We are all indigenous

A few months ago  I attended a gathering of Grandmothers in Naples, Florida.  These women had traveled from all over the continent of North America to share their spiritual teachings with me and the other  people who gathered to hear them.  They want to weave a blanket of Peace and bring their messages to the United Nations.

One of the Grandmothers said something that day, which I think about nearly every day.  She said, “We are all indigenous.”  I believe she meant that we all live on this planet, our Mother Earth, and that we all have a right to claim whatever affinity we have to the Native ways.  The amount of energy being spent on whether a person is “Native Enough,” depletes us and our goals.  There are aboriginal people, First People, on every continent, and their ways have sustained them for thousands of years.  (Tens of thousands in many cases.)

And I think she also wanted us to see that whatever work you do for peace or to heal the planet, it starts with you:  The space you occupy, where you live and work, and how you go about your daily life.

Most of us have the opportunity to make choices, small ones and big ones, every day, and those choices can be about peace and sustainability.

“Where I sit is holy, holy is the ground/

Forest, Mountain, River/

Listen to the Sound/

Great Spirit circles all around me…”

 

 

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Building a Florida Medicine Wheel (part 1)

We will be using a template from the Sun Bear information to build our Medicine Wheel.  We will work collectively over the next 12 months, to convert this into a Florida Medicine Wheel.

If you plan to attend the Ceremony and help build the Medicine Wheel, this is what you need to do to prepare:

1.  Tomorrow or Monday:  This is really, really important.  This is your gift to the Medicine Wheel.  Look around where you live and select a TREE, and then gather off the ground under it, a couple of handfuls of dry,  natural objects but only one kind per tree.  For example, if you select a pine tree, you would gather pine cones, or pine needles, but not both.  We can use flower petals, oak tree scree (leaves and seed stuff) cedar tree leaves, bean pods, whatever you are attracted to.  Collect only one kind, but bring a lot, at least what will fit into a gallon zip lock bag, when it is dried.  Collect it in the next day or two  and put it somewhere where it will dry out before Saturday morning.  You will need to check it each day and make sure it is drying.   Please note what Tree you collected from.  You may want to take a picture of the tree you gathered it under.  DO NOT BRING SAGE.

Orchid Tree

Orchid Tree Blossoms -Drying

 2.  If you make coffee this week, save your old used filters with the grounds.  Put it in a separate container from the stuff you collect in Item #1.  We will use this to dump onto fire ants on the Tor.

 3.  Think about what you will bring for pot luck.

 4.  Make a note of your Birth Date and be prepared to think about Astrology in a different way.

 Saturday Morning,

 5.  Bring something Pot Luck-ish for us to eat.  This will be a lunch time meal, by the time we eat it.

 6.  Bring a gallon of water with you.  Some of it will be for you to drink during the Ceremony and Wheel Building, and some of it will be to help put out a fire.

 7.  Bring the following other items:  Sun hat, closed toed shoes, work gloves, drums and rattles (if you have them), folding chair, bug spray/sun block.

 Saturday, we will place all our objects in a holding spot on the Tor, in the North East corner.  We will identify the four directions.  We will conduct a Ceremony, involving songs and drumming and movement and chanting.  We will make a fire on the Tor. 

 Then we will begin building the Medicine Wheel.

 To make the Medicine Wheel, we will pick up and relocate 36 rocks.  They are different sizes. They will form the shape of the Medicine Wheel, which is a big circle with the four quadrants in it.  Each time we pick up a rock, we will say what its significance is, and offer it to the 4 directions plus Mother Earth/Father Sky.    This takes an hour or more.

 After we get the Medicine Wheel built, we will work with it a bit.  We will stand where we were born.  We will stand at February 22.  We will stand at East, South, West and North.

Then we will conclude the Wheel Building portion of the event.

 At that point, we will eat,  and then you are free to leave.

You may return to visit the Medicine Wheel any time you like.