowledge. All is lost but a few words, the dates and names of some holidays,

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and a few simple concepts that have been stripped of their original context. For example, my father’s parents came here from Norway during World War I. They spoke Norwegian, but it was not the true language of their ancestors. That language was written with a different alphabet, which is referred to today as Runic; nobody alive remembers how to pronounce the runes, or their original meanings. Adolf Hitler adopted one of the ancient Norwegian runes—what is believed to be the symbol of lightning and the god of lightning—for his most elite troops. The double lightning-bolts looked like an SS, so they were called the SS, but it was really a rune. So lost are the old ways of my grandmother’s people that even the Nazis felt free to steal and reinvent them in any way they pleased. When we track it back, it seems likely that it all began—the entire worldwide 5000-year-long orgy of genocide and cultural destruction—in a part of the Middle East known then as Ur and now called Iraq. It started with a man named Gilgamesh, or one of his ancestors, in an area now called Baghdad. The first conquerors—the first people to rise up and discard the Great Law—were not the “White Men” of Europe. They were, instead, the people of the region where the Middle East meets northern Africa. (Which is why this area is referred to as the “Cradle of [our] Civilization.”) Their direct descendant is not the Pope or the Queen of England or King of Spain, but a man named Saddam Hussein. And so my people—who in the lands of Europe three thousand years ago lived the Red Road in harmony with the world, as your people did four hundred years ago—were stripped of their tribes, of their languages, of their ways, of their medicine, of their rituals, of their elders. And it was done by a people who, themselves, had had it done to them… by another people who had had it done to them—all the way back to the first “eruption of human insanity”: the City/State

An Apache friend of mine once said, “Why don’t the White people just learn to be satisﬁed with their own culture and leave us and ours alone?” of Ur (now called Baghdad) and its king, Gilgamesh or his predecessor, 5000 to 7000 years ago. And what each of these collapsed civilizations forced on the people they conquered—to replace the old Earth-connected, Creator-centered path—was a religion that was organized in the same way the dominator kingdoms were. At the top was one or more angry gods, who demanded that the people work for them and offer their crops, children, and lives to them. Under the god(s) were the bureaucrats who could deliver people’s requests to the deity: these bureaucrats (called “priests”) also had to be paid by the people, and, until recently, held the absolute power of life or death over the people (and still claim the power to bestow or withhold “eternal” life or death). And then, of course, at the bottom were the people, groaning and oppressed by their Church. They were victims, and so they became victimizers. Because of this my people crave their ancient ways—which are lost forever. They organize “pagan” festivals and try to reinvent the rituals, and some have become quite elaborate. Many people over the past few hundred years have claimed to have “received” the knowledge from the elders of our tribes, most through “channeling” or other abstract means, and there are tantalizing fragments in the archeological record. But nobody really knows the Old Ways with the level of conﬁdence

and certainty that Native Americans know the ways of your great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. Native American, Australian Aboriginal, African, Indigenous South American, and ancient Asian cultures were not “invented” by some clever man. Nobody one day woke up and said, “I just got an idea! We should live this way by these rules and practice our rituals in this fashion!” Instead, the ways of Native cultures took tens of thousands of years of trial-and-error to come to where they are. The Native American ways of life—the hundreds of different tribes and different languages and different paths—are each the result of millions of tiny experiments. It’s safe to assume that many of those experiments, in the early years, didn’t work out, and many tribes died out or vanished. Settlements, encampments, and even entire pueblo cities that were abandoned thousands of years ago stand in mute testimony to this process. Yet some tribal ways worked, and the ways that worked were taught from grandmother to mother to daughter and on down through the generations. Thousands of threads of knowledge—from ways to interact with others, to ways to hunt and eat, to ways to worship—were spun together into the yarn of culture, and the weaving of these yarns of tribal cultures formed the fabric of the Native American Nations. Humans have been on this planet for millions of years, and fully modern humans—people like you and me—for at least 200,000 years. If they had not found ways to live that worked, we would not be here. The tribal and clan ways of life are the pinnacle of a multi-million-year evolutionary process that kept the human race in delicate and appropriate balance with the animal and plant and mineral kingdoms. Until, of course, Gilgamesh and his friends created the first successful dominator culture, five to seven thousand years ago. This new cultural experiment rose up, wiped out three million years of trial-and-error learning, and replaced it with theft and fear and violence. And then it collapsed, because it wasn’t based on a solid foundation of knowledge, understanding, love, compassion, and respect for all life. But it was soon replaced by another insane attempt at domination, and then another, and another—each extending the reach of the dominators, the Younger Cultures, a bit further out of the Middle East and toward Europe. Until eventually it reached the Celtic people, who first conquered the tribal peoples of Europe, and then were replaced by the Romans, and then replaced by the Roman Official Church. (Keep in mind that the Pope signed the original and earliest land deeds giving Europeans “ownership” of the lands of North and South America. And all but two of the “modern European” languages are based on the official language of Rome—Latin.) As

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the Church faded in power during a time we call the Renaissance, it was replaced by the European and then American corporate kingdoms, which rule most of the world today.

And yet they yearn for freedom and crave the wisdom of cooperative tribal ways, which is now only found in the few remaining ancient and native cultures.

All are dominators, Younger Cultures. All are cultural experiments. None have three-million-years of trial-and-error experience, and the little experience these Younger dominator Cultures do have shows that they have always eventually selfdestructed, usually within 200 to 1000 years.

So, our wise elders, I thank you for sharing your wisdom and culture with my White sisters and brothers. As you say, they cannot become Indians. They cannot learn the language and do the ceremonies of your people. They will never get it right: it is not in their blood or their upbringing, and they lack the elders to correct them and keep them on the Pollen Path. But they can—and must—learn from you, both from your teachings and the examples of your lives.

And so, my Native American friends and elders, I ask that you understand the cultural poverty of my kin, and forgive them their ignorance. When Whites climbed under the rope around the sacred circle, they did so because their experimental Younger Culture has little concept of the importance of ritual…and so it is a doomed culture. When they interrupted and were not respectful to the Grandmothers, it is because their culture has no concept of wise elders…and so it is a doomed culture. When they imitate you and pretend they understand the ways of Native Americans, it is because they come from a world in which there are no elders who remember the Great Law, the Right Way To Live, or who walk in the Spirit Path day by day as an ordinary part of everyday life…and so they are trying to escape from their doomed culture. An Apache friend of mine once said, “Why don’t the White people just learn to be satisﬁed with their own culture and leave us and ours alone?” The unfortunate answer is that White people and those they subsumed have no true and functional culture, no way of life capable of sustaining humans for tens of thousands of years. All they have is an experiment, which all evidence shows is doomed to fail, and—in fact—is failing spectacularly all around us even at this moment…and threatening to take much of the rest of the life on the planet with it. And so those few who have in their hearts the understanding of the loss of their ancestors’ ways 2000 years ago, the loss of their native cultures, are empty and longing and in pain. They are afﬂicted with a sickness of the spirit, the same as if half their blood had left their bodies. They are slaves to the corporate dominators—the modern-day kings of the world—and they intuitively know they are slaves.

