About then, Coyote walked up to the table. I was very happy to see him, even though, more of than not, his presence brings trouble. “I’ve a story for you”, he said.

“Why are you smiling?”asked my friend. “Coyote’s here,” I hesitantly replied.

“Oh,” responded my friend.

Coyote began his story. “Newt Gingrich was talking to a room full of White people. He really got going when he started thinking about his hero, Andrew Jackson. I mean, he got so excited he started channeling old Andrew, saying, “We know our enemies and we should just get them out of the way!”

“Sounds familiar,’ said I.

Coyote Continued, “Newt just got more and more wound up. Finally he raised both arms, spreading them far apart as if to embrace the entire room. “Everybody in the country should just learn to look, act, and believe like us. We’re the greatest! We own this place We were here FIRST! Why if they don’t like what we’re doing, they should just leave.”

“Hummmm,” I replied.

“Of course,” suggested Coyote, “Everyone in the room stood, many cheering. Then Newt noticed quite a few people just leaving. He looked real closely at them. After they had all left, he turned to the audience and said, “Did you see that? Those were Indians and a lot of Mixed Bloods. Why they were acting just like us. Hell, we didn’t even know they were here. What’d I tell you? You can’t trust an Indian! They’re sneaky.”

I had to laugh.

“What’s wrong with your friend?” inquired Coyote. “”He survived,” I replied. Coyote looked closely at my friend. “He needs some healing,” he said. “I’ve done my best,” I acknowledged. Coyote raised a leg and dribbled a little on my friends leg.

“What did you just do!” exclaimed my friend. “Nothing. It was Coyote.” “I smell something funny,” announced my friend, “but I feel better.”

There can be no doubt that Pachamama, Mother Earth, is suffering.

So are innumerable beings. How could we not, if our hearts and spirits are open, feel their pain, fear, confusion, and anger? How could we not hear their calls for aid?

We are taught, in Western culture, that the suffering we feel is INDIVIDUAL, the idea being that we are separate from one another.

I have found that the values I grew up with as a Native person are not valued in this culture: connection, community, humility, compassion. Our understanding of the world, as a place of infinite relationship and sacredness are considered dangerous, or simply naive. For if we humans  acknowledge Pachamama as our mother, how could we destroy that which birthed and supports us? If all beings are relatives, how can we allowthe extinction of other species or commit genocide?

As we are infinitely connected to the world, we each have the capacity to transform some of suffering we see or face. Because suffering is BOTH personal and systemic, we may heal as we get to know the histories that created and maintain that suffering. As we are bridges between the generations, we can work with the Grandmothers and Grandfathers who have gone before us to bring healing to the present, and to future generations. Such healing is often incremental work, rich with meaning and deep in relationship.

When we open to life as it is, we may find joy in talking to an old, wise tree, walking in the woods, or asking the Creator and Pachamama to place our feet on the path they wish us to walk. How often we find joy in opening our hearts,  even to what hurts!   In this very moment  the Creator, Pachamama and the Ancestors are speaking to us.  A walk in the woods is an opportunity to listen for their voices.

To open our hearts is to offer solace to a suffering world.

It is an act of courage, and of resistance. When we open our hearts we join an ancient lineage of beings who care enough to risk more suffering, yet court joy. Such acts of deep love and humility are a great salve.

From “Where Love Winds Itself Around Desire”, by Lee Maracle. In First Fish, First People, Roche and McHutchison, eds, University of Washington Press, 1998.

One of my friends, an Abenaki healer, called earlier. It seems she had been watching “testosterone driven” hunters on t.v.. These hunters were shooting wolves and bear from helicopters. My friend was upset. After all, bear and wolves are sacred.

A call from my friend is a lot like a call from Raven or Salmon. She sees what’s going on. She notices people have lost their way. We’ve collectively lost our initial instructions. Her heart breaks. Animals follow her around, visit her house in the suburbs, and upset her neighbors. The neighbors think the birds and animals are all loose cannons. The presence of the animals offers offers my friend  solace.

