Category Archives: Thoughts About This and That

Thoughts About This and That

What’s in a Word?

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Over the many months that I’ve written this blog, I’ve quoted many teachers and teachings and several long-ago published books, siting the sources.  It came to my attention a while back that certain words, especially in the Lakota language, are often searched for on the internet by concerned persons.  This is true and obvious when I take a look at my site statistics.

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I wonder, when these words are found on my site – are the blog posts actually read?  Does the person doing the search then give me a pass when it becomes clear the quotation source and my intent?  Or am I considered an outsider appropriating culture and language by the one visiting my site?  Another disrespectful person without any right to the use of such words?

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Last November, I listened to all three days of the Global Indigenous Wisdom Summit.  All – but one – of the  Elders who spoke during those days embraced all comers to the Indigenous path of healing for the ails of our societies and Earth Mother.  They said we are all indigenous.  We are all people from the Earth.  True.  It was even said that to harbor resentments now is about ego, not my path or usage of a word.  Admittedly this was a relief to me, knowing I am welcome and embraced for my heart and intentions.

I am walking my life in the best way I know how to.  I use Lakota words.  I speak in Sanskrit.  Also the occasional Yiddish word.  I speak from my heart without malice or disrespect.  Instead with gratitude for those who’ve come before me and carried these ways forward.  And for the way I came to embrace them today – in a reverent way in my life and prayers.

What anyone thinks of me or my writing is none of my business.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

 

Thoughts About This and That, Wing Medicine

ET Phone Home

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The Band-tail Pigeon have arrived to gorge themselves in the springtime sunlight at the seed feeder.  They are both bold and shy.

Band-tailed Pigeon

Pigeon medicine offers us a way home.

Home to ourselves, to our own hearts where there is meaning.  Home to our internal family.  The Pigeon is asking us how can we best parent ourselves?  How can we be our own kid sister or big brother?  Our own best friend?  And home to the physical abode where we are safe, content and able to thrive.

Are you looking for a new home? New work? A community? A circle? A teacher?  The medicine of Pigeon can take you where you want to go both within and out in the world.  Pause.  Take a few moments to connect heart to heart with the ordinary city dweller, on these common yet unique birds. Watching their behaviors and adaptability, we can call on their powers.  We can call ourselves home.  Bring our energies back to ourselves and be at center.

Rock Pigeon TrioThe common Rock Pigeon is just about everywhere, assuring us that home can be found anywhere at any time .  All we need is to look within – be ET and phone home.  Home is where the heart is after all.

I call myself home.  I’m grateful for the winged ones.

All My Relations

Ceremony, Creating for Creating's Sake, Drums, Medicine Objects, Moms and Kids, Rattles, Thoughts About This and That, Wing Medicine, Workshops

Concentric Circles

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“Starting from within, working in a circle, in a sacred manner, we heal ourselves, our relationships and the world.”  ~  Chief Phil Lane, Jr.

Dense.  Fog.   Not the dark mercury fog of deep winter.  Instead a thick membrane of white-gray.  Seeming impenetrable while the light is already beginning to suffuse the placenta birthing this day.  Silhouettes emerging.  A circle.  The Standing Nation, tall, shoulder to shoulder.  The semi-round waxing moon had been present very early this morning, casting light onto Echo Lake, now she is on the other side of the fog.  Only milky white, shadows in the distance.   The lake is an altar.  It is a circle before me every day.  Surrounded by the circle of trees. The concentric circles begin within me, working their way out into the world.

Offering prayers to the North, to what remains of a non-winter, the trees tell me to go to the core of things within myself.  I go seeking to understand what lay beneath.  What is the motivation?  What are the emotions?  What is at the heart of me?  At  my very core?  Often in the forest I find pieces of wood that are just that, the core, the place of connectivity, of a branch growing from trunk.  I’ve kept some, one particular piece was sanded smooth becoming a talking stick for the Children’s Circle.  There are many circles – symbolic, metaphoric and physical in this reality that are part of my life.