This is their great challenge, their great mission, and their urgent quest: to save the future by transforming the present dominant world culture. They must create their own way, their own tribes, their own clans, and their own rituals and laws. To do this, they must learn the true history of what was done to their people over the past three thousand years, and try to recover what they can of their original culture. They must learn from other cultures who still have ten-thousand-year-long memories—like yours—and use those lessons about what works and what doesn’t to live in harmony with the Earth and other peoples. As they acquire this wisdom, they may be able to rebuild the foundations and assumptions of “modern” culture into something that will work and is sustainable. And they must do it soon, because they are the people of the culture with thousands of atomic bombs, millions of deadly microbes, billions of lethal weapons. For the first time in the five billion years of the life of Mother Earth, one culture has the power to lay waste the entire planet...by accident. With your help and suggestions, those who listened to your wise words may find a way to turn our Younger Culture toward the Older Wisdom and Ways which have kept humans—and other species—alive and thriving on this planet for millions of years. They may bring us through this peril and into the light of a new day. God help us if they fail. “The Lost People” was originally published in Spirit of Change magazine, November 1998, and copyrighted by Thom Hartmann, 1998, 2001.

Reconnecting with the Earth

edited by Rita Lynn Kesler

Land and Trust DOUGLAS STEVENSON

hese two words resonate deep within us. Our connection to land literally grounds us in our connection to the All, reminding us daily of the purity of nature and the divine. The word “trust” relates to one of our most important human values, representing a security that can only be found through an open heart. Used together, the words “land trust” represent people who have dedicated their energies as stewards of the land for the greater good of present and future generations.

up waves of

When I was a child, my parents moved from a crowded subdivision to the edge of the suburbs. Behind our home were acres of woods and the ﬁelds of small family farms. I spent my summers building forts, collecting tadpoles and cooling off in our creek.

emotion, images

Today those farms are gone, the ﬁelds now ﬁlled with apartments and subdivisions. The creek has disappeared.

and insight about

As I watched these changes, I began to question the direction of society and its ﬂagrant disregard for the Earth. A great number of my generation embraced materialism, settling into lives with no relationship to the land. In my search for a deeper understanding of spiritual values, I came to see the cities as an illusion created by man. I felt the path to a peaceful heart would be visible in the purity of the natural world.

Each day opened

myself and the land at home.

In the 70’s, my wife and I left the city to build our life at the end of a dirt road in Tennessee, determined to raise our children with the freedom to be found in a natural environment. We left the supposed security of Middle America to create community, joined by many with similar dreams. Forming an alliance, we purchased 1000 acres, and our community, “The Farm,” became real.

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The uninhabited forest stretched for many miles in all directions. Just beyond the border of our property was a paradise of cascading streams and gentle waterfalls, a living sanctuary. These woodlands had been privately owned by rural families for generations. In the 80’s, things rapidly changed. The recession placed immense financial pressures on family farms and one by one they were acquired by huge timber companies. Hundreds of thousands of acres around us left private ownership and were swallowed up by the multinationals. In the early 90’s, the farmers across the road announced that their 650 acres were for sale, nearly all of it mature hardwoods. Unless a better offer came soon, they would be forced to sell to a timber company. A few of us sprang into action. Neighbors were called, and we devised a plan to purchase this land. It was divided into parcels and we located buyers among friends both near and far, who wished to see this forest remain intact. One hundred acres within the land were inaccessible and could only be reached by hiking. This piece was set aside and became the foundation property for the new nonprofit corporation, a land trust. We called it Swan Conservation Trust, named after the creek that ran through the 1100 acre neighboring property that it was our dream to acquire. This piece had gone up for sale in the 80’s and was one of the first to be purchased by a timber company. Over the next two decades, we were forced to watch portions of it disappear as various tracts were clearcut.

celebration. In his memory, I committed my life to saving this forest from devastation for children of future generations. The following spring, I traveled to the west coast to gain support from friends who had a connection to this land. Now I realize this journey was actually a vision quest, a time in which I sought healing, affirmation, and a communion with spirit. At times, I felt lost and alone. Over and over, I found myself being blessed by friends through sacred ceremony and touch. Each day opened up waves of emotion, images and insight about myself and the land at home. In a vision, I saw before me the confluence where our two creeks joined together. This became the point of a sacred heart that surrounded the land and held it in its protective embrace. I felt the injustice of man’s artificial boundaries and the land called out to me to maintain its integrity. In the center of this sacred heart was our community, a spiritual refuge whose creation and future survival were dependent on the wall of protection created by the unbroken forest around it. Native peoples lived and hunted here for untold generations. Along the ridgelines are mysterious rock mounds. Legends of the area tell of Indian people who remained in this valley after the Trail of Tears. It became their protector, a place where they could live out their days close to nature and in touch with their culture.

At first I was just a supporter, donating a few dollars each month. Then I became a volunteer. After a couple of years, I joined the board of directors, and began an odyssey that has changed my life. Negotiations for the Swan Creek land continued for over ten years, our efforts constantly thwarted by nameless corporate bean counters in offices thousands of miles away. We watched as land values soared, until one day I found myself in our local bank, signing a huge contract. At last the land was in our hands, but it also meant the nonprofit would be faced with raising $5000 a month for 15 years. It was daunting. Only a few months before, I had lost my grandson, Julian, to a tiny bug called E-coli. He was only two years old, yet he could identify the names of numerous birds by their song alone. I had watched as he explored these same forests and streams in wide-eyed wonder and felt his growing connection to the land. I was devastated when he died. In my grief, I returned to the only place I could find solace, this woodland sanctuary that had always been there for me. As I lingered along its creeks and in its hidden valleys, I felt his spirit and the spirit of the land. I felt the energy of countless others who had traveled to this sacred space for healing and

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When I returned home, I hiked along the borders of the new property and came upon a waterfall. This one had a drop of over six feet and a strong ﬂow, its rivulets dividing into a trinity. I realized that few people in recent years had ever visited this waterfall, tucked away between two ridges with no path leading to it. This was a gift. It became a special place where I could go to ﬁnd solitude and healing. I came to realize that this was a Sacred Space. Throughout my life, as I have spent time in the forest, I have come to recognize that certain locations seem to hold a kind of power. I am drawn to these power spots again and again. Each time they perform an invisible service, often serving as the touchstone for various transitions in my life.