Every now and again, the ET’s stop by. Their presence brings joy to my friend’s life. They are not, from her point of view, loose cannons. They are not shooting sacred beings from their spacecraft.

I like to remind my friend she is doing her best. I want her to remember our relatives and the elders are waiting for us. They’ll probably point out our errors; that will take many days, and generate much laughter and amusement for them. The grandmothers will also let us know they’re happy we’re home. They’ll know how to deal with us.

For now though, my friend has things to say, concerns to share. She’s a big-hearted grandmother in her own right. Are you listening? Remember, she’s a grandmother. We’ll all  have to answer to her and the others when we finally get back home.

Jennie is preparing for another trip to teach Playback Theatre and Expressive Arts Therapy in Bangladesh and India, as well as to teach a workshop on Narrative Therapy in NYC. I’m getting ready to teach “Arts and Social Change”. We’ve decided pretty much everything we do is centered on story.

Certainly shamanism is deeply embedded in story.

The play of the world and the place of humans in Her life are part of that story. The rain falling outside the studio window as I type is part of the story. If we were in Alaska, tens of feet of snow would work itself into the story. Maybe next year we will sit around the hearth and talk about this winter that wasn’t. Maybe in two hundred years those who come after us will tell the story as they understand it. What may seem like fact and portent to us will be history to them, and myth.

From the shaman’s point of view, the story begins countless generations back, and extends far into the future.

I like to think of First Woman falling through a hole in the sky, falling for days and days, only to be caught by some kind ducks and geese, some of who died in the effort. I like to ponder whether she was pushed or fell, or simply jumped out of boredom, curiosity, or a wish to die.  Her falling is a good beginning to the story. In fact, it’s a grand story in itself!

In some versions of the story she births pretty much everything, in others, mostly human beings and, maybe, a few of our animal kin, usually the ones we depend on, traditionally, for survival. Those of us who live in North America walk on the back of the generous turtle who volunteered to hold her up, keeping her safe from drowning in the deep waters of the world’s oceans. Our hills and mountains might even be the beautiful shell of that turtle.

I think the turtle wasn’t First Turtle. No, I imagine he was just some handsome member of that ancient band, kind and big-hearted, and strong enough to support creation on his back. I imagine we are all called, in one way or another, to care for the people, so we are related to that turtle. Many of us are slow walkers, ponder things as deeply as we are able, yet are willing, at least on rare occasions, to spontaneously do what is demanded by the moment. I guess that makes us Turtle people.

First Woman’s story is a good story. If we stayed with it long enough we would come to the hard, violent, underbelly of human existence. The story is, after all, about us, and holds all our experience. Getting hurt, or lost, or even forgetting the story is part of the story.

“Good” stories are tales that hold the truth, cradle it close in their long arms.

They remind us of who we are and who we might be, individually and collectively. Often people come for aid when their stories don’t seem good and true anymore. I think abuse and genocide, in all their myriad forms, are about purposely breaking the sense, the very bones, of people’s stories. Colonialism, too, shatters stories, replacing generations of lived experience and wisdom with a stripped down, alien, heavy-handed and broken-hearted poverty tale, spun by the “victors”.

Shamanism calls on the spirits and Ancestors to reweave the broken threads of story, to remake a whole from innumerable fragments.

It strips everything down to an essence, and rebuilds. Narrative therapy, birthed from colonialism’s cauldron, seeks to do the same. Each works with the stories at hand, drawing in other tales as need and availability allow. Each builds lay and layer of richness and complexity, and, overtime, both unEarth the presence of the sacred, and recover, Self.

Elie Wiesel, in a brief story in his preface to The Gates of the Forest, noted, “God made man because he loves stories.” (Joel Merchant retells Wiesel’s story and, fittingly, spins a deeply personal story from it.) I like to think the Creator and Pachamama made us in their image, as story lovers, and story tellers. Like them, we are free to try many story lines, to create seemingly infinite alternative texts and endings, spiraling around a few profound themes. What else is Evolution but the play of innumerable stories, the individual strands of each of which eventually comes to an end?