Many circles.   Circle of life.  The circle of the seasons.  The astrological wheel a continuous circle.  Many Sacred Circles of Peoples.  The hoop of a family.  The hoop of a drum.   The waft of a feather fan, begins in the circle of a nest, sage smoke moves out into the Universe.   The round of a rattle allowing the contents to emanate voice.  A stone tossed into the lake creates ripples that move, even if interrupted, to the shoreline, meeting that circle of earth surrounding the circle of lake.  It is all connected.  Concentric circles.   Starting from within.  Working in a circle.  In a sacred manner.

The work at Soul Proprietor happens in a circle.  A container created by prayer, by intention and by the people who come to create.  Over the years numerous Teachers have begun to send their students to me, to craft in a good way their ceremonial and sacred objects.  Each of these Teachers carry a unique piece of a healing perspective.  I integrate these threads of wisdom into my life, woven fabric.  This past Sunday another new Circle, eight beautiful women came to birth drums.  The guidance that came forward for me to share with them was to learn the sacred songs, using their drums to send up a voice.  A healing.  Their teacher is one who carries the songs.  Their hearts begin the circle.  Starting from within.  Working in a circle.  In a sacred manner.   We heal ourselves.  Our relationships.  And the world.

I am filled with gratitude.

Brother Phil asked me and the entire Circle to memorize the opening quote to this post.  He asked also that we live it.  Make it our walk in the world.  With it comes so much honesty, so much hope, optimism.  I am inspired.  The fog has lifted completely, the pale blue sky boldly colors the water.  Trees reflect their strong imprint on the surface of the lake – their crowns pointing towards me – look within to the core of things they say.  Starting within.  Working in a circle.

I have an old dog who is preparing to cross over.  She still has all four feet in this reality and she is preparing, closing in on completion of the circle that is her life.  Somewhere a litter of Doberman puppies are gestating.  My father’s wife is preparing too, for her own transition, dancing between life, disease and death.  And a baby will be born.  Each life begins and ends – a circle, complete within itself and a part of the whole.  My heart is both heavy and full, buoyed by these ways of living and working in a circle.

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Thoughts About This and That

More Trash Talk

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“Guard the mind and protect the soul, expose the mind and the soul will be soiled with the trashes from people’s bins.”  ~  Ikechukwu Izuakor

I’ve made an agreement with myself – if I can see it and if I can reach it – I will pick it up the trash while out on my daily walks.  Oddly, I’ve been asked, “What are you,  good Samaritan or something?! ” I’ve received sentiments of God bless you too.  People have offered me their trash bin so I might empty my bag.  There are some crazy things that get thrown from car windows, that blow out of garbage trucks, and get dropped carelessly.  A home pregnancy test – I couldn’t help but wonder if it was good news.  An untold number of cigarette butts.  A “Found Pig” sign scribbled on cardboard with a number to call – one of a few things that I’ve kept, adding to the curious and eccentric collection of things around my house.  Hector the Collector right?  One mans trash is another woman’s  treasure.  All out garbage.  Fast food packaging.  Beer cans.  Single serve Sutter Home wine bottles, cap twisted neatly back on – every day.  There’s no end to the variety.  No end to the trash.  I’m often scolded to wear gloves.  I don’t.

The trash is always a meditation.

There is a lot of garbage visible deep into the roadside, thrown a dozen feet or more from the road itself.  The blackberry bushes, devoid of foliage invite me to retrieve it.  The winter rains have plastered last years leaf litter down flat to the earth, blanketing decay, protecting new growth.  And trash remains exposed, taunting me.   It wouldn’t be impossible to climb into the prickly stems to wangle the garbage out.  It would be difficult.  It would mean protecting myself from the many thorns.  Too many thorns.  The trash is teaching me surrender.  There is only so much I can do.  I must surrender to the fact that I can see it and I can do little about what is out of my reach.  What else must I surrender to?  Where can I go deeper, cleaning up my internal trash?  What external trash do I want to free myself from?

Low vibrations.  Acts and language that are not love.

I’ve had many teachers in my life (all y’all in fact).  The integrity of language is often times taught; be careful what you say, speak with a soft heart, be kind, seek to understand rather than be understood.  Negative speech and action have low vibration.  Positive speech and action raise the vibration.  Pretty simple.

