Bird Droppings July 7, 2010
We need a few cool days here and there

“All Sioux ceremonies end with the words, mitakuye oyasin, ‘all my relations’ meaning every living being on this Earth, every plant and animal, down to the smallest flower and tiniest bug.” Richard Erdoes, Crying for a Dream

It has been a warm summer most of the month of June here in Georgia has been in the mid to high nineties every day. I recall many years back on a canoe trip on the Ocmulgee River in mid Georgia with a group of Girl Scouts and the daily heat index was exceeding one hundred and fifteen. Heat records were being broken through middle Georgia. We had to get the kids off the river it was so hot. On that trip after living in Georgia and tubing and canoeing the Ocmulgee many times I had never noticed the marks on the banks. Twelve to eighteen inch slides down the banks in numerous spots along the river south of Macon Georgia. I had seen this in Florida and started to get concerned not saying anything to those with me. We pulled into a docking area to call the camp for pickup and a Wildlife Ranger happened to be there and started telling the kids they killed an eleven foot alligator on that dock the night before that had been stealing fish from lines. Those slides on the bank were gator slides and judging from the number there were more than one in the river. It is interesting how perspective changes from lets jump in the river to stepping back as far as you can go when a slight variable is added.
While an interesting story I wish the killing of the alligator part was not real and maybe relocation as so often happens in Florida had happened instead. Today in Georgia “gators” have a season on them and hunting is permitted during a small portion of the year. As you travel farther south into Florida and through the gators range many years ago Native American held this great animal sacred and still do in the remaining small groups of Creek and Seminoles in South Georgia and Florida that survived or escaped the Trail of Tears of Andrew Jackson’s era. But it made me think to this first quote borrowed from Richard Erdoes, writer and editor of many Native American articles and books. One series I have enjoyed is the writing and communications of Archie Lame Deer, a Sioux Holy Man. It is the thought here that intrigues me. All things no matter the size from the tiniest to the greatest are part of who we are. “All of our relations.”

“Good words do not last long unless they amount to something.” Chief Joseph

We have had some mid 60 degree nights here this week. Not sure whether to just turn on ceiling fans on and AC off or turn back on the heat. With the holiday over and more summer to come and now a heat wave sweeping the northeast winters pilings of snow in my home state are nearly forgotten. Just hard to consider it is summer when it is sixty degrees at midnight, the sky is clear and crickets and tree frogs are chirping away still warm enough for them but over the next few days nights again will be in the seventies.
I have been drawn to Native American wisdom for some time. Perhaps it started when I heard the first story of “Little Strong Arm” from my father as a child. My father had been infatuated with Indians from my earliest memory and growing up I was immersed in the same. Indian lore books, stories even artifacts as my father traveled through the west and South America.

“All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.” Chief Seattle

My own life’s journey has had many paths and trails and always as I look back twists and turns that seems to guide and direct the flow of my life. I was fortunate to meet when I took a job in Macon Georgia while still a student at Mercer a co-worker who was of the Creek nation. Through him I was taken into the group of Creeks and Cherokee who worked at the Okmulgee Indian Mounds National Monument. I participated in ceremonies and numerous activities. I was witness to spiritual aspects of a culture many never see. Watching the reverence of the handling of a single eagle feather being prepared for a grandfather or what some may say is silly a Green Corn Dance.

“We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God….” Chief Joseph

“From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things – the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals – and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man.” Chief Luther Standing Bear

About eight years ago I was given the name of Kent Nerburn, an author of numerous books on Native American Spirituality and on wisdom in general. I have used Kent’s thoughts many times in my writings and thoughts each day. Several years’ back a good friend gave me a smudge stick, a wrapped bundle of cedar and desert sage, to be used as incense. Each small piece in my life has led me to where I am now. Walking out about five this morning to take my dog out I watched the few clouds moving in a clear sky. Wispy patterns of white illuminated by a smile of a moon.
We each have a pathway that we travel on and as I speak with and discuss with high school students daily often it is hard to say this is where you go or will be one day. As I grow older and see how each little minute piece alters the journey ever so subtlety ever so gently. I look back at conversations I have been involved in or books I have read and now see how I was influenced. I think back to people I have met along the way each day. How have they impacted me or affected how I see life?

“Death will come, always out of season.” Big Elk

“Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!” Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, Ohiyesa

Several months back I watched a TV movie on Wounded Knee and Dr. Charles Eastman was the physician on the reservation when the wounded and dying were brought in from the Wounded Knee massacre. He went on to be a prolific writer and lecturer around the country. I was thinking along this line one morning as I walked the beach on Cumberland Island as the sun rose. Looking down the beach both ways as far as I could see not a person other than me. The waves were the sole noise hitting the beach. Even the seabirds were quiet as the sun rose brilliantly.

“Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.” Chief Seattle

Reading the news each day with the great oil spill makes me wonder if we are not close to suffocation in our sleep as Chief Seattle warned. So much is based on greed and money. Someone not concerned about the future and or anyone but themselves. I sit working with kids who are similar in their personalities focused only on themselves. I wonder why? Recently I researched the concept of generation Y. Children born approximately 1985 through 1995 and this idea of self centeredness is in many of the definitions. The societal norms of capitalism and consumerism seem to drive that point of focus. I wonder if many of the disorders of children today are not culturally derived.
Some will say it is nutrition, yet is it a lifestyle that has contributed to that nutritional deficit or overload. We are directed to fast food as an alternative and aid in our quest to grab a few more minutes out of a day and be more profitable and able to buy more things and grab more pieces of life. Perhaps it is seeing everything as having a dollar value, and or as a commodity. I got involved in a blog discussion yesterday over this very topic of self-centeredness. In some recent reading the term cyber-human was used. We see ourselves as a prosthesis only and not as human. We are simply something to be added to or deleted from.

“As a child, I understand how to give; I have forgotten that grace since I have become civilized. I lived the natural life, whereas I now live the artificial. Any pretty pebble was valuable to me then, every growing an object of reverence.” Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, Ohiyesa

Within the agenda of so much of education and many curriculums we strip away from our children and create consumers to buy all the odds and ends we have built for us in plants now over seas. We take away innocence and give back standardization. We deplete imagination and creativity and offer packaged curriculum so all will be more easily tested and graded. It is so sad Native American thinkers of over a hundred years ago saw this and knew this was wrong and we just now are starting to pay attention. Please take a moment and think about our friends and families in harms way around the world and keep them on your mind and in your heart.
namaste
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