Evening falls, live chamber music streams from the BBC, and the falling rain mixes with snow. Light cascades through the studio windows and is absorbed by the growing dusk. This afternoon, in this place, the story is good.

There are a number of blog/blogger awards. I began to think about my purpose for blogging. I mean the title of my blog reveals a lot about my mission: Believe Anyway. I have blogged before that I chose the title to remind myself to stay optimistic. My purpose is to light a candle in the darkness that envelopes us all at times. I want to lighten loads and light the way. I gravitate towards positive people and positive blogs.  I want to start a blog award that reflects my love for the positive in the blogosphere.

{To see a list of blogs that have been given The Candle Lighter Award Click on The Candle Lighter Award button on my header.}

I call my award The Candle Lighter Award. It is for blogs and bloggers that light a candle in the darkness with their blog. What does it mean? Whenever I see a post or blog that I think brings light to the world, I will put a copy of this post and give them The Candle Lighter Award. What does the recipient have to do to accept it? Just accept it and put the Candle Lighter Award badge from my blog onto their blog. Please put the link from this post about my creation of the award in a post on your blog so people can read about it.  What else do recipients have to do? Nothing. If they do think someone else is a Candle Lighter, they can surely give them the award anytime they want and as often as they want. [i'd love it if you could send me the links for the blogs you do find worthy of the award, because I'd love to see their blogs, too! But it isn't required]. Their is no limit to how many blogs you award The Candle Lighter Award to and no limit to how many times someone can receive it. But when you do, I ask that you use the link for this post.

Let’s set the blogging world ablaze with Candles for all the positive oriented blogs. The world needs joy and lots of it.

Why am I doing this? I think people that are going through the efforts to be positive and make the world better through their efforts and blogs deserve to be recognized. I am always looking for encouragement and ‘light’. I want my faith, my optimism, and my love for life to help to set the world ablaze. Hence: The Candle Lighter Award. I hope that you love this idea.”

This morning I received an e-mail from myraysof light, recipients of the award, informing me they had nominated this blog for the award. The nomination is an award in itself. I am deeply honored and grateful.

I hope you will visit, and support the work of, both these bloggers.

Blessings.

Traffic, Chennai, India

Yesterday marked the Feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, is the final day of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It memorializes the arrival of the wise men at the crib of the infant Jesus. An epiphany is a sudden insight or awakening to the deep meaning of something. The Christmas story suggests the wise men, who were not Jewish,  and perhaps not all men, suddenly realized they were witnessing a great miracle.

Perhaps you have had such an experience of awakening. Psychotherapy mines our personal and collective stories for just such nuggets of inspiring truth. Dreams sometimes bring insight, as do conversations with our loved ones. Often, epiphanies shock, heal, and liberate us.  They may also frighten us and radically disrupt our lives. Seldom are we able, following an epiphany, to simply go home, back to our everyday lives, as the wise men reportedly did.

There is, in the definition of epiphany, the suggestion that such an awakening opens the door to learning and wisdom. Epiphanies are seldom democratic. Rarely do entire populations of people come to a deep understanding of a problem at the same moment. Sometimes, such as with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a people awaken simultaneously to the presence of a task, but this rarely brings collective wisdom.

Shamans and mystics frequently report another form of epiphany: the world is perfect as it is! From this vantage point, we are each doing exactly as we were meant to do, and we are called to awaken. We are invited to wake from our personal and collective slumber. We are encouraged to see our impacts on others and the world, and to create lives governed by love and compassion. We are called to acknowledge suffering, and to do our what we are able to ameliorate it.

This morning Jennie and I were discussing her upcoming trip to Bangladesh and India. Both countries are increasingly, sometimes severely, touched by climate change. Bangladesh is a very low-lying, densely populated country, dramatically impacted by tropical cyclones and sea level changes. It is also a country of refuges. Few people in India or Bangladesh deny the problems posed by a rapidly warming planet. Many in Bangladesh wonder what they will do if displaced by emerging catastrophic rises in sea level.