In my heart I felt that we had been brought to this land at a time when our fragile culture needed protection and nurturing. The land had provided for us the isolation necessary to establish our ways and pass them on to our children, with the voice of nature as teacher of peace and compassion. Now it was the land that was in danger and I felt its call resonating in my soul. While still on the west coast, I found myself on a high mountain overlooking the Paciﬁc. Below me were centuries old redwoods, existing only because someone else long ago had said “No!” to the saw blade’s thirst. A voice inside me rose. “Trees of the West. I come to you from the Trees of the East. My brothers and sisters are dying. We ask for your blessing from the Valley of the Black Swan, where we make our stand.” I went down into the redwoods, spending the day in solitude and contemplation. I felt the enormity and gravity of the task before me. I understood that success would require long-term commitment and sacriﬁce. I could not turn back. I thought about my hikes back home where I would often encounter the presence of a great blue heron. With its sleek body and long legs, accented by a six-foot wingspan, it had the appearance of a prehistoric creature. As I sat in mediation, eyes closed, I saw before me once again the silhouette of this majestic creature and was jolted into the present. THIS was the guardian spirit of our land! Through endless cycles of birth and death and rebirth, it had lived in this valley for thousands of years. In fact, pioneers used to call it a black swan.

The waterfall came to symbolize the spirit of my grandson, its special sparkle and continual flow representing the lessons he taught me about unconditional love. Julian Falls has given me a greater understanding of the meaning of sanctuary. It has become my most intimate sacred space. That was three years ago. Since then, I have poured my heart into this project, reaching out to others who also feel a connection to land and nature in the core of their beings. I cannot save all trees, but I know I can make a difference here. I am reminded daily that it is only through many people working together that an effort of such magnitude can be accomplished. I am grateful and made humble. I believe sacred spaces serve to nurture our spirit. We honor and empower the sacred space when we give it value and it provides a place for us to put down roots, the bit of grounding that enables us to maintain our sanity. Find your sacred space wherever you are. It might be in a secluded corner of a park or under your favorite tree. Trust your intuition and discover what calls out to you. Then, go one step further. Learn about the land trust near you. Better yet, get involved. Land trusts are everywhere, with hundreds scattered across the world, each with the vital mission to preserve and protect the special places, the land, the water and all its creatures. Find your connection to the land and trust with an open heart. Nourish it. It will sustain you.

Rita Lynn Kesler, editor of “Reconnecting to the Earth,” is an environmental educator in North Carolina, where she guides children and adults to personal healing through reconnecting with the Earth.

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�east of the �mericas When we of European descent came to the Americas, we were starving. Our native lands had been cold and overcrowded, the soil depleted, the wealth controlled by very few. Facing the abundance of the New World, we didn’t think we could ever consume the riches of this land; that we could cut down the endless forests, empty the vast mountains and turn the plains with their bottomless topsoil into deserts. There was just so much.

Photograph © Les Byerley . Image from BigStockPhoto.com.

It was a giant smorgasbord. And once we licked one plate, having clear cut a forest or mined a mountain to dust, we moved on to the next course. The people watching, the remnant of those who had lived for countless years in harmonious balance with the land, were continually amazed. “Don’t you ever get full?” they asked. “Don’t you ever have enough?” The answer, of course, was and still is no. For us, children of impoverished ancestry, accumulation matters, consumption counts. But now the buffet is almost empty. The waiter is toting up the bill. Here he comes.

Finding the Path of Ancestral Wisdom

LEWIS MEHL-MADRONA

friend once described my grandmother, Hazel, as a good Christian woman, which she could play well. But, if you listened carefully to her Christianity, what slowly emerged was hardly Biblical. If you listened long enough, her Native spirituality would shine through. My grandmother was a chameleon, an expert at assimilation, which was the Cherokee approach to survival. She forged my identity through her constant telling of tales and teaching me about our “Indian ways.” My half-brothers and sisters had a very different experience. My mother moved north to Ohio to marry a German farmer--their father. I passively rode along, as children have to do. Luckily for me, my grandparents also came. I spent many happy moments with them. They provided an escape from my strict and unforgiving step-father. Hazel picked me to be her special pupil, to tell me the stories that her daughter eschewed, since being Indian or even part-Indian was definitely not “cool” in the 1960’s. Hazel hid most of my Native education from my mother. Archie, my step-grandfather, assisted in my indoctrination into indigenous knowledge. While I thought we were fishing, he taught me how to pray. I always wondered why we threw so many fish back, but I was having fun. I didn’t question what we were doing. I learned that no categorical separation of thought exists in indigenous knowledge. Amidst the scent of Archie’s cigars, I learned, as V. F. Cordova wrote in his essay, “Doing Native American Philosophy,” that “Native American thought should be approached as a complete, alternative explanation for the world and for human nature.” I learned to associate the smell of cigars with the coming of spirits and the saying of prayers. I tried to explain some of this to my half-brother, Jim, who hadn’t experienced the Indian side of our grandparents. He suffered from severe asthma, and could hardly leave the virtually hermetically-sealed room built for him and his suffering.

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Jim never set foot in the cigarenriched, Trenton apartment, as far as I could remember. He never got to hear Archie’s simple wisdom, a kind of Cherokee/Christian blend informed by his life experiences. Archie had grown up in an orphanage where he carried water for boarders at age five. He had been a boxer in Louisville and had worked as a mechanic in Mt. Vernon, Kentucky, where I was born. In Trenton, he gathered janitorial wisdom, in which he also trained me. The M’ikmak educator, Marie Battiste and her husband Sakej Henderson, who heads the aboriginal law program at the University of Saskatchewan and recently won an aboriginal achievement award for 2005 in Canada, wrote that “all knowledge flows from the same source: the relationships between a global flux that needs to be renewed, the people’s kinship with other living creatures that share the land, and the people’s kinship with the spirit world” (Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge. Purich Press, 2000). This is the learning environment in which my grandparents taught me their version of indigenous knowledge, their understanding of cosmology, spirituality, ethics, and politics. I learned to matter-of-factly talk to the spirit world, without unnecessary pomp or fanfare. I learned about my kinship with the frogs in the pond, the fish and the worms we used for bait, the foxes that came to see what we were doing, and the birds that took the remains of the fish after we cleaned them. I learned to seek answers in communion with the animals and the spirits.