Yet getting caught in the traps, having buttons pushed, being a pitiful human catches us all.  It happens probably every minute of every day to someone, perhaps some tens of thousands of us in the same instant, moment after moment day in and day out.  The collective is being triggered at this time.  Density rubs up against my own density.  What must I learn when this is presented in my life directly?  How do I rise up and move from a density into a frequency of that is more God-like?  What is my soul asking me to learn in this human body that will make me the best possible version of myself?  How do I evolve to serve the highest good?

“Darkness is the only path to light, it is not our wonderful gifts that make us closer to God; its using our garbage to transform ourselves. This is the key that unlocks the door that opens to God.”  ~  Yehuda Berg

I do the very best I can with the tools I have to work with.  Admittedly there are times, too many times possibly, when my own acts and language lend to the lowering of the vibration in the Universe.  And still, I give myself permission to stand up for myself.  To take a stand for what is important and has meaning to me.  I allow myself to speak up.  And this is doing something new, something different – there is no holding in the hurt of my heart any longer – that no longer works.  It never did.  If it perpetuates the density for the moment and perhaps I am not the most peaceful warrior, I forgive myself for that.  I am always willing to do my work, to understand the many layers of myself, to realign with peace.  To raise the vibration within me thereby raising the Vibration.  I hold myself in love.  What more must I do?  There is always more to do.

“So close your eyes and dream of all the wonderful Trash that’s yet to come. There’ll be more Trash tomorrow.”  ~  Oscar the Grouch

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Ceremony, Drums, Medicine Objects, Moccasins, Thoughts About This and That

Sharing Their Bounty

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This is a story about generosity, about receiving a gift from virtual strangers, and about the gift of the deer nation.

It all started with a friend recommending Soul Proprietor moccasin to a client of hers last summer.  I met and measured this woman’s feet.  The easiness with which we talked to one another was lovely – not just business for either of us – instead an exchange from the heart that took up the better part of an afternoon.  Again when she tried on the patterns for proper fit and more so upon delivery.

Out of the blue she called me last fall.  Would I like any deer hides from the hunt her People would be going on?  She is from the Snoqualmie Tribe.  Each autumn the People come together to hunt, to make meat, sustenance for all who’ll need meat throughout the year.  She offered that I could have possibly as many as 20 hides.  I accepted 3, not wanting to take more than I could properly tend to.

Late last year she delivered the hides to me.  And would I like some feet?  I accepted this too.  I put the hides into my freezer until I could dedicate my time to them.  The feet needed immediate tending.  I was presented with a learning curve.  I’ve never taken toes from hooves.  Nor had I ever harvested tendons to make sinew.   This is a time I can say thank goodness for Google.

When I am making moccasin, I am able to be present with feet in a surprising way, it seems so intimate and personal.  Likewise, taking the hide and toes from deer feet, seeing their structure – the muscling, the tendons and blood vessels, the bones – different than an intellectual knowing, now it was personal for me.  And working with these particular deer, knowing they had been prayed for before they were hunted, that these deer had been honored in a good way – they had offered themselves so the People may live.  My own prayers of gratitude and respect accompanied the boiling water that would soften the cartilage allowing for the toes to be removed.  Sage smoke to purify.  Some of the tendons and toes released with ease.  Others took effort.  Metaphor.  What am I holding onto?  How can I let go?  What makes sacred and what makes ordinary?  Is there a difference?

Last week I took the smallest hide from the freezer, let it thaw, then opened the black plastic bag.  I hadn’t seen the hide yet, the bag had been tied closed.  I was taken aback by the thick coat of fur, course yet so soft.  I spent a while praying with the hide, being thankful, honoring the animal’s life and this gift.  I called for help.