Bangladeshis are, like the island peoples of the Pacific, and our Indigenous aunts and uncles everywhere, threatened by climate change that is driven largely by Western countries and the China. For many in the West, climate change is an inconvenience. Many deny the climate is changing, or downplay the role humans are taking in those changes. For Native people, and those living in the Third World, it is increasingly a threat to our very survival as Native people and communities.

The Feast of the Epiphany invites us to awaken to a changing world, to risk  hope, and to accept the task at hand. We cannot simply, as did the wise men, give thanks to the Creator and go home. We are all home already, denizens of this bright blue planet. We are all kin, and ultimately share the same fate. There is no where else to go.

The institution of the New Year Festival is widespread in human cultures. In Europe, and throughout much of Native North America, the festival occurs on or shortly after the Winter Solstice. The festival marks the quiet time of deep winter. It is a time of ceremony, play, and feasting before the potential cold and hunger of later winter. New Years’ acknowledges the past, pays homage to the Ancestors, and looks forward to the return of warmth, and the restoration of abundance.

The New Years’ season is complex, mixed in tone. New Year’s Eve and Day are times of celebration and excess. Yet the days immediately before New Years’ are more somber. December 28th marks Holy Innocents’ Day in the Christian calendar. (Philip Lowe Jr. wrote about this in a recent post.) This feast day marks the mass murder by the Romans of Jewish male children. The story goes thus: Herod was warned by his astrologers that a new king had been born to the Jews, a king who would lead his people out of Roman oppression. Herod responded to this perceived threat by ordering the murder of all male Jews under the age of two living in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The birth of Jesus, in the Christian tradition, offered hope for change and renewal; acts of genocide steal hope from the people.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Holy Innocents’ falls in that space between the birth of Jesus and the turn of the New Year. For people in the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere, winter has traditionally been a time of challenge and hunger. Winter was particularly brutal on young children and elders.

As is true for all good stories, the story of the Holy Innocents is rich with additional meanings. One such resonance is the survivance of hope, even in the face of genocide. Another story, lost to much of North American culture, is the massacre of between 150-300 Lakota Sioux (mostly women, children and the elderly) at Wounded Knee, on December 29th, 1890 (see this recent post from the Ella Baker Center) . The massacre occurred in response to the spread of the Ghost Dance, a messianic ceremony (some say religion) that allowed Native Americans to directly contact our Ancestors, and provided hope in the face of ongoing genocide. Although colonialism continues to threaten all we hold sacred, both internally and externally, each year Holy Innocents’ and Wounded Knee remind us we are, against all odds, “Still Here.” (I am grateful to John Ahniwanika Schertow for his efforts to keep us informed about the struggles of Indigenous people around the world.)

New Years invites us to remember and appreciate those who have gone before, and to look to the future and those who will follow. We are reminded we are bridges between the generations, and stewards of the future. We are asked to rekindle and nurture the fire of hope, and to remember that we are, in spite of whatever travail that we have passed through in our lives, still here.

This morning, following a night of light snow, we awoke to a white world. The sun plays shadow games with passing clouds. Today the air is warmer than yesterday.

Yesterday we awoke early and went to the Unitarian Church to serve breakfast to all who sought warmth and food. The morning was bitterly cold, and many homeless and marginalized persons arrive to catch a free, plentiful meal. The event also drew large numbers of people from the congregation, as well as the larger community. Serving this Christmas breakfast has become a family activity in our household, and we enjoy getting up early for the event.

This year, 6 a.m. Christmas morning seemed very early indeed. Christmas Eve included a luncheon celebration with family, Jennie singing in the choir for two services, a potluck in between services, and a late evening party with friends. Then there was wrapping……

Now we settle into the Twelve Days, leading up to Epiphany.

