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My heart broke Tuesday night
My heart broke Tuesday night, as I watched the unthinkable happen. Hillary Clinton, the most qualified presidential candidate ever to run in my lifetime, was defeated by a racist, sexist, mysoginist, bullying, pathological liar.
Of course, it didn’t help that Clinton was a woman.
Ironically, she won the popular vote, but our antiquated electoral-college system gave it to the other guy.What has happened to our country? What is happening in the world?I have always known the U.S. was a racist, sexist country, but never knew just how racist and sexist until now. Yet when there is an infection, a festering wound, the puss that comes out also leads the way to healing.Hopefully that is what will happen here. Seeing what is wrong in our country is the first step to fixing it.Continue reading
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The Sacred Art of Smudging: Sacred Smoke, Sacred Life
Many people have heard of “smudging,” and may even practice it, but there’s great value in knowing its history, and understanding the true sacredness of it.
There are three primary herbs used in the Native American tradition for smudging: sage, cedar and sweetgrass.
Sage is used to dispel negative energy.
Cedar is used for an overall blessing or to cleanse where there has been illness.
Sweetgrass draws in positive energy.
I have been taught the importance of burning only one herb at a time for smudging, otherwise you are giving mixed messages.
Sage is the most commonly used for cleansing the energy field of a person, place or thing, so I will focus on it for this post.
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What if our leaders would marry the land?
In ancient Ireland, the ceremony of crowning a king included a marriage ceremony in which the king would marry the land, or more accurately marry the Goddess of the land.
This marriage meant that the King swore to protect the land and the people, and be a caretaker of the earth. In return, when a King was favoured by the Goddess:
• he would rule with wisdom,
• the land would be fertile and prosperous,
• the country would always be victorious in war.
When that sacred contract was broken, the land was no longer fertile.
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Water is Sacred. Why are we poisoning it?
It is the first thing we use every morning, and the last thing we use every night.
It allows us to thrive, and plants, trees and our food to grow. It is essential to all life.
And yet we poison it at every turn:
It’s reported that at the Rio Olympics, swimmers need to ingest only three teaspoons of water to contract a virus. Rio de Janeiro waterways are contaminated with raw human sewage teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria.
14 billion pounds of garbage, mostly plastic, is dumped into the ocean each year, killing sea life. In January, 2016, thirteen sperm whales washed up dead in Germany, their stomachs full of plastic and auto parts.
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Summer Solstice: your new beginning
June 20, 2016 is an auspicious day: both the Summer Solstice and a Full Moon – it’s the first time these two events have coincided in 70 years!
The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the time to celebrate life in all its aspects.
It’s also the time to call in all the positive things you want in your life, and release what no longer serves you.
The Full Moon also brings in powerful energies for manifestation of what you want.
Read this post to learn how…
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The Truth About Cancer can save your life!
I’ve recently watched a documentary series that is brilliant – and can save your life. It’s called The Truth About Cancer.
In it, medical doctors and scientists present well-researched studies about the numerous holistic therapies that have successfully treated cancer – with or without chemotherapy.
We all have friends or family members who have succumbed to this disease. In fact, 21,000 people around the world die from cancer each day.
Why not get educated on the many alternative therapies that work and do not destroy the immune system the way chemotherapy does?
Or that can support the immune system while undergoing chemotherapy?
Did you know that cancer cells feed on sugar? Yet many cancer centers have bowls of candy available for their patients to eat. And oncologists rarely tell their patients to avoid sugar. How is that taking care of our health?
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Gay rights: let indigenous people lead the way
More and more, modern people are turning to indigenous teachings to learn a better way to live. Perhaps acceptance of gay rights could be the next lesson.
Here are a few things Native Americans have already contributed:
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“America the Beautiful”???
Have you ever wondered what the Native American perspective is of the song, “America the Beautiful?” Here is your chance to find out.
The song’s original lyrics sing the praises of the natural beauty of this continent, referring to it as wilderness. There is no mention of the original inhabitants.
My Native American friend, songwriter Tia Shawnté, wrote “Native Son” in 1990 for Mother Earth, set to the melody of “America the Beautiful.’
She has performed the song across the United States and the mayor of Austin, Texas declared February 4 as Tia Shawnté Day. She has just released a music video of the song, which you can watch below.
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What eagles can teach us about Courtship
There is always much to be learned from the animal world, even about courtship . . . and even from eagles.
Here’s what a Navajo elder says:
” … It amazes me that in the animal world, the female of every species chooses the fastest runner, the best hunter, the strongest fighter for her mate. Yet a woman, who is supposed to be Creator’s finest achievement, often will lay down with any and sometimes every man who comes her way. If anything is going to change for the better, we women must lead the way to higher moral ground. We have to begin teaching our daughters and sons that they have great worth and great responsibility.”
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Little told stories of medicine men and medicine women
The Creek Tribe had about as many medicine women as men and their knowledge and abilities went far beyond the healing arts.
In the old days, when our medicine people were not doctoring their patients or away on some quest, they would occasionally get together and take some time for themselves, meeting and drinking and kind of letting off steam.
I don’t know where they got the liquor because in those days it was illegal for Indians to drink but they managed it somehow. They didn’t do this all the time, just every now and then as it was one of their ways of staying connected with the earth and humanity.
My mother told me about how they would show off in front of one another while they were drinking. As a child she saw one instance where one of them took a whisky bottle, said a chant, blew on the bottle, physically twisted the glass in his hands and set it down — it was still glass, but it was as though it became something else in his hands, something which allowed itself to be re-shaped.