At that time I was living a double life. I was an honors student, engaged in studying modern science and mathematics, doing experiments on the physics of splashes while still in high school. I continued to study science in college, majoring in biophysical chemistry, and running the world’s largest magnetic resonance spectrometer (which is now called MRI). I minored in Creative Writing to keep my humanities alive. But I never felt the need to integrate my Cherokee training into my scientiﬁc work until I reached medical school and encountered real people. I never really thought about the difference between scientiﬁc and indigenous knowledge until my pharmacology course at Stanford

University in 1973. I was there to become a doctor and to learn about healing. What I got instead, was a lecture by Gerald Reavens, famous for his promotion of the metabolic syndrome and other work on diabetes. He began by saying, “Boys, life is a relentless progression toward death, disease, and decay. The job of the physician is to slow the rate of decline.” That statement drove me to seek out indigenous knowledge about health and healing, because I sure didn’t like my introduction to conventional medical knowledge. I was inspired to ﬁnd Cherokee healers with whom to study in Northern California. What a difference between my weekend studies and my weekday life. During the weekends, I attended sweat lodge ceremonies, watched

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healings, and interacted with people who talked to spirits and mediated between the worlds. During the week, I studied pharmacology, attended ward rounds in neurosurgery, and observed at surgery. During my Urology rotation, I discovered four men, who had begun with only protein in the urine, a potentially benign finding, dying of iatrogenic causes (conditions caused by medical procedures). Each diagnostic test had resulted in complications, only to result in more diagnostic tests, and more complications. I learned that our medical obsession with finding the causes of illness is sometimes more dangerous than the illness itself. My weekend activities put this in perspective. I learned that healing was about spiritual relationships with the physical world and the spirit world. Two experiences brought this home for me. I watched Grandfather Kidla doctor a forty-year-old woman who had been in chronic pain for fourteen years. After a sweat lodge ceremony that she was unable to attend, he laid her out on the ground, and began to feather her with sage. He sang over her and asked the spirits to come into her body to doctor her. She seemed to shake and I felt as if I could see a darkness rising out of her body as his hands lifted up. He spat at it and told it to be gone. Then he lit tobacco and smoked his pipe. A sudden calmness descended over the room. For the first time in years, the woman stood up and walked freely without being stooped. While she required more work, more ceremonies and more doctoring, Grandfather had started her road to recovery in a way that had been impossible for her physicians. I saw Grandfather doctor another man in his mid-sixties who had had back pain for most of his life. Kidla prayed and then used his hands to pull the pain out of this gentleman. He blew upon him, feathered him, massaged him, rubbed his back, rotated and shook his hips and his arms, and almost walked upon him. The whole process took over two hours. The final prayer ended with the fragrant odor of Kidla’s smoking mixture going skyward. “Grandfather keeps my life worth living,” the man said. “Those doctors, all they want to do is give you pills. Those pills just make you sick and barely work anyway and then they get all worried that you’re turning into a drug addict with the medicine that they just gave you. It’s all nonsense. I figured that out years ago and keep up my time with Kidla, over here.”

I saw people who had been abandoned by conventional medicine getting better. I began to wonder if just spending time with people and praying would be more effective than writing prescriptions. Marie and Sakej also wrote that “indigenous ways of knowing share the following: (1) knowledge of and belief in unseen powers in the ecosystem; (2) knowledge that all things in the ecosystem are dependent upon each other; (3) knowledge that reality is structured according to most of the linguistic concepts by which indigenous people describe it; (4) knowledge that personal relationships reinforce the bond between persons, communities, and ecosystems; (5) knowledge that sacred traditions and persons who know these traditions are responsible for teaching “morals” and “ethics” to practitioners who are given responsibility for this specialized knowledge and its dissemination; and (6) knowledge that an extended kinship passes on teachings and social practices from generation to generation.” My grandparents successfully indoctrinated me into this knowledge. It was because of their teachings that I could never completely become engulfed by mainstream medicine. It was because of those weekends spent in their small apartment above a bar on the main street of Trenton, Ohio, that I am the person that I have become. It was at my grandmother’s funeral that I leveled with my brother. Jim had become an Army ofﬁcer. As we rode together in his car to the church, he ridiculed my life path. Before I vowed not to ride back with him, I said, “This identity of being an Indian, it’s what saved me. I would have died in childhood, if I hadn’t believed in that other world and the high esteem which Hazel and Archie placed in it.” Jim was the youngest and had never believed in the physical and verbal abuse I received from his father. He couldn’t remember the many times I ran away and hid in distant cities–-Boston, New York, Philadelphia. He couldn’t have known that the offerings to the ﬁre, the lighting of Archie’s long, thick cigar, his contented puffs, and the wisdom he had imparted while smoking, kept me alive. He couldn’t appreciate, either, how I had “broken in” his father for him. I have been criticized for my Indian identity from both sides. Like the Canadian writer, Thomas King, who is half Greek and half Cherokee, some have not found in me “the

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Indian they were looking for.” King was identified as Greek most of the time. I have been relegated to the ranks of theTurks or Albanians. My French friend, David Servan-Schreiber, once told me that I could never dress well enough to be considered French, so I should be content to be seen as Turkish. The most painful criticism of my Native identity came when I was at the University of Pittsburgh. I was the Medical Director of their Center for Complementary Medicine. We had a small Native community in Pittsburgh. It was a source of great pleasure for me when we gathered around the fire, told stories, sought counsel of each other, and looked to the spirits for wisdom. Those people knew how to tell stories. They knew how to talk in order to listen. They knew how to dispel my feelings of isolation, loneliness, and fear. Through my many years of study with Marilyn Youngbird, an Arikara-Hidatsu medicine woman, as well as other healers, I learned how to lead sweat lodge ceremonies, but I avoided leadership as often as possible. I preferred to let the oldest and wisest person present be in charge. These days, more often than I like to admit, I am the oldest and most knowledgeable person in some settings. This was the case in Pittsburgh. Though we often brought in healers and leaders from South Dakota and beyond, few people knew how to lead sweat lodges. So it was left to me to lead the ceremonies. Shortly after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did an article about me and the sweat lodge ceremony I had led for a cancer patient, I acquired my own personal “quackbuster.” Patrick Curry, my friendly enemy, came from an organization, known as Quackbusters, that sees anything but surgery and drugs as fraud. He attacked me in The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (the Quackbusters official journal), depicting my background and practices as bizarre. He also placed an article in the Post-Gazette that described my involvement in leading sweat lodges as cultish. At this same time, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine changed deans. Our new dean saw our Center for Complementary Medicine as a stain on the reputation of this fine University. My contract was not renewed and I was encouraged to look elsewhere. To their credit, the rabbinical, Protestant, and Catholic leadership of Pittsburgh came forth to support Native American