One of our friends celebrates the entire liturgical cycle of Christmas, something in excess of forty days. She recently gifted us with a twelve day candle, which glows festively from a downstairs window. We also approach the last night of Hanukkah. Sometime this past week the men returned from their seclusion in the kivas of the pueblos. The sun has turned and a new season of life is promised.

I do not believe our forefathers worried about the return of the sun.

As one young adult recently noted, once one has lived through five or six winters, one realizes the light will return. Perhaps our seasonal festivals are, at root, expressions of gratitude to the Creator, to Grandfather Fire, and to the plants and animals that feed us.  Whether in church, synagogue, or shamanic ritual, we acknowledge the promise of rewed life, the joy of warmth and food in hard times, and our dependence on the great web of life and consciousness. We may also accept the reciprocal nature of all relationship, that we must give back as well as receive. Surely this awareness is a restorative challenge to our arrogance and greed.

As the light increases, we turn our hearts to the Creator, and to all beings with whom we share life and consciousness, greet one another, and acknowledge our mutual debt and appreciation.

May there be blessings aplenty for All Our Relations.

In the late afternoon, a neighborhood family came over to make peanut butter pine cones for the animals.

The kids had been asking about this activity for a couple of weeks. Jennie began the tradition the year we moved here. Yesterday we the 5th edition. The participants change, yet the tradition continues.

The idea is simple: one ties a loop of string tightly around the base of a pine cone, lathers the cone with peanut butter, and rolls the entire thing in bird feed. The string loop allows one to hang the cones from tree branches. Yesterday, we added a few cranberries to the mix. We also cut up oranges and bananas to create hanging fruit bowls for the fruit eaters. As dusk settled, one of the neighborhood kids accompanied us into the field and woods, where we hang the cones and bowls. (Earlier in the week we had held a Solstice party and guests had brought bird food which we used to make the cones; we carried the remainder with us into the woods.) As we fee the animals, we also feed the spirits of the land.

As the darkness gathered, our young friend asked whether we might best head home – a few hundred feet. We agreed and started back. Just as we reached the trail, a flock of geese flew overhead, calling out to us and one another. I feel some kinship with geese, and accepted their passing as a blessing. One of my companions, wanting the geese’ passing to be significant, but not quite sure, expressed some doubts. Moments later, a single goose flew overhead and called.

In the early evening we attended a Burundian Christian concert by my members of the local African diaspora community.

The music, much of it written by the performers, chronicled their lives, and their journeys through war, refuge camps, and the immigration system. Outside, snow and the temperatures were falling. A glaze of ice covered the sidewalks and parking lot. Inside, African rhythms and melodies carried praise songs to the Creator in four languages.

The event was sponsored by the New North End Studio, an organization that extends itself to the refuge community. The small cafe in the performance space was open, selling drinks and cookies for $1. When families struggled to afford those prices, the owners just slipped in extra food and drink.

There were few European looking persons in the audience, yet we felt very much at home. We could just have easily been at a Native gathering, in Bangladesh, or India. Most striking were the familiar stories of war, displacement, and genocide, and the heartfelt gratitude expressed to the Creator. Amongst the praise songs were interspersed songs about suffering and redemption. There were songs about the lives of orphaned children, making their way on the streets, and about friends and family members who were murdered. Good and Evil, kindness and horror lived, for the evening, as so often in life, side by side.

We felt our own sense of immense gratitude for being, on the eve of Christmas Eve, thrust so deeply into the human condition.

We acknowledged the turning year Wednesday evening by lighting the Chanukah candles and holding a ceremony for Grandfather Fire, a confluence of two tribal traditions. Those gathered sent many expressions of gratitude and prayers to the Creator via Grandfather. Last night, under an immense old maple tree, we joined friends as they lit a fire to the returning sun.  In these ways we remembered that we are indeed connected to All That Is. We also reminded others that, like Horton, “We’re Here!”

Today, Christmas Eve eve, the ground lies bare. Overnight there was snow in the hills and mountains, but here in the great valley there is only rain. We await Christmas and winter.