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The urban legend of the right to bear arms
The more something is repeated, even if untrue, the more it will be believed. This is particularly true of the belief that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives individuals the “right to bear arms.”
The Second Amendment, passed by Congress in 1789, consists of one poorly crafted sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
For 200 years, it was understood that the Second Amendment only gave an individual the right to bear arms within an organized militia.
This changed in the 1970s after a methodical political campaign by the National Rifle Association [NRA] led to its being reinterpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read on to understand how this came about.
According to the Huffington Post, last week’s mass shooting in Oregon was the 265th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2015. That’s not a typo.
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Bear Heart’s first job
Encouraging a child to earn their own money does more than teach them responsibility. It gives them the confidence to tackle anything. In this lovely excerpt from “The Wind Is My Mother,” Bear Heart tells the story of his first job: earning money planting cotton.
My dad taught me to hitch a team of horses to a wagon and a plow when I was eight years old and when I was ten he gave me two acres of land, saying, “If you want to plant something, go ahead. If you don’t plant anything, let it grow wild. Maybe some rabbits will come, feed upon the plant life and you can kill a rabbit to have something to eat. It’s your choice.”
Don’t let it sit idle, let it yield something — that’s what he was teaching me.
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Jimmy Carter on the number one human rights abuse
I just watched former President Jimmy Carter’s May 2015 TED talk entitled, “Why I believe the mistreatment of women is the number one human rights abuse.”
It’s riveting and enlightening [in a dark sort of way]. And it’s something we all need to know about if we are to correct these major abuses around the world. Just 16 minutes long, it’s well worth a watch.
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The History of the U.S. Constitution we weren’t taught in school
If you’re like me, I learned in grade school that the U.S. Constitution was based on ancient Greek democracy. Which was a creative stretch of the truth, since ancient Greece was not a democracy.
My research as to what children are taught today about the origin of our government is also disappointing.
Apparently the Founding Fathers simply created it out of thin air, or were influenced by European governments even though there was no democracy anywhere in Europe at that time.
THE TRUE HISTORY OF OUR CONSTITUTION
The truth is that the U.S. Constitution is modeled in both principle and form on the Great Law of Peace of the Native American tribe known as the Iroquois.
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Your surprising super power: inexperience!
Years ago I was at a party and walked into a room where a group of friends were playing on a small pool table. Curious, I asked what they were playing.
“Pocket billiards. Want to play?”
“Sure,” I replied, “what do I do?”
Pointing to the various pockets and handing me a cue, my friend said, “shoot this ball into this pocket and that ball into this other pocket,” etc., etc.
Much to my friends’ amazement, I did exactly that, because I was too naïve and inexperienced to know it was supposed to be hard!
So there was a super power I didn’t know I had.
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Reincarnation: how to know if you lived before
Do you believe in reincarnation?
Were you here before?
How will you know?
Reincarnation is the spiritual belief that when we leave our physical body, our souls eventually re-enter another physical body and we live another life. Possibly over and over.
But perhaps we don’t need to reenter a physical body to live again, because consciousness may very well survive death, the brain and the body!
The Roman poet Lucan summarizes the Celtic attitude to death as follows: “Death is the middle of a long life.”
I once asked my Muskogee Creek teacher, Bear Heart, if Native Americans believe in reincarnation.
This was his one word answer: “Yes.”
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Memorial Day: Earn it!
“James, earn this… earn it.” Dying words of Capt. John Miller to Private James Ryan in the film, Saving Private Ryan.
Officially, Memorial Day in the United States is a day for remembering and honoring all Americans who died in any war.
Unfortunately, Memorial Day weekend also marks the beginning of the summer holiday, with people focusing on shopping, family gatherings, picnics and sporting events. So we sometimes forget the real meaning of the Day.
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The Japanese Tea Ceremony – the sacred in every day life
I love to look for the sacred in every day life. And there may be no better example than the opportunity offered by mindfully drinking a simple cup of tea, as in the Japanese Tea Ceremony.
Whether gazing out the window, or going through the formality of a Japanese tea ceremony, there is tranquility and grace to be found there.
The Japanese are reputed to have the lowest rate of heart disease in the world. Diet is a big part of that, but also, 50% of Japanese drink three cups of green tea day!
Perhaps there’s something to learn from that and, in particular, how>/b> they drink tea.
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What’s in a name? The shameful case of the “Washington Redskins”
How is the “Washington Redskins” team name still in use in this day and age?
Most of us have heard the term, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?”
Did you ever believe it was true?
Not likely, because we all know words have power and can hurt.
In fact, there is ample evidence that negative thoughts, feelings and words, can be harmful to the body.
It follows that everyone, be it an individual or a national sports team, should be more conscious of their use of words.
THE HISTORY OF THE TERM “REDSKINS”
The Washington team has tried to defend its name choice by saying that the term “Redskins” honors Native Americans. But that view doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
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The Winter Solstice – why it’s the true new year
Winter Solstice is the day when light is reborn out of the darkness of winter. Our days start to become longer and lead us back to the beauty of spring and the warmth of summer, stretching towards their peak at the Summer Solstice.
Most ancient cultures celebrated this return of light and life with feasting, music, light and fire, and for many, it was the true beginning of the New Year.
It was so important to the pre-Celt ancients of Ireland that they spent over 30 years building a monument to the returning sun: Newgrange.
Older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza, it was designed so that on the Winter Solstice, the rising sun shines directly along the long passage into the inner chamber and for 17 minutes illuminates the chamber floor and the symbols etched on the back wall.
WHAT DID THE ANCIENTS KNOW THAT WE DON’T?