Fleshing is very hard work.  Was I scrapping enough of the fat and fascia off?  Was I going too deep?   At first it seemed like I’d never get it done, there was a lot to do.  It made me slow down, be present, learn from the animal.  Medicine is such a teacher.  No single direction accomplished the task, I was circling around the work table in the fresh air with the warmth of the sun – mourning the absence of winter and snowpack, it was nearly 60* on a winter’s day.  Finally, listening, I was able to work with ease, a composure within myself and the gentleness of the deer to guide me.   Once I understood, I found a rhythm and could  be present with both the work and my prayer, and my wondering thoughts.  The Snoqualmie People – how generous to share with a stranger the bounty of their hunt.  Prayers for their good health, happy hearts and all their needs being met in a good way.  Who shot this deer?  How many will eat?  Who took the hide off the animal?  They did a really good job of it, no holes were cut into the skin.  I thought of the landscape that supported this deer, of my prayer for Ina Maka.  I was reminded of the buffalo hunt my own community had the year before.  I helped to take that hide from the animal, it was women’s work just like the old days.  Who fleshed the buffalo hide?  I don’t know.  It must have been a herculean task, I found myself grateful there was a community to do the work.  And deep gratitude for Eileen, gifting me a knife on that day, the knife I was now using, perfect for my work.  I wound up with a blister where it fit into the palm.  I thought of friends long gone from my life and how tender a place still for them in my heart and memory.  Flies.  Was this bounty an unexpected feast for them or did they just take it in stride?  I thought about the food chain.  And enough.  I reflected on the fact that this is my life – buffalo hunt, helping friends to butcher turkey, now this deer – could I kill?  I never have taken an animal’s life.  I thought of my own mortality.

It took longer than I thought it would, not just the work itself, but the time to make ready – teaching me patience and to trust.  I worked on it three separate days just to remove the fur.  Each day more fur came free but not all.  I saw the places I held fear the way the skin held the fur – not wanting to waste or lay to ruin this hide.  How long was too long to soak it waiting for the fur release and be easily removed?  Using a round stone that fit nicely in my hand, I rubbed the fur off the skin.  Soaking it again over night with wood ash.  Then over a weekend, the last of my ash.  Was there a better way?  Was I working in an efficient manner?  I was reminded again and again to breathe and relax my shoulders, release the tension in my neck and thoughts.  To trust in the process.

I never did get all of the fur removed.  There is still a bit around the edges of the hide but nothing that will inhibit good use of the skin which is large enough for two drums to come forward.  I chose to dry the hide so I could learn how to stretch it without stretching too much.  More metaphor.  Deer teaches of the many paths there are to follow to arrive at a single destination.  I am constantly amazed this is my path into the Mystery.

The first drum and the first rattle will be given back to the Snoqualmie People in gratitude for their generosity.   Their kindness gives me hope for us all.  We are all one nation, one tribe, one human family.  And the deer, who made an agreement to give of itself sets an example for me to live by, one which we all can learn from in these times of great need.  There is enough when we share in the bounty.

Pilamaya to the Snoqualmie Nation.  Pilamaya to the Deer Nation.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

Thoughts About This and That, Wing Medicine

Holy Moment

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Mercury must be retrograde (it isn’t!).  Communications have been miserable.  Technology frustrating.  Hours have been invested into a seemingly simple problem with no resolve.

In the midst of the vexation,  I am standing at the kitchen sipping a glass of water laced with a red cedar spagyric, watching out the window.  The usual suspects are all here – Chestnut-sided and Black-capped Chickadee with their out of town cousin the Mountain Chickadee, Evening Grosbeak and Red-breasted Nuthatch – all taking turns at the seed feeder.  The overgrown rhododendrons,  the water birch and the moss covered ground are busy with Towhee, Junco and Gold-crowned Sparrows, lots of sparrows.  Suddenly a pair, male and female, of Red Crossbill land on the glass patio table.  I catch my breath, not taking my eyes off them.  Crossbill have visited before but rarely.  She flies out of view.  He is there on the glass, with his cross bill picking up bits of this and that, the samara of a big leaf maple tree.  I am struck with the metaphor of their cross bills and the challenge of communications.  Then he turns his head to the side and presses it against the glass and takes a drink of the leftover rainwater that thinly covered the surface of the table.

I burst into tears – a holy moment – before me was perfection.  In that moment, the simplicity of a beautiful little pale red bird drinking water, sustaining himself with the bare little that was available, I was snapped to attention.  Be present, in this moment – for it is holy!

Really, aren’t they all holy moments?  Yes, of course they are.