spirituality as bona fide. It was a spiritual knowledge system that did not require confirmation from European or Middle-Eastern derived religious practices. Our sweat lodges were as good as their synagogues and churches, they wrote. Nevertheless, I was destined to leave Pittsburgh. Today I direct aboriginal mental health services for Northern Medical Services at the University of Saskatchewan. I also teach Indigenous Knowledge (Political Science 302) and I’m developing a center for aboriginal health and healing. I am working harder than ever to protect and promote indigenous knowledge of mental health and physical healing as viable practices in the modern world. Contrary to the beliefs of my brother, the University of Pittsburgh, and the quackbusters of the world, Native knowledge is not quackery. It is growing and expanding, despite intense legal and religious efforts to obliterate it in both the United States and Canada. We are coming to recognize that indigenous cultures have knowledge that the modern world desperately needs. I am grateful to my grandparents for passing on the respect of this knowledge to me. I also give thanks to my worthy adversaries who pushed me in ways that forced me to strengthen my resolve, to pursue this knowledge and to promote its viability to mainstream medicine. I believe my grandparents are pleased, as are other spirits. I believe we are headed toward a future in which science and indigenous knowledge will co-exist and will inform each other. We will sit by the fire at night, stare upwards at the moon and the stars, and hear the songs of the spirits. In the daytime we will return to our laboratories, classrooms, and clinics. We will offer our tobacco to the spirits and stay informed by them, even as we interrogate the Universe with our scientific instruments.

I learned that our

medical obsession with ﬁnding the

causes of illness is sometimes more

dangerous than the illness itself.

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References Battiste M. Henderson S. Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Press, pp. 35-56. Cordova V. F. “Doing Native American Philosophy.” In O’Meara S, West D (eds.). From Our Eyes: Learning from Indigenous People. New York: Garamond, 1996, pp. 13-18.

Stacking Wood These are the bones the body of Fire is built upon— I think of this as I carry each piece and place it on the stack. They were trees, once, Were acorn, pinecone, nut— Something small and tight with possibility. Then some unfathomable lottery chose them, Offered them a chance to Awaken, crack, rise, become. The quartered rings of these logs number their many birthdays. I hold one and once again I say to myself, This once was tree Until the steel bit into the birthday book And transformed each acorn’s dream— Just wood, now.

The stack of wood might not have an opinion, Might not feel the absence of roots The way an amputee seeks his leg. They aren’t dreaming towards an impossible future Or longing for the past— Next time they flower it will be with flame. I’m the one who considers their history, Who imagines their great sacrifice on my behalf. Yet isn’t it true that they give themselves without complaint, So we can warm ourselves, gather with friends, And roast potatoes in their final ashes?

Photograph © Andreas Guskos. Image from BigStockPhoto.com.

I try and ﬁt the ash with the oak and birch. Nothing is exact. Each piece has its own shape and story. The stack grows. I can’t stop myself from strutting back and forth, Adding, ﬁtting, adding yet another. I’m marveling at my prowess. I’m thinking this builds character, could sell tickets, teach the masses a kind of “stacking” meditation. I’m forgetting about the wood’s generosity. I’m only thinking of me.

—Louise Berliner

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Naked Forest I do not go in to the forest to take pictures. A camera is not the thing to bring if you want to crawl on the forest ﬂoor, climb trees, crawl through swamps, or swim across lakes.

SHAUN LYNCH

One summer day I was not ashamed or afraid Me and my friends swam naked in the lake Take me back there someday. —The Push Stars Don’t pass a swamp and say, “Nice swamp.” Get into it. Sink down neck-deep in the primal ooze. Come face-to-face with frogs. Feel catﬁsh nuzzle your legs. Watch dragonﬂies dart in front of your eyes. —Tom Brown

his summer, I dropped my camera just as I climbed to the top of a giant white pine. I was holding the camera by its strap in my teeth, and I inadvertently relaxed my bite for a moment and watched helplessly as the camera tumbled downward through the pine branches. My method of carrying my camera may need to be explained. The most effective way to climb a tree is to use both hands and feet. When in the woods and trees in the summer, I am not often wearing clothes, so there are no pockets. I had already had a swim and rolled around in the mud, so holding it by the strap in my teeth seemed like a good option. When I climbed down from the treetops, I found my camera still working and in one piece, even though it had fallen about seventy feet. The camera had managed to land on a very soft, spongy area of forest ﬂoor. It would be

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a couple of weeks before I was going back to the city, so I was glad to recover a slightly damaged, but working camera. The camera is a tool for recording, a replaceable tool, a lens and a screen that can see accurately but differently than I do. The camera needs more light than my eyes to record the forest images. The camera also records what I would not normally be aware of— reflections and shadow-reflections and shadows. The camera has forced me to examine how I really see. In a sense, the camera shows me what is really there, rather than what I perceive to be there. Sometimes out in nature, I shift to a clear, calm state of mind. In this state, I am able to slow down and observe clearly the nature around me. The smallest piece of land becomes sublime, beautiful, ugly, strange and luminous. My mind quiets and I enter the present moment. I become one with the nature that surrounds me. The forest becomes new to me and I am in awe of what I now encounter. Sometimes I turn the camera back on myself. In doing so, I then become a part of and merge with the nature I am recording--me, physically, in the mud, in the swamps, on the forest floor or simply my reflection, now part of nature that I photograph. My body, spirit and mind meld into the surroundings. I then become the comfort, peace, joy and elation that I feel in the wild and the wild in me.

Naked Forest

The Lightness of Letting Go

BRANDON BAYS

PHOTO BY JAI KELLER

ften, we become attached to something or someone, because deep down we fear we wouldn’t be complete without it or her or him. We fear letting go into the presence of the unknown, and feel that we would be bereft, lost, alone without that outer possession, person, lifestyle. Indeed, some of us have become so identiﬁed with these things that we experience them as our actual identity. “I’m Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So... I’m a teacher, engineer, business person... I live in… My children are ... My lifestyle is… I, I, I... My, my, my...” Sometimes this identity can become so real for us that without it we fear there would be nothing or no one there. We fear non-existence. Even in the asking, “Who would I be without my car, job, money, husband, wife, family, proﬁle, material possessions, home, friends, contacts,” an internal scrambling for something to cling to arises. Because of this, it’s no wonder that attachment to outer things comes up as a common experience for nearly all of us. Then, when some spiritually arrogant youngster, posing as an all-knowing guru or enlightened sage, has the nerve to tell us that the key to Freedom lies in nonattachment, we feel indignant. “He’s a monk— what does he know about ‘true’ attachment. I’m not really a materialist,” you hear yourself say. “It’s natural to be attached to your loved ones, committed to your job. Of course it’s normal to feel attached to a home you put all your love and care into, to the knowledge you’ve spent years attaining. How could something as natural as valuing what you’ve made of yourself keep you from true freedom?” An Indian master of some material means said, “Let me tell you my secret. Every night, before I go to bed, I get down on my hands and knees, and I thank God with all my heart for all the blessings

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of the day. And then, with my whole being, I offer up to God everything I hold dear. I offer up my factories, my ashram, my homes. I offer up my students, my friends and even my beloved wife and precious children—in my mind’s eye I see the factories and ashram burnt down, I see my family and loved ones taken from me and resting in God’s arms. And when my prayer is ﬁnished, I go to sleep a poor man.” “When I wake up, I look around me to greet the fresh, new day, and I see God’s grace is still surrounding me. And, ﬂooded with gratitude, I get down on my knees and I thank God with all my heart that for one more day he has blessed me with these priceless gifts. I realize that I am only His caretaker. These gifts were never truly mine. They have only ever been on loan. Everything is on loan.” When I heard these words, they penetrated deeply. When I arrived home after the retreat, I made a vow that I would take this teaching into my life. Each night I would take a few moments to sincerely thank God for all the blessings of the day, and would offer up to grace all that was dear to me—our home, our family, our lifestyle, my marriage, and all our material wealth. And I found that each morning I arose with a heart full of gratitude, overwhelmed that I had been blessed for yet one more day. My relationships to the physical things around me began to take on a light, scintillating quality. I was fully aware that they really didn’t belong to me. They were a gift from grace, and my responsibility or dharma lay in cherishing them, honouring them. I became aware of the ephemeral nature of all things in life—how short a time we really have on this planet, and how lucky we are to have the bountiful blessings that surround us. I also began to view my relationships with people differently. My relationship with my daughter felt extremely precious and I viewed it as a profound blessing, and I felt an even deeper honouring take place in my marriage. In caring for the things around me, a paradox unfolded in my life. With the profound recognition that everything was on loan and a blessing to be cherished, there was also the realization that part of the gift was to pass on to others the blessings that had been given so graciously to me. I began to notice that the material things in my life were able to come and go gracefully. I loved the things dearly, yet felt completely neutral and unattached in their leave-taking. It really became a rich but light relationship with the outer things in my life. After a while, it became clear there was no ownership abiding anywhere, just life dancing in a vaster context of grace.

I faced nonattachment personally when I happened to be in New York City for work. I received a phone call from a close friend in California. Our family’s home had burned down in a huge forest fire. This house held everything that was materially dear to me — photographs, writing, mementos of family holidays, anniversary presents, inherited porcelain, beloved books, journals, and wedding pictures. Suddenly, eighteen years of accumulated memories were gone. We were financially devastated and materially wiped out. I remember so clearly hearing the news and waiting to feel a big thud in my guts—because the truth was that we would never be able to replace any of these priceless things. We’d lived a modest life to begin with, and we had no clue how we’d get back on our feet and put a roof over our heads again. I kept waiting and expecting to feel fear or anxiety over it all, but it didn’t manifest! Instead, I felt curiously light, as if some old karma had been lifted off my shoulders — as if a huge weight had fallen away. All of those things had only ever been on loan, and the gratitude and completion I was resting in felt completely untouched. This fire turned out to be just the beginning of a huge wave of leave-taking that occurred over the next two years. A year later, my marriage unexpectedly dissolved, my daughter and I became estranged, and the tax authorities took all our income and savings. Within those two years, everything I had come to know as my lifestyle fell away, and I was left utterly and literally without anything. And yet, this infinite grace that I was resting in continued to feel so abundant, so full. I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that the wholeness did not become less whole. It just became more openly apparent! Of course, the natural experience of grieving, loss, and hurt took place, but it happened within the vaster context of feeling already whole and completely complete. Over the years since that time, grace has blessed me with new relationships, a new and deeply rewarding marriage, an entirely new and successful business, bestselling books, and a lifestyle so full of grace that even in my dreams I could not have imagined it. And yet, I’m still aware that everything in my life is and always was on loan. I dance an even lighter relationship with the outer things in my life. The gratitude deepens, along with an even sharper recognition that life is truly fleeting and each precious drop must be savored. The extraordinary blessedness of everything has only become more poignant. Truly, nonattachment is an invitation to soar in complete freedom.

Adapted from the book, Freedom Is, by Brandon Bays. Copyright © 2006 by Manifest Abundance Unlimited. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com Number Four

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My Tio Louis

My Uncle Louis died this morning at his home in a small village in the Azore Islands (Norte Grande, Sao Jorge...as it were). His hair the white of magicians, he never married. His dog was called Formiga and his eyes were knowing, fraught with intensity, kind. He had the ability to make chairs dance just by looking at the chair from across the room. When he was a child, he would entertain the adults of the village with this “trick.” When he was older, he entertained the children with his magical chairs. He stopped making chairs dance when his mother passed away, something to give up as a way of remembering. I remember living with him one summer in that small village, in that little house with no hot water and no electricity. I remember Formiga. I remember my brother riding horses through the cobbled town square. I remember the late nights at Carlos Matos’ discotheque, siphoning gasoline from our cars to run the generator and keep the music playing. I remember my short-lived run as the fill-in goalkeeper for the village soccer team. I remember the homemade wine and old men playing cards at the clubhouse. I remember that mystical watering hole we hiked over volcanic rock to get to, the fish we caught and cooked over a fire on the dock. I remember Tio Louis, he of the dancing chairs.

Photograph © Rui Vale de Sousa. Image from BigStockPhoto.com.

MARK MATOS

Getting Right with Money

Mark Blessington

The Magic of Money

It can be hard to see how every job we are being asked to perform by Divine is “being on our path.”

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here’s something magical about money. We’ve all heard the stories or experienced them— money appearing just when it was needed most, a charitable act mysteriously followed by the offer of a new job, promotion or an inheritance. A friend of mine once joked that rather than give workshops on “Getting Right with Money,” I should give a workshop on “Getting Left with Money.” At first I just thought it was funny. Now I think he was really on to something. I’ve seen quite a few money miracles in the past few years. As I reflect on them, they often seem related to the earth element of Chinese medicine. In the five-element system, the earth element is in balance when we are open to giving and receiving nurturance and support. This principle, while fundamental, seems to get lost when it comes to money—we are so eager to receive it but so fearful about losing it. We are often taught that money is scarce, easy to lose, dangerous to carry, difficult to invest. So we count it, hoard it, hide it, guard it. From a Chinese perspective, if we create a dam by dumping earth in a stream, we hinder the flow of water. The same applies to money. If we let fear dominate our perspective on money, we effectively create a “money dam” and we hinder its flow in our lives. On the other hand, if we trust that Mother Earth will take care of us and feed us, and if we give no thought to her milk running dry, we open ourselves to her magic. So, if we are open to giving money away and we are not ruled by fears about losing it, we open ourselves to receiving it.

Think about what it takes to earn money. We give our precious time and talent away. In exchange, we receive money. We humans like to think that this exchange is strictly governed by things like employment agreements. From an energetic perspective, however, the earth element is really the more powerful force in play. A debt has been created by the act of freely giving away precious time and talent and the earth naturally acts to repay the debt. If you plant a seed and care for it properly, the earth will reward your effort by nourishing that seed and helping it grow and ﬂourish. If we focus exclusively on the micro level—business transactions from person to person or from person to organization—we might think that humans are in charge of all things economic. This is so unfortunate. We miss the macro-picture about Divine’s role in our economic lives. We lose awareness of how the act of giving precious time or money eventually leads to receiving. “Jim” only had a year and a half before he was totally broke. He had not been able to work for three and a half years due to chronic fatigue and dizziness. He applied for disability, but his old employer denied his case. He also applied for federal disability, but had been told that his application was not likely to yield anything for years. Jim’s prior career was in engineering. He’d had a great salary, but he never felt engineering was connected to who he was as a person. Jim suspected his engineering career was part of why he got sick. He became an engineer because it was a safe route to a high-paying job and it was what his parents wanted him to do. But his true passion had always been music. He just never made it a high priority. Jim desperately wanted to pursue his passion and start dedicating a big part of his life to music. He needed to buy an electric piano to make it happen. But how could he afford it? It would take a big chunk out of his nearly depleted savings. He decided to cast aside his fears and buy the piano of his dreams. Then an amazing thing happened—a few weeks later, Jim’s federal disability claim was approved and he started receiving disability beneﬁts checks. Jim had surrendered his fear of not having enough. This made “money magic” a possibility. He let himself fall into the arms of Mother Earth and was miraculously caught. Skeptics would say he was misinformed about how long the government takes to award a disability claim. They would say it was foolish to buy the piano or that the piano purchase had nothing to do with receiving the disability claim. Others

might feel bitter when reading Jim’s story, recalling a time they were in financial free fall and were not caught. They blame Divine and have chosen not to trust Her anymore. But these views are blind to the magic of money. Maybe what was really going on was that Jim had finally decided to make an over-due investment in his life—one that was aligned with his true purpose—and a miracle became possible. Earth energy calls us to accept the natural give-andtake with Divine: If we align with Divine’s plan, amazing things become possible. “Susan” only had a few weeks of financial life left. She was three months late on the rent. She had no money in savings. She had been skipping meals to help pay the bills for months. She was reluctant to ask for help from family and friends—she had done this too many times in the past. Her job required physical labor, but her back was killing her. She was sleeping on a couch because she had sold her bed to pay the bills. If she did not get a bed soon, she could become unable to work. To make matters worse, her car needed costly repairs and she could not do her job without a car. Not that long ago, Susan had built up quite a successful business. A “voice” had given her specific guidance on how to win business contracts and her track record was incredible. This voice had been guiding her since, as a little girl, her parents had all but abandoned her to care for her younger brother who was born with a devastating chronic illness. But recently, that voice had gone silent and her business sense was all but gone. Susan committed herself to an intense daily spiritual practice. She set aside time in the morning and evening to pray. Her prayers were desperate but honest. She expressed gratitude for what she had. She focused on how Divine forces had been integral in the lives of her ancestors. She meditated on how ancient peoples had prayed to the Divine for favorable weather so that their crops would grow and there would be abundant game. She asked to reconnect with Divine so that she could understand Divine’s role in her everyday financial life. She begged Divine to let abundance flow once again in her life. Then the miracles started. Two days later, Susan re-balanced her checking account and discovered enough money to buy a bed. She had balanced it to the penny only a week before and had no idea where the money came from. But there it was. Now she had enough money to buy a bed, so she ordered it. On her way to work the next day, her car started

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to die. She pulled into a repair shop and got an estimate but could only afford a quarter of it. Then a friend called. She just happened to know someone who did car repairs on the side. The next day she took her car to him and he fixed it for what she could afford. But while she was getting her car fixed the bed people tried and failed to deliver her bed. She called, and was told they were closed for the weekend. She explained her desperate situation and pleaded with them. They said they would make an exception and deliver her bed the next day even though they were closed. After several nights of sleeping on a bed, Susan started feeling more energy for work and started selling new accounts. She stopped skimping on meals. Within several months she had caught up on her rent, paid off all of her debts and had put aside $20,000 in savings. Susan made a sincere and profound shift in her spiritual life. She opened herself to remembering how Divine plays a role in prosperity and abundance. She pleaded for Divine help. She asked others for help. Somehow everything started to work out in ways that brought prosperity back into her life. A skeptic would say Susan’s praying had nothing to do with her newfound prosperity. She simply made a math mistake and then corrected it. It was just a coincidence that her friend called when she needed a cheap mechanic. Her new bed let her sleep better which in turn gave her more energy to do her work. Such explanations are rooted in a deep secular bias in our society where scientific, rational, logical and verifiable explanations are viewed as the only valid ones. But this perspective is ultimately fear-based. We have come to believe that the power to explain money matters will give us the power to control them and avoid unpleasant financial outcomes. Conversely, if we encounter financial occurrences that can’t be explained scientifically and logically, we have come to fear that financial disaster is right around the next corner. Our modern fear about prosperity and abundance is a relatively new thing. Earth energy urges us to remember how Divine has always cared for humans. When hunter-gatherers lived in harmony with Divine, their shamans told them when they were finished hunting in a particular place and they moved on. This way they never took more than the land graciously offered. The land they moved to was full of game, and when they returned, game was abundant again. Divine has not lost its willingness to provide for humans; humans have forgotten how Divine providence works. We

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have veered off track due to our lack of connection. As a result, we have forgotten how to let Divine guide us and give us prosperity and abundance. This is the magic of money that earth energy urges us to remember. When we surround ourselves with fear about money, or live in fear about what could happen to us financially, we shut ourselves off from the magic of money. If we take a job that provides a safe income but is not aligned with our true purpose in life, we get sick or have bad financial “luck.” On the other hand, when we follow Divine guidance about why we are here and what we are called to do, Divine takes care of us. It is important to remember that abundance is relative. Jim experienced abundance because he surrendered his fear, spent his money on a piano and then got his federal disability claim approved. He did not inherit a million dollars. Likewise, Susan recommitted herself to her spiritual practice and was able to buy a bed. The point is that “abundance and prosperity” doesn’t mean that we all have to be millionaires. And sometimes it takes devoted spiritual work just to recognize the state of abundance we already live in. It can be hard to see how every job we are being asked to perform by Divine is “being on our path.” Our path can start in humble ways like a hobby, a volunteer job or a part-time job. It can initially feel scary, irritating, hard or inconvenient. Moving from a life of economic fear and onto our path involves change, and change always carries an initial measure of pain. But, eventually, we start to experience strength. We all know when we are doing work that is on our path—we are wired for it. We feel alive, challenged and thrilled. We love our work. Pause and consider how beautiful this is: when we create and sustain relationships with Divine and use the gifts we were given, prosperity and abundance flows. Our ancestors have given each of us a set of gifts. When we use these gifts and put them to work in our daily lives, we set the flow in motion. We enjoy the benefits. And, there is a bonus: others benefit as well, because using our gifts always benefits others. So, stop fighting Divine. If you are using your gifts, you will be taken care of. In other words, if you want to get left with money, maybe you need to explore your relationship with Divine… rather than your relationship with your relatives. Formerly a consultant to large corporations, Mark Blessington currently counsels individuals and small businesses on how to get right with money. www.gettingrightwithmoney.com.

Remembering Connection SHERRY MORGAN

n August, 1997, I met a woman named Carolyn who would become my spiritual teacher for a time. Early on in our work together, she took me to a park nearby and gave me instructions for a prayer that I was to do every morning and every evening. The morning prayers were to be offered outside, before sunrise. At that time, I would give thanks to everything in nature I witnessed or could think of. At night I was to do the same before going to bed. Carolyn said that in the beginning, it would take me about ten minutes, but it would soon increase to twenty minutes, and then an hour, and more. She was right. I did as she instructed every morning and evening no matter how early, how late or how tired I was. Very soon, I spent a minimum of an hour twice a day doing nothing but giving thanks. I stood outside as early as 4:30 am in the summer and in every weather condition imaginable. I chose a location overlooking a river at the edge of a park a few blocks from where I lived. I witnessed and acknowledged changes in the landscape as the seasons came and went. I thanked the seasons themselves and the weather beings. I gave thanks to many trees, plants, animals, insects, stars, planets, etc. for the multitude of their gifts. I appreciated many things about the river, learned from the moon, Mother Earth, Father Sun and a host of others. In addition to appreciating the gifts of so many aspects of nature, I was moved by my own feelings of appreciation. Until that time, “thank you” was mostly about being polite. I was surprised to notice that nature was speaking back to me and inspiring me with ideas. I learned that only we humans wonder what we should be and what we should do. These prayers transformed my life. I was no longer someone consumed by negative thoughts, and for the ﬁrst time, I felt connected to life around me. This piece ﬁrst appeared in Around the Fire, the newsletter of the Sacred Fire Community, Volume 5, Number 1 in a slightly different form.

Photograph by Craig Sadler

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�� Fire circles are at the heart of the Sacred Fire Community. They offer a space for people of all paths and traditions to come together in community around the fire and be touched by its transformative energy as they share their hearts and lives. Fire Circles are offered in North America, Australia, and Europe. For a full listing, visit www.sacredfirecommunity.org

THE BROOKFIELD MASSACHUSETTS FIRE CIRCLE

Are you longing for a sense of community?

invites you to join us to share the warmth at our monthy community fires.

A place to share your heart with others in a sacred space where you can feel safe and heard?

We welcome you to join us at our monthly ﬁre!

Tim Simon and Gwen Broz at timgwen@charter.net or 508-867-9810 for dates and times of upcoming fire circles.

Community Fire Circle of Boiceville, NY Claire Franck at cfranckpsm@hvc.rr.com 845-657-2929 ��

THE COMMUNITY FIRE CIRCLE IN SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA

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“Fire moves you to a different place”

Come be with the fire, the ocean, and each other. For more information, contact: Peter and Sharon Brown 831-252-5530 p2b48@yahoo.com

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Notes from the Fire Animals and Disease All major (communicable) diseases in civilization have to do with a breakdown in the relationship between humans and animals. Originally an arrangement was made, as it was with certain plants, for humans to recognize and honor, with gratitude and sacred ritual, the animals that gave themselves for human use and consumption. However, when farmers began living in close proximity to animals, they began to ignore their relationships to the animals and the sacredness of the animals themselves. People began to believe that animals were just here for human benefit. As humans and animals crowded together, and the original agreements were violated, diseases came about. Small pox is a good example. It is not so much a matter of biological infection as it is a statement of the violation of the nature of the human and the animal. The broken relationships between humans and animals are an almost worldwide phenomenon. These days, most people have little concern for the exchange back to the animals. The renewal of those relationships will require dramatic changes. Part of the problem has to do with the large human population. Civilization has come to depend on the mass production of food from animals through factory farms and slaughterhouses. As things are, it is very difficult to honor any sense of right relationship. The easy solution would be to reduce the population. But asking for three billion volunteers to exit the world is a tall order. You need to start in a simpler fashion. You need to look at your relationships to the animals and plants that give their lives to you. When you consume plants, animals or both, you need to relate to the lives that have been sacrificed for your benefit. Even though the vast majority of harvest and slaughter is done far away and out of sight, you need to begin to identify the individuals you consume and honor them for their lives. Each of you, in your small ways, can start the process. Some people have tried to honor animals by eliminating them from their diets, but that doesn’t necessarily address the value of the original agreements. Besides, whether you consume the product or not, animals are still being maltreated and losing their lives in your names. People with a living connection to their ancestral wisdom spend a lot of time honoring the lives that are sacrificed to sustain them. They do this through honoring the gods and the ancient sacred relationships. Through ritual and prayer and their own sacrifices, they recognize the gifts of the individual animals and plants and constantly renew those relationships through their own living relationships with the gods.

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