“…I’ve learned something about times like these.  In times like these, you have to grow big enough inside to hold both the loss and the hope.”     ~ Uncle Mogey, from Strange As This Weather Has Been, Ann Pancake.

This moment did not resolve my communications and still it lifted my heart. It changed my vibration to witness. I am grateful. Mercury is not retrograde, but January 21st it will be – pause for caution and thoughtful consideration. How to proceed?

In gratitude for the medicine of the winged ones.  A’ho!

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Thoughts About This and That

Joy Jar

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“Happy. Happy. Joy. Joy.”  ~ Ren and Stimpy

Elizabeth Gilbert suggests a happiness  jar.  A great idea that for me, became a joy jar.  Recounting my joys – I can feel the sensation of joy in my body – I love how joy feels.  Recreating this feeling again and again builds my cellular memories.  The feeling becomes much easier for me to hold.  It’s all a practice.  I guess it just depends on what a person wants to be good at, to integrate more fully.  For me that would be joy.  Joy has seemed fleeting.  Sometimes illusive.  And joy is everywhere!

This first week of the year, already so many joy-full moments.  I created the possibility of leading with my heart.  Blind Girl Squirrel.  Confrontation lead me to greater surrender and deeper trust, my open heart intact.  Pilamaya RLS¹!  I stood in my power for a teaching moment.  And learned.  Richard – happy happy joy joy!!  Sunshine and the Mountain is out.  I dreamed of geese.

Bonus Joy!  My dear friend Pam is healthy.

It’s a good day to be alive.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

Ceremony, Thoughts About This and That

A New Dawn

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Waking in the half light of  a new day and into a new year, I go out into the frozen morning with a hummingbird feeder to hang it in the dogwood tree, a bare winter branch with spring buds waiting.  Walking down the long narrow lawn to fill the seed feeder I am moved deeply by the silence of the morning.  I savor the cold against my bare skin, the brittle crunch of heavily frosted grass under my feet disturbing the hush.  I am grateful for the perfection of this winter day, being alive to witness the dawning alone – no birds yet risen with song.

The abundance of my life is not lost on me.  The frigid morning was there to greet me.  I did not have to sleep outside in the cold.  I have a home.  It was a warm and comfortable bed I arose from.  There’ll be hot coffee with cream and breakfast to follow, clean clothes.

A few days ago I had the realization that in addition to the love and light I do my best to practice and live, that I still held judgment and anger for the transgressions of the past.  The past is behind me.  Unless I put it into my present.  And worse into my future.  My rightful concerns for the injustices and the inequalities that exist in the world today have been so clouded over by my conditioning.  No matter where my heart has been coming from, my mind still had control.  I don’t want to simply change my mind – change can equal little more than another word slipped in to replace anger.  A word with the matching emotion such as indignation, resentment, acrimony or bitterness.  Change isn’t benevolence or good will – transcendence is.

Anger is valid.  Anger though, must be put to good use.  Anger is my teacher shifting my perspective more fully towards forgiveness and embracing the light.  Injustice isn’t healed by anger alone, by recounting each outrage or prejudice, all the oppressions and breaches in dignity.  I cannot make the reparations in the outside world.  The trespasses of the past can only be healed inside my own head and heart.  I see how I need to stop ripping back the scab that makes the wounds bleed.  I am willing to transcend the mind, create a new pattern.   Connect the head and the heart.  This, says Chief Phil Lane, Jr. is the longest journey a human being will ever undergo.  I am tired of this walk – on a treadmill going nowhere – I am learning.

I will step anew onto a path of calm and kindness, contentment without complacency for a new dawn to rise within my heart each minute of the day.  As I transmute this old way of being, I create the possibility of a dawning of light, a healing elixir and salve that transcends anger into charity and peaceable forbearance.  Of a heart alleviated from the long-suffering anger of the past.  As another one of my teachers said this morning, “…when I go to do something, or manifest something, I always start with a prayer, put out the intent for things to manifest.  That is the teaching.  Sometimes we just forget to apply our tools and we have really good ones.”.

At the genesis of this new year, I put up this prayer – for gratitude, for peace of mind, of forgiveness, and for the manifestation of a new dawn and anger that lives in the past.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations