Sacred Fire Magazine Issue 16

FALL 2012 ELIOT COWAN JAKE SWAMP CHARLES EISENSTEIN DERRICK JENSEN OREN LYONS restoring balance through the fire of heart

Biology of the Weather Beings The Sacred Activist Love in the Realm of Dreams

Healing into Harmony Song for the Season of Drought Sacred Plant Teachers Mayan Prophesies 2012

No You’re Not $7.95 U.S. / $9.75 CANADA

I S S U E 16

CRAZY

Plants Really Do Talk Back

Restoring balance through relationship to the sacred world around us

Our deepest gratitude to all who have so generously opened your hearts to our work in 2012!

Individual Donors Ellen Allen Jessica Almy-Pagan Theresa Arico Sophia Arroyo Jeff Baker Kate Baldwin Stanley Bates Marie Bathum Mark Bedell Louise Berliner Len Beyea Sherry Boatright Bonnie Bright Wendy Brittain Sharon Brown Gwen Broz Dan & Bettyann Cernese John Chandler Danny Chazanas Joan Clement Rebecca Coble Erica Cohen Karla & Tim Cole Vincene Collura William Coughlin & Anna Lukas Eliot Cowan Keiko Cronin Elizabeth Cunningham Jennie Davis Sara Lisa Davison Mary de Rosas Thomas & Sabine Dherbecourt Kathryn Donald Mary Dunnam

Grace Duong Karen Durkee Ron Eberhardt Artemia Fabre Linda Felch Lyn Felling Mace Fleeger Cindy Fogle Alison Gayek Carolyn Gregory Chris Griffin & Nicole Colvin Griffin Donna Groves Amy Haynes Teresita Heiser Nancy Holm Carl Hyatt Deanna Jenne & Gary Weidner Alan & Amanda Kerner Jillian Kirchmann Sterling & Maggie Klippel Bruce Kramer Liz Lipski Robin Lockwood Lynn Maas Elizabeth Macdonald Judith Mann Milt Markewitz Annie Marra Erica Mascorro Claudia Mckenzie Jane Meadows Lawrence Messerman Terrence Messerman Laurie Miller

Jody Miller Katie Moody Sherry Morgan Barbara Nill Paul Nolan Rob Norris Angela & Anthony Ocone Bette O’Connor Jessica Oppenheimer Sam Parisette-Hersog Sabrina Parisette-Hersog Andrea Parker Elizabeth Parker Angi Patton Autumn Peterson Anna Marie Pope Paris Preston Maxima Putnam Bonnie Jo Radasch Victoria Reeves Karla Refojo Philip Roberts Heidi A. Romrell Joanne Rothstein Darlene Roudebush Gary Ruppert Sharon Salter Rachel Shea Prema & Scott Sheerin Ellen Simon Timothy Simon Susan Skinner Anne Smith David Soule

Julie Stafford Christine Staub Mark & Sally Stebbins Amanda Stinson JoAn Street Ray Strouble William Sutton Rita Swanson Nancy Terrill Andi Tilmann Patrick Toomay Marjorie Tursak CristiĂĄn Valenzuela Deborah Van Wagner Jaime Velez Lori Von Colln Sally Wagoner Joan Walden K.A. Waleryzak Joan Wallace Kristie Wells Lynn Wells Kathy Whit David C. Wiley Barry Williams & Renata Ritzman Mary Willis Amy Wolf Linda Wolff

Organizational Donors

Jewish Community Fund Maine Community Foundation The Sandy River Foundation

from

the editors This issue, our sixteenth, marks seven years since we published our first edition. Since 2005, our virtually all-volunteer staff has poured heart, time and talent into creating a unique publication that opens a door to the sacred, interconnected nature of life, a perspective held by indigenous peoples and spiritual traditions everywhere.

After seven years the winds have moved through and brought changes, as they will. Last Spring, Sacred Fire’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, Jonathan Merritt, was instructed by his elders to step down from his role in the magazine so that he could focus on his work as a traditional healer, community leader, writer and speaker. Jonathan’s contribution to Sacred Fire has been immeasurable. We are so pleased that he will continue to share his perspective and skills as a contributing editor. Thank you, Jonathan.

The seven-year winds brought more changes, delivering a fresh, new look and a new format to better demonstrate the relevance of heart-centered, ancient wisdom in these modern times. You’ll find our content organized around five themed sections that answer the questions: How do our lives change when we begin to sense the world through our own indigenous hearts? What is the benefit to working (often very hard) to develop this perspective?

When our perception shifts and we experience life through the sacred fire of heart, Sustainability becomes a lived relationship with the earth, not just a trendy buzzword; Community becomes much more entwined with our lives and our spiritual growth; Healing becomes less of a chemical battleground and more of a living process; Listening becomes expansive as we communicate with a world beyond human language; and we embrace new Lifeways, the cultural and ceremonial practices that frame events and our passage through the cycles of time.

We hope this new format enhances your experience of Sacred Fire and offers you new ways to connect your own life to the lives of those around you. We welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Also new with this issue, Sacred Fire is bringing much more visibility to our publisher, Sacred Fire Foundation. An educational and charitable nonprofit, the foundation has two main purposes: to support the sources of indigenous and traditional wisdom through fundraising and grant-making programs and to spread the blessings of this wisdom to others via this magazine, the Ancient Wisdom Rising retreats, and other educational programs. You’ll find references to the foundation throughout this issue, and we hope it inspires you to support this life-affirming work.

There’s no other magazine quite like Sacred Fire. If you agree that spreading a heartcentric view of the world is vital to our ability to thrive, not just survive in the future, please get involved. We’re always looking for writers with stories and insights to share.

We’re interested in connecting with folks whose spiritual practice, earth connection and/or life lessons have taught them something about sustainability, community, healing, listening or lifeways. Talk about us with your friends; buy them a gift subscription this holiday season. And consider making a financial contribution. Your donation is the fuel that feeds our fire.

Thank you for living your life in a good way. Blessings to you upon the new year.

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Winds of Change

Welcome to the new Sacred Fire.

contents Sacred Fire

6 | NEWS FROM THE FOUNDATION 7 | CONTRIBUTORS 60 | MARKETPLACE 64 | EMBERS

community

healing

8 | SPARKS

17 | SPARKS

28 | SPARKS

RECREATING PARADISE Marilyn Berta

STANDING UP FOR THE SACRED

Sharon Brown

FUELING FAMINE

Sharon Brown

ALL TOGETHER NOW

Chris Schlake

Chris Schlake

SAVING SACRED SEEDS

BRIDGING THE GENERATIONS

Cindy Fogel

Cindy Fogel

END:CIV MOVIE REVIEW

YOUNG AT HEART

Chris Schlake

Chris Schlake

DERRICK JENSEN: THREE QUESTIONS

20 | PROFILE

Jonathan Merritt

HONORING THE ANCESTORS

12 | PHOTO ESSAY

10 22

LETTING GO THE GRIEF

30 | ESSAY WATER DREAMING Barry Williams

When confronted with a spiritual illness, what’s needed is a spiritual cure.

Marilyn Berta

32 | FEATURE

THROUGH THE EYES OF FRANZ LANTING

For over seven generations, Ann Marie Sayers’ Indian Canyon has been a home to ceremony

Jonathan Merritt

Marilyn Berta

Extreme weather, sketchy food, heavy equipment and patience, patience, patience

22 | ESSAY TO THE LEADERS OF THE WORLD

13 | POEM

Oren Lyons

OCCUPIED

A visionary message from the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth

Brigitte Goetze

14 | FEATURE

HEALING & SACRIFICE

The ancient ritual of the Sun Dance is alive with gifts of generosity and deep lessons of exchange.

24 | FEATURE

THE THREE SEEDS

24

Charles Eisenstein

THE SACRED ACTIVIST

Planted thousands of years ago, they carry messages of wisdom and awakening from the ancestors.

Marilyn Berta

Mystic and scholar Andrew Harvey brings his passion for God to his passion for justice

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COVER: NEJRON | DREAMSTIME.COM; THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: CINDY FOGEL; MACE FLEEGER; DAVID SUTTON; NICK COBBING / GREENPEACE.

4 | LETTERS

sustainability

listening

lifeways

36 | SPARKS

47 | SPARKS

THE DANCE OF A GOOD LIFE

PREPARING FOR THE NEXT STEP

Sharon Brown

Rosette Royale

LOVE IN THE REALM OF DREAMS

BRAVEHEART WOMEN’S SOCIETY

Rosette Royale

Chris Schlake

BIOLOGY OF THE WEATHER BEINGS

ESSAYS

Sharon Brown

39 | POEM

49 | MAYAN PROPHESIES 2012

Tata Omeakaehekatl Erick Gonzalez

SEEK THE COUNSEL OF TREES

Words of advice for the coming changes, spoken at a Council Fire at Ancient Wisdom Rising 2011

A Song For the Season of Drought James Davis 40 | ESSAY CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JENNIFER REISWIG; © ROBERT LEON / WWW.ROBERTLEON.COM; MACE FLEEGER.

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REQUIEM FOR SEQUOIA Heather Dunn

Sometimes teachers appear without notice. Sometimes they are human—sometimes they are not.

Rob Preece

A month spent feeding the fierce Dorje Khadro, Tantric Destroyer of Demons 52 | A NIGHT AT THE GREEN CORN FAST Christine Staub

42 | FEATURE

Dancing until sunrise to the song that births the world anew

SACRED PLANT TEACHERS

54 | FEATURES

Eliot Cowan

Their healing powers are undeniable—so what could possibly go wrong?

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50 | FIRE OF PURIFICATION

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LAST OF THE SPIRIT KEEPERS Carla Woody

Surrounded by the growing influence of evangelicals, a Lacandón Mayan Elder tries to keep the godpots burning.

on the cover: No, you’re not crazy, you’re learning how to hear. This issue’s Listening section offers three stories about lessons learned through communicating with plants.

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from our

readers

Muskrat Love

Last year I wrote about my pain when I observed oil spillage and noxious odors at the lovely lake by my house. I wanted to share more about my journey as I continue my early morning visits with Grandmother.

These visits have become for me the most intimate of experiences and I look forward to them because they make my heart sing. The oil spills came and went. The noxious odor?

Well . . , that’s a funny story. Close to the water’s edge from fall to spring a raft is moored. As I went deeper with my observing in the dim early light I occasionally noticed different water wave patterns radiating outward from the edge of the raft. One morning

Sacred Fire wants to hear from you! How do you feel about our new format? Tell us! Do you have a story idea? Share it! Where do you see the fire of heart making a difference in the world? Write us at publisher@sacredfiremagazine.com or P.O. Box 11014 Marina Del Rey, CA 90925

when the odor was particularly offensive I caught glimpse of these waves again and this time, the dark brown head and furry body of a muskrat purposely swimming away from the underside of the raft to the nearby shore. MUSKrat, of course! That’s the odor—authentic musk odor! A great joke on me! I had to laugh at myself.

How removed from nature am I? It is so amazing to me how one tiny observation can, in a split second, shift one’s whole perspective and subsequently one’s relationships. The odor no longer offended me. This hardworking little critter had built a nest in one of the empty metal drums underneath the raft, which provided the raft’s buoyancy. When the odor disappeared with the colder weather, I became attuned to muskrat presence just by the subtle movement of the water by the raft’s edges. When the snows came I rarely sighted one but if I listened very carefully, on occasion, I heard a yawn and a stretch

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or a quick plop as they entered the water from their hidden nest.

These days I’m fascinated with the summer residents—the night heron that squawk and roost as a family in tree branches and their great blue cousins as they, with their strong wings, cut across the air just above the water. I continue to watch the wave patterns. As they spread and shift across the water’s surface I imagine them reverberating through me too.

But the reverberations actually began in 2009 when I read an article in Sacred Fire magazine about a program to help children develop relationship with nature, offered near Greensboro, North Carolina. Something clicked for me—not a door closing but one opening. It led to my participating in a twoyear program there. And this led to my spending time with the lake and so it goes. A spark to a wildfire. I am so grateful to be on this journey and for all the help I’ve received along the way from the community, from the fires to the programs, to the amazing articles in the magazine that can transform powerfully. Many, many thanks.

Joanne Rothstein Arlington, MA

It’s All Relatives I enjoyed and agree with what Sharon Brown wrote in her Publisher’s Note in the last issue, especially one of her paragraphs about relationships.

My own father expressed it this way, “When I look at the world around me I know inside that we are all related and need each other to survive.” (He

Restoring Balance Through the Fire of Heart Issue Number Sixteen

sacredfiremagazine.com

was talking about Air, Water, all the other Beings including Rocks.) And, the ones who trained to be Medicine People— their function is to give life and vibrancy to all societies. In short, in industrial society we do ourselves possible (maybe probable) harm by self-medicating. We need the Medicine People to prescribe for us and to be aware that all their words and efforts will affect everything (lives and fortunes of all societies) for the next 5,200 years.

PUBLISHER & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR SHARON BROWN SENIOR EDITOR ROSETTE ROYALE CREATIVE DIRECTOR MACE FLEEGER MANAGING EDITOR KATHY DANCING HEART MARKETING DIRECTOR ROBIN RAINBOW GATE CONTRIBUTING EDITORS CHRIS SCHLAKE, MARILYN BERTA, JONATHAN MERRITT SUBMISSIONS MANAGER STEPHEN MICHAEL SCOTT COPY EDITOR & PROOFREADER LYSSA FASSETT PHOTO EDITOR ROBIN RAINBOW GATE SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER KATHY MCKEOUGH SUBSCRIPTION COORDINATOR MARILYN BERTA I.T. & WEB MASTER DAN CERNESE

Woody Morrison (Haida) British Columbia

Things are Looking Up

THANK YOU! to Wendy Domster and those who have shared their time, talent and financial support for this issue, and of course, Grandfather Fire.

I have long enjoyed the many fascinating and inspiring stories published in this fine journal. You give voice and respect to our indigenous elders with beauty and eloquence. But sometimes I detect a sad feeling of loss in the writings, a wistfulness for the way that once was. While clearly modern cultures expand and many ancient cultural traditions are at risk, I write to encourage hope and a new way of thinking.

There are many signs of positive change in our world. For those of us who grew up in a segregated society, the fact that we have a Harvard educated African American president, regardless of his policies, is a thing of wonder. I recall the hateful phrases that I heard as a boy, such as the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and the hopeless caricatures of Native Peoples in Hollywood movies. But now there is a growing respect and value across our cultures for Native ways and traditions. In my own lineage, the indigenous Bon tradition of Tibet, only a handful of masters escaped death during the Cultural Revolution, but through their unceasing efforts and the generosity of others, they have trained a new generation of teachers and even spread the teachings to the West. The peoples of the Amazon, long suppressed and exploited, are now beginning to benefit from landmark legislation that gives them the chance to legally challenge corporate interests and remain stewards of their own lands. Your own journal highlights many other exciting signs of renewal and rebirth of traditional ways.

There are always simultaneously many causes for sorrow and hope. It is our choice to dwell in somber darkness or face into the light. There is injustice and suffering in our world, but through our prayer, powerful speech and enlightened actions there are many causes for hope and celebration. We can be the change that we seek. May our radiant hearts be the lights unto this world.

Letters We encourage readers to share their reactions to Sacred Fire by sending emails to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com or letters to P.O. Box 11014 Marina Del Rey, CA 90925. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length and clarity.

Submissions We accept queries and unsolicited submissions of writing and illustration. See sacredfiremagazine.com for guidelines. Email editorial inquiries to submissions@sacredfiremagazine.com and illustration inquiries to artsubmissions@sacredfiremagazine.com.

Advertising Inquiries For an ad sales media kit, visit sacredfiremagazine.com/advertise or email advertising@sacredfiremagazine.com.

Change of Address or Other Subscription Inquiries Email subscriptions@ sacredfiremagazine.com and include both your old and new address. Please allow 6 weeks for address change to take effect.

Subscriptions In the United States: Four issues: $28, in Canada, $38, all other countries, $48 (all amounts in USD). Subscribe online at sacredfiremagazine.com Single Copy Sales Bookstore sales in the United States: $7.95, Canada $9.95. Order single copies and back issues online at sacredfiremagazine.com, $10 includes shipping within the U.S. Distribution Services Sacred Fire is available to newsstands in the U.S. and Canada through Ubiquity, Armadillo, Kent News, New Leaf, One Source, Ingram and Disticor Direct.

Sacred Fire has an electronic licensing relationship with EBSCO Publishing.

Postmaster Please send address changes to: P.O. Box 7284, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7284.

Reproduction No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Any requests to reprint material appearing in Sacred Fire magazine must be made in writing and sent to publisher@sacredfiremagazine.com.

PUBLISHED BY SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that supports initiatives that honor and sustain traditional wisdom and indigenous spiritual approaches, because these ancestral lifeways foster global balance and healing. Through its educational and charitable activities, the Foundation supports the sources of ancestral wisdom and brings this wisdom to the world.

SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION sacredfirefoundation.org P.O. Box 11014 Marina Del Rey, CA 90925

Board of Trustees CHAIRMAN DAVID WILEY TRUSTEES ALAN KERNER, ARTEMIA FABRE, GWEN BROZ, WILLIAM COUGHLIN TREASURER STERLING KLIPPEL EXEC. DIR. DEVELOPMENT (INTERIM) CINDY FOGLE EXEC. DIR. PARTNERS AND GRANTS SOFIA ARROYO EXEC. DIR. COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION SHARON BROWN SECRETARY VICTORIA REEVES The opinions expressed by Sacred Fire contributors are not necessarily those of Sacred Fire magazine, Sacred Fire Foundation, the Sacred Fire Community, and/or their respective staffs.

John Jackson director Chamma Ling Solitary Retreat Center of Colorado Land of the Loving Mother

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news from the

foundation

OREN LYONS

The Mission of Sacred Fire Foundation is to restore balance by igniting a heart-centered way to relate to each other, our communities and the world around us. We serve as a doorway through which people can discover the sacred, interconnected nature of life, a perspective held by indigenous peoples and spiritual traditions everywhere. To that end, we actively support initiatives that help to ensure these original pathways to connection are alive for generations to come.

Oren Lyons Awarded Wisdom Fellowship Sacred Fire Foundation is pleased to award our first Wisdom Fellowship to Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan and member of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (the Haudenosaunee). He receives the award Nov. 10, 2012, at Ancient Wisdom Rising in Atlanta.

Wisdom Fellowships honor indigenous and traditional elders whose outstanding leadership preserves, protects and revitalizes the spiritual and cultural heritage of their people while building bridges of understanding to all nations.

Chief Lyons has been an advocate for Indigenous rights since the ‘60s. “At first, I wanted to defend the Iroquois.

Then my sights broadened to embrace other Indians. Then I saw this had to include defending indigenous peoples all over the world,” he says in Visionaries: The 20th Century’s 100 Most Inspirational Leaders. During almost 50 years of activism, he has been an outspoken advocate for world peace and the Earth’s environmental problems.

Protecting the Sacred

The Revolution of Heart

Staying connected with the wisdom of the past is precious. The modern world would do well to remember the “original instructions,” the early ways of living in reciprocal relationship with each other and nature.

These instructions were grounded in the awareness that humans are just one small part of an enormous, sacred dance of life. We’ve lost that awareness. Increasingly, humans break the world community’s rhythm by marching selfishly to the beat of our own independent drummers.

After centuries of assault, the sacred traditions are an endangered species.

Sacred Fire Foundation works to keep these sacred lifeways alive through our Protecting the Sacred grant-making program. We fund projects that protect the sacred ways, from preserving native food traditions, to maintaining cycles of ceremony, to revitalizing languages, healing practices and traditional crafts.

Grant applications will be accepted Jan. 1- Feb. 15 and June 1-July 15, 2013. For more information visit sacredfirefoundation.org.

Do you feel it? People everywhere long to live in balance and relationship with each other and the living world. They’re taking action to shift our culture’s consciousness from fear to love. Grassroots movements are demonstrating the necessity of moving our collective focus away from mind and materialism toward heart and collaboration.

This revolution of heart is changing our world.

Sacred Fire Foundation has joined The Sacred Fire Community to create a Revolution of Heart website and Facebook page to raise the volume on speaking from the heart. Sharing ideas, connections and actions, the Revolution of Heart will elevate heart-filled conversation into mainstream consciousness.

Currently the site demonstrates the depth and breadth of this movement around the world. As the Revolution gains momentum, it will unite the good works of hundreds of thousands of people under a common cry for change. Become a revolutionary— help us shape this project’s future. revolutionofheart.net

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MICHELLE GABEL / THE POST-STANDARD

Find Oren Lyon’s statement to the U.N. on page 22

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this issue’s

1. DARLENE DUNNING; 2. WILL BERLINER; 3. JENNIFER MEANS; 4.KENDRA STAUB; 5. ANDRE ANDREEV; 6.ROBERT LEON .

contributors 1. Carla Woody is the author of

3. Jonathan Merritt is a Mara-

5. Charles Eisenstein is a

Calling Our Spirits Home and Standing Stark. She founded Kenosis and Kenosis Spirit Keepers to support human potential and help preserve indigenous wisdom traditions. For more than twenty years Carla has led spiritual travel journeys working with Maya, Hopi and Q’ero peoples, as well as offered group and individual programs toward conscious living. She will return to Chiapas in January 2013. kenosis.net kenosisspiritkeepers.org

kame, a traditional healer in the lineage of the Huichol people of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidentale. A founder, former editor-in-chief and contributing editor of Sacred Fire, he is on the board of directors of the Earth & Spirit Council (earthandspirit.org). Joyfully married and the father of three children, he lives, practices and works in Portland, Oregon. He keeps a monthly community fire under the auspices of the Sacred Fire Community.

teacher, speaker and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money and human cultural evolution.

His books (The Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics) as well as his other essays and blog posts on web magazines have generated a vast online following; he speaks frequently at conferences and other events, and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts. He lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife and three sons. charles@panenthea.com

2. Eliot Cowan Founder of the Blue Deer Seminary and the Blue Deer Center, Eliot Cowan is the author of Plant Spirit Medicine. A Tsaurirrikame, a fully initiated shaman in the Huichol tradition, he offers Plant Spirit Medicine practitioner courses and continuing education, healing camps based on traditional Huichol healing, and animal totem courses at the Blue Deer Center. bluedeercenter.org

4. Christine Staub, M.D., wife, mother, and family physician, is deeply grateful for her living relationship with sacred aspects of Fire which guide her journey as a human being. She is passionate about the healing power of the circle. As a Sacred Fire Community firekeeper, she has been offering monthly community fires in Greensboro, NC since 2004.

She has served as Program Lead for Ancient Wisdom Rising in 2009, 2011 and 2012.

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6. Robert Leon is based in Canada.

He is an adventure-travel photojournalist and documentary photographer with 31 years of professional photography experience. His work is a way of contributing to other people’s appreciation of diverse cultures and their traditions. He photographs people in their environment, especially indigenous people. His photography has evolved into a visual voice for all cultures. robertleon.com

sustainability

living in right relationship with the earth to thrive, not just survive

“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.�

D. Elton Trueblood

TRIGGER IMAGE / GLASSHOUSE

Quaker author & theologian

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{ sparks }

From Left: After being turned into a desert, the marshlands of Southern Iraq are returning. An Ethanol refinery.

FROM LEFT: MUDHAFAR SALIM; ERIC TADSEN / ISTOCKPHOTO.

Recreating Paradise Azaam Alwash spent his childhood in Iraq on the banks of the Euphrates River. Growing up there in the ‘60s, he reveled in the beauty of Iraq’s central wetlands, the ancestral home of the Ma’dan Tribe for 7,000 years. To the young Alwash the marshland’s reed beds appeared to reach the sky. Even when he immigrated to the United States in 1978, his love for the region never faltered.

Then in the 1990s former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered the drainage of the wetlands to subdue rebels who used the marshes as strategic hideouts. Embankments were constructed to divert the waters that had sustained humans and wildlife for millennia. People, including the Ma’dan, were forced to abandon their indigenous homeland and fled to other parts of Iraq or Iran.

Alwash’s parents traveled further afield, joining him in the U.S. in 1990. After the 2003 U.S. invasion Alwash returned to his birthplace. When he arrived, he couldn’t believe what he saw: The region near the Euphrates, named in the Book of

Genesis as one of the four rivers that flowed through the Garden of Eden, was a wasteland.

Yet he also witnessed flickers of life. The Ma’dan, known as Marsh Arabs, had begun to reclaim the region. They dug breeches in the canal embankments; they reflooded small areas. Alwash found their work inspirational. “The Marsh Arabs have returned home determined to recreate paradise,” he said.

During that visit, Azzam became determined to help the Ma’dan people. In the U.S. he earned his living as an engineer. He recognized that a cohesive plan could help replenish the marshland, and he joined with the Ma’dan to provide engineering support.

This led him in 2004 to found Nature Iraq, a non-governmental organization that seeks to restore the country’s natural environment and rich cultural heritage.

So far, restoration projects have returned the marshes to almost 60 percent of their previous state. Communities are being built along the marsh perimeter, a good sign in Alwash’s eyes.

Yet threats remain: Dams constructed in the neighbor-

ing countries of Turkey and Syria hamper water flow into the marshlands. Chemical and pesticide runoff has turned fresh marsh water increasingly saline.

Alwash says that Nature Iraq is calling for a “blue revolution,” a term to describe the revitalizing effects of clean water on the region and its people. Critical for the revolution’s success, he believes, are negotiations among Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

But the most important step, he says, is the continued involvement of the Marsh Arabs. After all, their persistence and dedication have brought the marshes back to life. Their work has filled him with hope.

“The Ma’dan are beautiful role models for living sustainably.”

—MARILYN BERTA

Fueling Famine A staple the world over, corn has fed and nurtured human populations since long before Archer Daniels Midland.

Originally cultivated more than ten thousand years ago, corn is synonymous in many Native languages with “our mother” and “our life.” For groups throughout the Americas, in

fact, the People are corn and corn is the People.

Today in the desacralized First World, however, corn is no longer kin. Instead, it’s a monocropped commodity grown densely over millions of acres of supplanted prairie land, primarily for livestock.

Increasingly, due to recent U.S. energy legislation, the ancient grain is now being fed not to people, not even to hogs and cattle, but into our fuel tanks.

As a result of pumping the nation’s gas pumps full of corn, growing numbers of people will face hunger.

Soon, say some observers, hunger will turn desperate.

And desperate will turn violent.

Citing soaring, recordbreaking global food prices— including a 65% increase in corn prices since June—the New England Complex Systems Institute predicts that critical breakdowns in global food security will prompt a new wave of food riots across the Third World. Key to the price surge, they say, are federal mandates to convert 4.9 billion bushels of U.S. corn into fuel.

This past summer, the U.S. experienced its worst drought Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 9

| sustainability}

Many entries in the 100th Annual Cherokee Indian Fair were grown from Center for Cherokee Plants seeds.

in 50 years, which caused the nation’s corn yields to be cut nearly in half, according to the USDA. But not even all of that meager harvest will find its way onto dinner plates: A full 46% of that yield is legally mandated for ethanol production. While the diversion from food and feed is a boon to the biofuels industry, the business of eating, NECSI analysts warn, will take the hit.

As stocks of food corn shrink and corn prices rise, the impact on families in the “developing” world is catastrophic. Though people in the industrialized nations spend 10-20% of their income on food, that number jumps to 80% for the “bottom billion.”

Just as Oxfam reports that a mere 1% increase in food prices sends 16 million more people into poverty, the USDA predicts an increase next year of 3-4%—on top of the 10% spike of last summer.

“Given the possibility of price-driven famines,” says NESCI president Yaneer BarYam, “burning corn for cars is unconscionable.”

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Traditionally recognized as sacred, and even as the goddess of providence and community well-being, today corn no longer knits the people together: Our abuse of her threatens to unleash widespread social unrest.

—CHRIS SCHLAKE

Saving Sacred Seeds In the harsh Winter of 1838, 17,000 Cherokee were marched over 1,200 miles from their homelands to the Oklahoma Territory. On foot, without shoes or moccasins, some wrapped in smallpoxinfected blankets, they were driven by soldiers who stole their food. Nearly 5,000 died on this “Trail of Tears.”

Along the way the women secretly gathered shiny black beans and sewed them into their garments. In spring they planted these life-giving seeds in the foreign land, allowing

their people to survive.

Due largely to the efforts of Kevin Welch, founder of the Center for Cherokee Plants, and his wife Sarah, these same beans are once again being planted, harvested and shared on the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina where the Eastern Band of the Cherokee still live.

Originally founded to save old-time family lines of seeds, the Center reconnects Cherokee with their traditional practices by teaching the current generation to grow, preserve and prepare healthy heritage foods. “The kids want to know about the feasts, the ceremonies, the dances,” says Kevin. “I tell them, if you don’t know how to maintain your traditional food sources, our people will perish. That is the foundation.”

At the recent 100th Annual Cherokee Indian Fair much of the bounty was grown from Center seed. “This little guy’s

seed savers exchange knows that the well-being of

future generations depends on maintaining the integrity and diversity of heritage plants.

They offer an alternative model to big agriculture by collecting, growing and sharing heirloom seeds, from amaranth to watermelon. seedsavers.org

been gardening since he was two,” said one proud mother of a six-year-old. “None of my kids will ever starve to death.”

On a recent trip to Oklahoma Kevin was handed some seeds by a Choctaw woman.

“These are your Cherokee Tan Pumpkin,” she said. “Your people brought these when they came. I thought you’d like to bring them home.” Back in North Carolina some of the grandmothers brought out small jars of the same seeds.

No one had known what they were called; they’re now being planted again.

Located on land just a few hundred yards from Kituwah Mound, the birthplace or “Mother Town” of the Cherokee People, the Center provides a tribal seed bank, a seed exchange program and a nursery for propagating traditional edibles. It also offers artists’ resources and plants for wildlife and erosion control. Additionally, the Center maintains a “memory bank” of oral histories to help maintain traditional Cherokee botanical knowledge. “Without a story behind a seed,” says Welch, “a seed is just a seed.”

—CINDY FOGEL

CINDY FOGEL

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MOVIE REVIEW

FROM LEFT: DAWN PALEY; COURTESY DERRICK JENSEN.

End:Civ With collapse imminent around the globe, you’d think it would be time to re-boot civilization. But what if “civilization” itself is bunk?

The documentary End:Civ, written and directed by Franklin Lopez, looks directly at this idea and asserts that civilization not only is patently unsustainable but, beneath its veneer of genteel ingenuity, is actually quite savage. Inherently (and increasingly) dependent on both nonrenewable resources and the use of systematic violence, civilization is well past its shelf life and needs to be scrapped.

Based loosely on grassroots activist Derrick Jensen’s bestselling book Endgame, the film features Jensen as the central narrator along with a posse of over 20 other resistors to “civilized” life. After marshaling evidence for the suicidal mission of industrial society, Jensen asks

watch now Watch End:Civ at endciv.com. Award-winning director Franklin Lopez is available to speak at screenings in person or via Skype.

the viewers to “give me a threshold, give me a specific point at which you’ll finally take a stand.”

Jensen knows that his predominantly nonviolent audience cares about the fate of the Earth, but he also believes that their nonviolent fundamentalism cripples them strategically.

No stranger to controversy, he contends that civil rights leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were less effective because their peaceful cooperation with the powers-that-be blunted mass dissent.

Like Jensen himself End:Civ wants to get inside viewers’ heads and hearts and set the familiar furniture on fire. Griefstricken and outraged by the status quo, the film sees in industrial civilization nothing less than white collar terrorism (writ large) across the whole world.

The film insists that the heirs of today’s Earth won’t care how we halted this juggernaut so long as we do. Fifty years from now, says Jensen, people won’t be interested in our ideologies or political strategies, the moral purity of our actions or even how hard we tried to fix the mess we’re in. “All they will care about will be ‘Do we live on a living planet?’”

A fast-paced collage of archival footage, animation, moving graphics, music, slapstick and satire (including the revelation that the original title for the film Star Wars was actually Star Non-Violent Civil Disobedience), the film incites tough questions about human obligation to future generations and the natural world.

What Jensen ultimately wants is to settle the question of violence not through dogma or rhetoric but with situations that spark people into action. He wants people to think and feel for themselves as they endeavor to defend the land upon which they depend.

—CHRIS SCHLAKE

Derrick Jensen: Three Questions SF: Is there is a spiritual perspective that guides your activism?

DJ: Yes. The understanding that every “thing” on the planet is alive and has a life as precious to him, her or it as mine is to me. I explore my spirituality at great length in nearly all my books, most especially Dreams, What We Leave Behind, and A Language Older than Words.

From Left: Franklin López filming an Oregon clear cut. Derrick Jensen has authored more than 20 books.

SF: Are there traditional wisdom keepers that help you maintain your perspective and balance?

DJ: As in trees? Muses? Dreamgivers? Rivers? Dragonflies? Yes. As in indigenous peoples? No. I’m not indigenous and never will be, and it’s extremely important that I not in any way co-opt indigenous traditions.

SF: And what is your vision of how humans are to survive?

DJ: The most important thing humans need to do so that everyone can survive is to bring down civilization. What is the first thing anyone must do when faced with a sociopath? Stop the sociopath. What’s the first thing that must happen when someone is in an abusive situation? They must be brought to safety. For humans to survive, civilization must go. That means the physical infrastructure, and it means the philosophies and religions. Like Vine Deloria said, “If humans are to survive, all of Christianity and most of science must go.”

—JONATHAN MERRITT Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 11

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THROUGH THE EYES OF FRANS LANTING Extreme weather, sketchy food, heavy equipment and patience, patience, patience

By Marilyn Berta Photographs by Frans Lanting

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week after graduating with a masters degree in environmental economics Frans Lanting found himself photographing birds in the marsh next to his university and realized his heart was calling him to a different life. “I abandoned all caution, took up a camera and never looked back,” he said.

Now one of the greatest nature photographers of our time, he’s been known to lie in the mud for days, moving only an inch per hour closer to an animal whose essence he hopes to capture on camera. A former photographer-inresidence for National Geographic, he has received numerous and prestigious awards for his work.

SF: What keeps calling you to your work?

FL: My wife (writer, editor and videographer Christine Eckstrom) and I have a passion for interpreting the natural world and sharing that story in photos, 12 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

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film and words. We work to foster an understanding of the earth and its natural history, and we hope our passion and sense of wonder will be contagious.

Speak about the beautiful sense of connection people experience with your photographs.

My best work comes from paying exquisite attention to the animals, being as passive as I can and waiting until the moment when the animal chooses to reveal itself to me. That is the moment to capture—the heart of my work.

ILLUSTRATION: MACE FLEEGER

In addition to being artists you and your wife are known as ambassadors for the preservation of the natural world.

The animals are the ambassadors. We become the envoys who go back and forth between the two worlds, the natural and the cosmopolitan world. My original studies were in environmental economics, so I’m always interested in reconciling the tension between people and nature. No matter where we go in the world the human footprint is there.

Even if the footprint can’t be seen, the impact of humans reaches all around the globe. www.lanting.com

Occupied

By Brigitte Goetze

This spring I missed again the day the waking plum raised green hands in prayer— my mind too occupied with striking items from a relentless to-do-list.

But today I breathed the blooming thistles’ sweetness, each lavender head exhaling holy names, entraining my harried heart.

And praise erased all thoughts of chores.

Brigitte Goetze, biologist, goat farmer, writer, lives near Oregon’s Coast Range. Her most recent poems can be found in Four and Twenty, Outwardlink, and Mused.

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Planted thousands of years ago, they carry messages of wisdom and awakening from the ancestors

BY CHARLES EISENSTEIN

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OLA DUSEGĂ…RD / ISTOCKPHOTO

THE THREE SEEDS

{ feature } Reprinted from: realitysandwich.com /three_seeds

Once upon a time, the tribe of humanity embarked upon a long journey called Separation. It was not a blunder as some—seeing its ravages upon the planet—might think. Nor was it a fall, nor an expression of some innate evil peculiar to the human species. It was a journey with a purpose: to experience the extremes of separation, to develop the gifts that come in response to it and to integrate all of that in a new age of Reunion.

But we knew at the outset that there was danger in this journey: that we might become lost in separation and never come back. We might become so alienated from nature that we would destroy the very basis of life; we might become so separated from each other that our poor egos, left naked and terrified, would become incapable of rejoining the community of all being. In other words, we foresaw the crisis we face today.

That is why, thousands of years ago, we planted three seeds that would sprout at the time that our journey of separation reached its extreme. Three seeds, three transmissions from the past to the future, three ways of preserving and transmitting the truth of the world, the self and how to be human.

Imagine you were alive thirty thousand years ago and had a vision of all that was to come: symbolic language; the naming and labeling of the world; agriculture; the domestication of the wild and dominion over other species and the land; the Machine, the mastery of natural forces; the forgetting of how beautiful and perfect the world is; the atomization of society; a world where humans fear even to drink of the streams and rivers, where we live among strangers and don’t know the people next door, where we kill across the planet with the touch of a button, where the seas turn black and the air burns our lungs, where we are so broken that we dare not remember that it isn’t supposed to be this way.

Imagine you saw it all coming. How would you help people thirty thousand years thence? How would you send information, knowledge and aid over such a vast gulf of time? You see, this actually happened. That is how we came up with the three seeds.

The first seed was the wisdom lineages: lines of transmission going back thousands of years that have preserved and protected essential knowledge. From adept to disciple, in every part of the world, various wisdom traditions have passed down teachings in secret. Wisdom keepers, Sufis, Taoist wizards, Zen masters, mystics, gurus and many others hiding within each religion kept the knowledge safe until the time when the world would be ready to reclaim it.

That time is now, and they have done their job well. The time of secrets is over. Released too early, the knowledge was co-opted, abused or usually just ignored. When we still had not covered the territory of separation, when we still aspired to widening our conquest of nature, when the story of humanity’s ascent was not yet complete, we weren’t ready to hear about union, connectedness, interdependency, inter-being-ness.

We thought the answer was more control, more technology, more logic, a better-engineered society of rational ethics, more control over matter, nature and human nature. But now the old paradigms are failing, and human consciousness has reached a degree of receptivity that allows this seed to spread across the earth. It has been released, and it is growing inside of us en masse.

The second seed was the sacred stories: myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore and the perennial themes that keep reappearing in various guises throughout history. They have always been with us so that however far we have wandered into the labyrinth of separation, we have always had a lifeline, though tenuous and tangled, to the truth. The stories nurture that tiny spark of memory within us that knows our origin and our destination.

The ancients, knowing that the truth would be co-opted and distorted if left in explicit form, encoded it into stories. When we hear or read one of these stories, even if we cannot decode the symbolism, we are affected on an unconscious level. Myths and fairy tales represent a very sophisticated psychic technology. Each generation of storytellers, without consciously intending to, transmits the covert wisdom that it learned, unconsciously, from the stories.

Without directly contradicting the paradigms of separation and ascent, our myths and stories have smuggled in a very difIssue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 15

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ferent understanding of reality. Under the cover of “It’s just a story,” they convey emotional, poetic and spiritual truth that contradicts linear logic, reductionism, determinism and objectivity. I am not talking here about moralistic stories. Most of those carry little truth.

To transmit the second seed we must humble ourselves to our stories and not try to use them for our own moralistic ends.

They were created by beings far wiser than our modern selves.

If you tell or transmit stories, be very respectful of their original form and don’t change them unless you feel a poetic upwelling. Pay attention to which children’s literature has the feel of a true story. Most recent kids’ literature does not.

You can recognize a true story by the way its images linger in your mind. It imprints itself on the psyche. You get the feeling that something else has been transmitted alongside the plot, something invisible. Usually, such stories bear rich symbolism often unknown even to their authors. A comparison of two twentieth-century children’s books illustrates my point: Compare a Berenstain Bears story with How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Only the latter has a psychic staying power, revealing the spirit of a true story and is rich with archetypal symbolism.

The third seed was the indigenous tribes, the people who at some stage opted out of the journey of separation.

Imagine that at the outset of the journey the Council of Humanity gathered and certain members volunteered to retreat to remote locations and forgo separation, which meant refusing to enter into an adversarial, controlling relationship to nature and therefore meant refusing the process that leads to the development of high technology. It also meant that when these people were discovered by the humans who had gone deeply into separation, they would meet with the most atrocious suffering. That was unavoidable.

These people of the third seed have nearly completed their mission today. Their mission was simply to survive long enough to provide living examples of how to be human. Each tribe carried a different piece, sometimes many pieces, of this knowledge. Many of them show us how to see and relate to the land, animals and plants. Others show us how to work with dreams and the unseen.

Some have preserved natural ways of raising children, now spreading through such books as The Continuum Concept. Some show us how to communicate without words—Tribes such as the Hazda and the Piraha communicate mostly in song. Some

show us how to free ourselves from the mentality of linear time. All of them exemplify a way of being that we intuitively recognize and long for. They stir a memory in our hearts and awaken our desire to return.

In a recent conversation, the Lakota Aloysius Weasel Bear told me that he once asked his grandfather, “Grandpa, the White Man is destroying everything; shouldn’t we try to stop him?” His grandfather replied, “No, it isn’t necessary. We will stand by. He will outsmart himself.” The grandfather recognized two things in this reply: That separation carries the seeds of its own demise That his people’s role is to be themselves But I don’t think that this is an attitude of callousness that leaves the White Man to his just desserts; it is an attitude of compassion and helping that understands the tremendous importance of simply being who they are.

They are keeping alive something that the planet and the community of all being needs.

By the same token, our culture’s fascination with all things indigenous is not merely the latest form of cultural imperialism and exploitation. True, the final stage of cultural domination would be to turn native ways into a brand, a marketing image. And certainly there are some in my culture who, sundered from community and from a real identity, adopt native pseudo-identities and pride themselves on their connections to native culture, spirituality and people.

Underneath that, however, we recognize that the surviving first peoples have something important to teach us. We are drawn to their gift, to the seed that they have preserved until the present time.

To receive this seed it is not necessary to participate in their rituals, take an animal name or claim a native ancestor but only to humbly see what they have preserved so that memory may awaken. Until recently, such seeing was impossible for us, blinkered by our cultural superiority complex, our arrogance, our apparent success in mastering the universe. Now that converging ecological and social crises reveal the bankruptcy of our ways, we have the eyes to see the ways of others.

The seeds of Reunion are sprouting everywhere. That which was hidden for millennia is coming to light. Soon, fertilized by the detritus of our decaying civilization, the sprouts will mature, bloom and bear fruit. Our job is first to receive them, then to spread them everywhere and to guard and foster them with every ounce of our love.

These people of the third seed have nearly completed their mission today.

Their mission was simply to survive long enough to provide living examples of how to be human.

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community

The ways we connect through collaboration, creativity & conflict

“Why do people have to be this lonely? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?�

Haruki Murakami Japanese author

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Standing Up for the Sacred Petitions for political and environmental causes are flooding inboxes these days. With a click of a “Send Now” button, you can take a stand to stop fracking, support better education, cut greenhouse gas emissions, demand governmental accountability and end unfair trade practices. But will initiatives like these be the key to bringing balance, justice and harmony into the world?

The Sacred Fire Community is an international organization that offers a petition with a different perspective. It asks people to take a stand for the sacred.

The website banner says it all: We stand for the sacred and interconnected nature of all life.

The SFC encourages people to declare and defend the position that the world and every aspect of it is alive, holy and worthy of respect. Click the big, red “Stand With Us” button and you’ve added your name to a roster

now you know

that includes Julia Butterfly Hill, the activist known for living two years in a 1,500-yearold redwood to prevent loggers from cutting it down, Eliot Cowan and less-well-known but equally passionate life-lovers around the world.

“What would our world look like if political, economic and social leaders made a commitment to respect the interconnectedness of life?” asks SFC Speaker Erin Everett. “What if everyone honored their relationship with the living world?”

The Sacred Fire Community is committed to bringing this discussion to the forefront of modern conversation.

Eliot Cowan, Huichol shaman, founder of Blue Deer Center and author of Plant Spirit Medicine offers this: “Taking this stand is a simple, powerful act. It creates a field of vibrant, aligned human heart energy. The divine livingness of the world, so long ignored and desecrated

by our people, will rejoice in that field and will respond by nourishing all of life.”

Which is to say, the earth is listening, and there’s power in numbers.

Paying attention to longignored, other-than-human beings of the world can bring large-scale global balance and healing, but taking the stand apparently has benefits that accrue closer to home, too.

Another statement from the website says, “By gathering in community and re-establishing our relationship with the living world, we end the isolation of modern culture and build lives of meaning and purpose.”

Founded in 2003, The Sacred Fire Community makes it easy for people to gather in community. Initiated Fire Keepers host monthly fires in almost 60 locations around the world. sacredfirecommunity.org —SHARON BROWN

The vision of the Sacred Fire Community is to develop “deep community” for the sake of personal and community well-being and balanced relationship with nature. For a list of community fires around the world, see pages 60-61. Sacred Fire magazine was published by Sacred Fire Community until 2007 when the magazine was incorporated into the educational programs of Sacred Fire Foundation.

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Taking this stand is a simple, powerful act. It creates a field of vibrant, aligned human heart energy.The divine livingness of the world, so long ignored and desecrated by our people, will rejoice in that field and will respond by nourishing all of life.

FROM LEFT: COURTESY JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL; LAWRENCE MESSERMAN.

From Left: Eco-Activist, Julia Butterfly Hill. The 2010 Sacred Fire Community Reunion held in the United Kingdom.

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From Left: Program manger, Juanita Wilson. Claire Couture, 76 years young, performing at a recent concert.

FROM LEFT: SOUTHWESTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE; JODI NICHOLAS.

Bridging the Generations What does it take to create a strong community? Leadership.

Shared values. A common bond.

The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI) are taking the long view in how to re-build their communities after hundreds of years of genocide, abuse and cultural decimation.

Inspired by a Hopi adult leadership program, elders and tradition keepers of EBCI have come together to inspire young adults to be leaders steeped in the old ways. They’re looking to re-embrace the cultural values that created balance and stability among their people from earliest times.

The result is The Right Path Adult Leadership Program, a year-long, multi-faceted course that blends contemporary leadership development with traditional Cherokee knowledge and values.

“Ga-du-gi (selfless service to others) is a core Cherokee value,” says Juanita Wilson, The Right Path program manager.

“It’s considering the needs of the community over the individual.

We need this in our leaders.”

Participants hear respected elders and speakers pass down

what it means to be Tsa-la-gi, or Cherokee. From clan customs to the wisdom of native food ways, from stories that teach the “right way” to the relationship between mental and spiritual health and farming, The Right Path ensures the collective wisdom of the old ones is carried on.

“It reminds us how our ancestors led The People, how we looked to elders for guidance,” says Juanita. “These new leaders are the bridge connecting our elders to the young people, who will then take their turn to lead tomorrow.”

The program is unique in that it also includes revitalization of the Cherokee language, the deepest common bond between the people and their land and history. Currently only 280 Cherokee are fluent speakers; all are over the age of 60.

“Revitalizing the language is a race against time,” says Juanita.

How’s the program working? Tom Belt, a Right Path program speaker and tradition holder, says this about the new leaders: “They are a light that has been turned on for our people that we haven’t seen in over 100 years.”

—CINDY FOGEL

Young At Heart With Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Roger Daltry all on the long side of sixty, worrywart rock fans increasingly wonder how long can the show go on? Ask a band of octogenarian rockers from western Massachusetts, however, and they’ll tell you the icons of rock are just hitting their stride.

Known as the Young @ Heart Chorus (youngatheartchorus.com) since their inception at a housing project for the elderly in Northampton, MA, the group has been eroding stereotypes of old age since 1982. Despite an average age of 83, they don’t croon, carol or serenade— they shred. Eschewing big band, pop and show tunes, they instead cover with sass and soul everything from Jimi Hendrix to Jefferson Airplane, the Stones to Springsteen, the Clash to Coldplay.

Drawn together by an infectious love for singing and performing, they form a clan of intrepid troubadours who sometimes need to sit or even tote along a tank of pharmaceutical-grade oxygen but who always keep on

keepin’ on. A community with a mission, even as they mourn the not-infrequent passings of their comrades, they rehearse regularly and even complete tours around the world.

Through passionate and poignant re-creations of well-known songs, the troupe seems to turn hipster skeptics into adoring fans wherever they go. In the deft and devoted hands of director Bob Climan, The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” and Talking Heads’ “Heaven” become intergenerational anthems for community sing-alongs.

For one inspired fan, in fact, the troupe became the subject of his next film. Since its 2008 release Steven Walker’s documentary about the chorus has won 23 film-festival awards and stands as the highest-ever grossing British documentary in the U.S. The seasoned rockers, known for leaving their hotel rooms tidier than they found them, are currently celebrating their thirty-year anniversary.

Check them out and you’ll see, when they kick out the jams they’re not talking about your grandmother’s marmalade.

—CHRIS SCHLAKE Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 19

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HONORING THE ANCESTORS For over seven generations, Ann Marie Sayers’ Indian Canyon has been a home to ceremony

By Marilyn Berta

Anne Marie Sayers (and friend) at one of five granite waterfalls in Indian Canyon.

A walk reveals a waterfall, the primary sacred site of Indian Canyon and an essential part of all ceremonies. After smudging, cleansing with sage to walk in connection with Creator, she enters her cabin. Brightly colored blankets, buffalo skulls adorned with necklaces, a turtle shell drum, and a large stone mortar and pestle—excavated from the land—grace the room. Artwork created by her daughter and gifts from indigenous people all over the world complete the space. Sayers settles on a big leather sofa and talks to Sacred Fire.

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SF: How do you honor your ancestors?

AMS: I am a Costanoan Ohlone Indian of the Mutsun language. We’re sitting and talking where my ancestors talked and sat. This home site has collected the positive energies of generations of my people, and I feel their powerful presence. When you are in one place, generation after generation after generation, a communication

takes place that both understand.

Here in the Canyon I make an offering of tobacco every morning. I have traveled extensively, and regardless of where I am, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sydney, Australia or Christ Church Arctic Village, I offer tobacco to Mother Earth and say, “Ancestors, whose land I am on, please guide me so that my words, my actions will honor you.” And I’ve found that

COURTESY ANN MARIE SAYERS

red and yellow wooden sign announces the entrance to Indian Canyon, whose walls are lush with hemlock,Woodwardia ferns and fragrant California buckeye. Standing nearby is Ann Marie Sayers, the straight-talking, energetic chair of the Indian Canyon Nation and Director of the Costanoan Indian Research Center. Born and raised here, Sayers has dedicated nearly 30 years to restoring and protecting native culture throughout the central California coast. She built her log cabin on the site where her greatgrandfather Sebastian Garcia built his home, the same place where Sebastian’s great-grandmother built hers.

{ profile} when I don’t take the time to do this, something will happen that day that will remind me I need to pay my respect.

I also work monitoring building sites that are archeologically sensitive areas. The Repatriation Act addressed the rights of Native Americans to the remains of their ancestors. Now, instead of the bones being wrapped in old newspapers and dumped in a dusty corner of a museum, they are being returned to their people for proper reburial.

At times it is challenging dealing with so much death. Even if I don’t know the people personally, their death still has an impact on me; I feel the connection.

SF: Would you speak about the importance of the elders in your community?

AMS: The elders have always been a vital part of every gathering held at Indian Canyon. They bring the gifts of knowledge, wisdom and experience to share with the community. The elders teach us how to live with joy, respect and responsibility. When we are beginning a new project, the elders hold ceremony so we begin in the right way with a clear intention and gratitude.

And elders who may have experienced a lifetime of having their Indian ways disrespected are validated and appreciated in the Canyon. It comes full circle.

SF: I’m curious about the history of the native people who lived on this part of the California coast.

AMS: At the beginning of time our culture was shaped by the environment in which we lived. The canyon is filled with oak, pine, sycamore, bay and Manzanita. Our economy was based on gathering acorns, berries and many other plants supplemented by wild game, deer, turkey, rabbit, elk and quail.

My people traded, socialized and married with neighboring tribes.

In 1774 Juan Bautista De Anza and his Spanish soldiers came up the coast from Mexico to lay Spanish claim to the land. They did their job well: A total of

21 missions were built. Indian Canyon became a safe haven for the natives who did not like the restrictions of the San Juan Bautista Mission.

When school children study California history, the real story is not told.

In the mid 1800s to say you were an Indian was suicide. In 1854 alone the government paid more than 1.4 million dollars to hired killers, 5 dollars a head, 50 cents a scalp. Quite a number of Ohlone descendants come up here and say to me, “Ann Marie, my mother says I’m Mexican, my grandmother says I’m Mexican, but my grandmother’s sister told me I’m Ohlone, right here from the Mission.” I tell them, if you were an Ohlone woman in the mid 1800s and you watched your husband and your sons get killed, you’re gonna tell your daughter, “If you want to live, tell people you’re Mexican.” So consequently you have five, six or seven generations of what I call Indian Denial. It was simply a matter of survival.

SF: Has Indian Canyon always been a place for people to hold ceremony?

AMS: Yes, people come to ask Spirit for help moving forward with their lives.

Many are on The Red Road, which means being clean and sober and attending ceremony to gather the strength and blessings of Spirit to continue the cycle of life. When you have something that can help, I believe it’s meant to be shared.

We are a living Indian Cultural Heritage Center. We’ve opened up the Canyon to all indigenous people who are in need of traditional lands for ceremony.

There are seven different sweat lodges, and there are about 40 different sites that people use for the hamblecha, or vision quest. We have had people come from all over the world to hold cer-

emony here: the Maori of New Zealand, the Australian Aboriginal People, the Sami of Finland and spiritual teachers and tribal members from Central and South America, Canada and the United States. We had the Crown Head Dancers from Apache White Mountain that was absolutely amazing. The Bear Dance is an ancient healing ceremony that is held every year.

The Healing Pole Ceremony was a dream come true. The pole was carved by Tonu Shane Eagleton from an 800-year-old Alaskan cedar log that originally came down river from Alaska to San Francisco. This particular pole weighed more than 7,000 pounds, was 4 feet in diameter and 34 feet tall.

Through our good fortune, the help of the Cultural Conservancy and Jon and Karen Larsen Family Foundation, Indian Canyon was gifted with this pole. We had almost 400 people at the unveiling.

Over a hundred were students from San Francisco State taking Native American Studies. The students wrote to me later and said that they felt as if they were really participating in another culture, rather than just observing someone else’s ceremony.

SF: What is your dream for Indian Canyon?

AMS: We are planning to build a TupenTah-Ruk, a round house to hold tribal meetings, guest speeches, dances and ceremonial activities. We plan to involve the youth of the surrounding community in its preparation and building to encourage them to develop ties to the Canyon and the way of ceremony. I am living my dream. We are blessed with a place where people who want to get in touch with their native roots can come to reconnect with their ancient ways and traditions.

After her interview with Anne Marie, Marilyn Berta took part in a multi-cultural sweat lodge, led by a Cherokee elder. She felt blessed to be part of this ceremony and was honored when handed the abalone shell to sprinkle cedar on the rocks for the last round.

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TO THE LEADERS OF THE WORLD A visionary message from the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth

By Oren Lyons

This statement was delivered to the MillenniumWorld Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, United Nations, NewYork, August 2831, 2000. It is reprinted with permission of the American Indian Institute from their CommuniquĂŠ 20.

Leaders of the World: Neyaweha-scano (Thank you for being well). Today I bring you greetings from the indigenous peoples of North, Central and South America. Indeed, I bring you greetings from the indigenous peoples of the world.

We are the keepers of the traditions, ceremonies, histories and future of our nations. We are the ones who escaped from your proselytizing. We survived with the wisdom of the Old Ones. And we are pleased to add our voices to yours in this great effort for common sense and peace among nations.

Leaders of the World, I bring you a most urgent message that was brought to our 23rd annual gathering of the Traditional Circle of Elders and Youth.

This message was brought by a runner from the north, from Greenland, and he said, The ice is melting in the north!

He informed us that some 15 years ago they noticed trickles of water coming down the sheer face of Glacier Mountain. That trickle has grown to a roaring 22 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

river of ice water pouring out of this mountain into the Atlantic Ocean. He informed us that Glacier Mountain has lost 4,000 feet of ice in these past few years. And the melt continues to accelerate. This is an alarming message that requires your absolute attention.

Leaders of the World, we are a collective voice of indigenous peoples. We have joined this great mission for peace. We add our presence in support of this great effort for reconciliation between peoples and nations. We agree that there must be parity and equity between rich and poor nations, between white people and people of color, and rich people and poor people, with special attention to women,

children and indigenous peoples. We, in our collective voices, add to this that there must be a reconciliation between peoples and the natural world, between nation states and the forests that sustain us, between corporations and the resources they mine, the fish that they catch and the water that they use.

Leaders of the World, indigenous nations and peoples believe in the spiritual powers of the universe. We believe in the ultimate power and authority of a limitless energy beyond our comprehension. We believe in the order of the universe. We believe in the laws of creation and that all life is bound by these same natural laws.

We call this essence the spirit of life.

This is what gives the world the energy to create and procreate and becomes the ponderous and powerful law of regeneration, the law of the seed. We,

The American Indian Institute recognizes traditional Indian wisdom as an endangered human resource that is relevant to today’s world and holds keys to our survival. Looking seven generations into the future, AII sees a world in which the values and traditions of indigenous people are respected for the wisdom they hold for the Earth and all its peoples. To pursue this vision, AII supports the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth as it teaches, motivates and celebrates traditional Indian peoples today.

Chief Lyons receives the 2012 Wisdom Fellowship Award, see page 6

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Ice from the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier in Greenland, which displays alarming signs of increased melt.

NICK COBBING / GREENPEACE

They noticed trickles of water coming down the face of Glacier Mountain. That trickle has grown to a roaring river of ice water pouring out of this mountain into the Atlantic Ocean in our collective voices, speak to this to remind you that spirit and spiritual laws transcend generations. We know because this has sustained us.

Religion and spirituality are vital to survival and moral law. It is a faith that has sustained our human spirit through our darkest hours. It has sustained our human spirit in times of crisis during the times we suffered through the grinding measures of inexorable perse-

cutions that have spanned generations and continue today. Yet here we are, today, adding our voices to this plea for sanity in leadership and responsibility to the future generations whose faces are looking up from the Earth, each awaiting their time of life here.

Leaders of the World, the collective voices of indigenous people add that we are saddened by the absence of our elder brother, the Dalai Lama, in this

forum. We believe that reconciliation should begin here because peace is an inclusive term, and peace and reconciliation is the purpose of this summit.

Peace is dynamic and requires great effort of spirit and mind to attain unity.

Leaders of peace must step forward and take responsibility for a paradigm change in the direction of current lifestyles and materialistic societies. The human species has become the most voracious and abusive consumer of Earth’s resources.

We have tipped the balance of life against our children, and we imperil our future as a species.

Leaders of the World, despite all of our declarations and all of proclamations, no matter how profound they may be the ice is melting in the north.

We see the acceleration of the winds.

We see the fires that are raging in North America. And we see that the sun’s rays that provide us with light, energy and the very essence of life now are causing cancer in people, blinding animals and killing the plankton and krill of the sea. This is only the beginning, and already we are helpless. We will now see the real spiritual powers that govern the Earth.

Leaders of the World, there can be no peace as long as we wage war upon Our Mother, The Earth. Responsible and courageous actions must be taken to realign ourselves with the great laws of nature. We must meet this crisis now while we still have time. We offer these words as common peoples in support of peace, equity, justice and reconciliation.

As we speak, the ice continues to melt in the north.

Dahnato (now I am finished). Neyawenha (thank you).

Oren R. Lyons Faith Keeper, Turtle Clan Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaun Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 23

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Mystic and scholar Andrew Harvey brings his passion for God to his passion for justice B Y M A RY L I N B E RTA

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DAVID SUTTON

THE SACRED ACTIVIST

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The vision of “sacred activism” came to spiritual teacher Andrew Harvey in a dream: Two rivers of fire raced across a plain, meeting in the sea and creating an explosion of new energy. “I heard the words, ‘When the river of the mystic’s passion for God meets the river of the activist’s passion for justice, they create a third fire, the fire of love and wisdom in action.’ With this fire we can transform chaos into order, apocalypse into grace, and immense, menacing darkness into a new, divine humanity.”

Harvey was born in 1952 in India, where he lived until he was nine. After boarding school in Britain, he spent seven years at Oxford University, where he was the youngest person to receive a scholarship to All Soul’s College. Disillusioned with university life, Harvey returned to India where he immersed himself in different mystical traditions and practices. In 1984 he began his 10-year exploration and translation of the 13th century Persian mystic poet Rumi. The Sufi poet’s teachings imbue Harvey’s concept of sacred activism, a fiery practice he says he hopes to kindle in every open human heart. The author of more than 30 books, he provides a primer on this philosophy in The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism.

Andrew Harvey shared his passion for sacred activism with Sacred Fire contributing editor Marilyn Berta, where he began by saying, “What the world needs most is sacred fire.”

SF: How can we find the courage to fall into this fire?

AH: The only way you can find the courage is to fall more and more intensely in love with love, to dedicate yourself to love in its infinite mystery so that whatever love requires of you, you accept.

The ego cannot take you to that place; only divine love can. And you have to risk it. The great teachers are saying to us, “What are you waiting for? Die! Die now! Your life as you’re living it isn’t really a life. It’s just a series of meaningless fantasies all tied together by fear. Unloose the cords....The life that will be given

to you through that process will completely astound you by its beauty and majesty.” They can’t all be lying because they’re all saying the exact same thing!

SF: But we’re not reading them in the New York Times.

AH: Doesn’t matter. Today the elders of different traditions are sharing the same message. We’re all in the same country. There is only one Divine, and there are many paths to connecting with Divine. Divine light shines through different colored windows, but it’s the same light: We are all brothers and sisters. This unity completely unravels the culture of fear, death and domination that is now threatening the life of the planet.

The Buddha’s second sermon was the fire sermon. He said, “The world is burning to death in the fires of greed, delusion and ignorance.” In the Buddha’s time he was speaking psychologically and inwardly, but the terrible aspect of our time is that those fires have now become actual: They’re out there. They’re not just raging in our internal lives. They’re licking the trees of the Amazon, polluting the seas, creating a situation in which two billion people are living on less than a dollar a day.

SF: How did we come to this place?

AH: Very early on we chose power over love. We chose to separate ourselves from the motherhood of God, the feminine side of God, which was known, loved and celebrated in the earlier times of humanity. We became rapidly dissociated from the holy presence of the divine in everything, seeking the development of power over nature.

In the indigenous world it is understood that power comes only from living with and in communion with nature. Imagine a world where everyone—scientists, doctors, farmers, architects, politicians—are illumined, inspired and working in dedication to the power of love. No one can be certain about Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 25

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the outcome of what we’re going through, but I can be certain that the birth is taking place because it’s taking place in me and thousands of others.

Everything depends on us. Divine cannot do this on its own because the birth is one of co-creating humanity. Divine is offering, and we have to say Yes. Our responsibility is to live a life that will show others the joy, passion, energy, clarity and peace that comes from living in connection with the divine world so that everyone who can will choose it.

SF: In The Way of Passion you write about Rumi, “No other poet in history has had so exalted and comprehensive an impact on the civilization he adorned. And no other poet has aroused such ecstatic and intimate adoration.” Is Rumi the voice of sacred activism?

AH: Rumi is because he is the great guide to the fire. I first read Rumi when I was twenty-four. I knew I was in the presence of something I had never experienced before. I’ve come to understand Rumi as a supreme messenger of the Beloved, and I believe the current renaissance of his poetry is directly related to the

Andrew Harvey book club Andrew Harvey is a clear and consistent voice for spiritual engagement. His books challenge us to wake up, to deepen our personal connection with Divine and to dedicate our lives to cocreating world transformation. Consider:

A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides Skylight Paths Publishing, 2003

Harvey recounts the joys of learning from four of the world’s great spiritual teachers: Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Ramakrishna.

Heart Yoga North Atlantic Books, 2010

With Hatha Yoga instructor Karuna Erickson, who illustrates yoga asanas (postures), Harvey relates their connection to ancient spiritual traditions and the Divine.

The Hope Hay House, 2009

Harvey inspires us to greatness. Learn about Spiritual Activism and how to work with “like hearted people” for positive change.

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great birth of the divine humanity that is about to take place.

Rumi was a universal prophet of love. And yet the world wasn’t ready for this revelation. So the great master of adoration bided his time in eternity and now the time has come for the greening of the world by divine love.

SF: How can Rumi be relevant for the kind of activism needed today?

AH: A being like Rumi does not die. One of his most wonderful lines is “When I die I will die at the breast of the all merciful. What am I saying? How could the lover ever die?” He lived embracing all human beings and the world of animals. He died embracing death as another birth into the absolute. He became unified with divine. The Beloved now wears the face of Rumi and speaks with immensely eloquent and passionate words to inspire us to embrace five related things.

The first thing Rumi asks us to embrace is our divine identity—to stop pretending we are just slaves of time living a meaningless life and start realizing that we have within us the spark of divine consciousness. The whole point of life is to live in the sacred fire of that spark, to emanate that intensity, purity and authenticity in everything we are and do.

The second great revelation is the absolute sacredness of the world. Every stone is radiating divine light; every gnat is divine light in a gnat body; every plant is a gift of the light. We have to fall irretrievably in love with the Beloved that permeates our world and then gather all our strength to protect and honor our world.

The third revelation is that we are all here to experience the fire of sacred communion with each other, with the animal world, the plant world, stones and mountains, rivers and seas.

Rumi says, “When you really awaken, you will be able to hear the cries of pain of the created world and you will respond to it with complete mercy.” Our current vision of awakening is too human-centered. It’s essential for us to start receiving the great understanding of union with the forces of nature.

The fourth great revelation is the wisdom of The Dark Night.

We are in an immense evolutionary crisis, seen in the death of our collective illusions, in the current environmental holocaust and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yet, at this very moment, people are prepared to put their money, resources and lives on the line to stand up for a healthy future. And we have the revelations of the greatest mystics—Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Jesus, Ramakrishna, Theresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart and Rumi—to guide us in this revolution.

The fifth revelation is the tremendous love energy, the sacred fire that is born when you are brave enough to die into life, into divine love. Rumi says, “Passion burns down every branch of exhaustion. Passion is the supreme elixir and renews all things.”

Our task at this moment is to let divine passion triumph.

SF: Many political and environmental activists say that sacred activists, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin

{ feature } Luther King, actually played into the status quo and prevented their revolutionary movements from achieving the radical transformations that were needed.

AH: I completely disagree. Gandhi’s extraordinary mixture of profound spirituality and political savvy posed the British an insuperable problem and greatly speeded up their departure from India, as well as insuring that it would be done as far as possible without violence. Gandhi cannot be blamed for the terrible massacres between Hindus and Muslims: This was entirely the responsibility of the British and their partition of India and, of course, is due to the long hatred the between the religions. As for King, I believe he, single-handedly almost, prevented a horrific blood bath between whites and blacks, which, given the imbalance between white and black power, would have set back the African-American cause 200 years.

I think other great sacred activists in the 20th century, such as retired South African bishop Desmond Tutu, first elected South African president Nelson Mandela, former Polish president Lech Walesa and the Dalai Lama, show us that action prompted from sacred consciousness can have remarkable results. Who would have imagined South Africa could make a

dignation activists tend to act from still unhealed aspects from their shadow and not have the spiritual strength to keep going in the face of massive defeat and disappointment.

Sacred activism is revolutionary in many ways. First, by stressing sacred consciousness as a necessary basis for action, it plugs activism into the socket of divine wisdom and energy. Second, authentic, mystical realization only makes more urgent the changing of all of the institutions on the planet to reflect the allembracing love of Divine. Thirdly, sacred activism provides the fuel for an evolutionary leap, not only in consciousness but in the way in which consciousness is immediately reflected in acts of transformative justice and compassion.

SF: Those of us with Western minds may be thinking, “How do I take my first step?”

AH: Ask yourself, what, of all the causes in the world, breaks my heart the most? You find in that broken, open heart passionate energy that will help you dedicate your life to a higher good.

When you follow your heartbreak you ultimately find your bliss because you find the bliss of divine love, which is simultaneously whole and heartbroken.

Then, following that heartbreak, create networks of grace, groups of people who come together in a local community to pool their resources, invention and passion to create synergistic ways of healing the community. This demands integrity, focus and discipline. It’s not always easy, but it can be done. I know it’s possible because there are at present at least forty networks of grace all over the world.

Acting from a place of sacred consciousness demands sacred practice. It demands surrendering the fruits of action, doing shadow work, surrounding yourself with divine protection.

When you take on the churning, destructive, ferocious forces, you need to be protected. You cannot do this on your own. You must do this with like-minded, like-hearted people. Divine works most potently through cooperative effort—groups that keep each other alive, encouraged and infused with joy. It demands that you ground yourself in the supreme joy that is the creative force of the universe.

This isn’t the only road map. There are many others. Laugh, weep, dance—but we can only face the extremity of the crisis together. Let’s get this revolution of divine love and wisdom on the road!

When you follow your heartbreak you ultimately find your bliss because you find the bliss of divine love. relatively peaceful transition from the horror of apartheid to the complex and problematic democracy it is now without chaos and massacre? Who could have imagined that a movement of spirituality-inspired workers in Poland could bring down the Russian-backed communist regime? Who could have imagined that the Tibetan cause, for all the betrayals by the whole world of the Tibetan people, could still be alive due to the ceaseless persistence and spiritual radiance of The Dalai Lama?

SF: Why is it necessary for effective activism to have an aspect of the sacred?

AH: The problems facing us are too vast to be tackled from anything but enlightened consciousness in action. Mystics and activists as we know them now are tremendously limited.

Mystics tend to be addicted to transcendence and to their own private journey to enlightenment. Mystics float off into a la-la land of self-absorption, leaving the world burning to death. Activists tend not to inquire within or spend seriMarilyn Berta has been a practitioner of the Healing Arts for thirty years. Her Wellness Practice ous time taking advantage of at the Center for Health in Santa Cruz, CA includes Plant Spirit Medicine, Therapeutic Bodywork, authentic paths of personal Yoga as Medicine and Integrative Health Counseling. Working in the subscriptions department and growth or spiritual wisdom. doubling as a contributing editor, she is proud to be a staff member of Sacred Fire.

For all their courage and in-

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 27

healing

Deep work that balances and re-aligns our inner and outer worlds

“Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature.

When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.�

ADAM PUTNAM / GLASSHOUSE

Hippocrates

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FROM LEFT: BLUEPOINT951; TKKKK

Letting Go the Grief The pain that stems from the atrocities committed against indigenous people throughout the Americas is still present in their communities today. It is embedded in the collective memory of the people. They’ve passed on their traditions orally from generation to generation; they’ve passed on their pain as well. Their elders say that if the pain is not dealt with, if they do not grieve, the pain will consume them. And so it is. Indian Country experiences abhorrent rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, incarceration, domestic violence and child abuse.

Some years ago the late Tekaroniaken Jake Swamp, a Haudenosaunee elder, had a dream that evoked the need to heal, to close the wounds and to invoke the spirit of hope for the new times.

On June 18-22, 2012 an Indigenous Continental Meeting of unprecedented scope

was held at the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Mr. Swamp’s dream was honored with a Ceremony of Condolence, Strength and Peace. The burdens of historical trauma were eased through the loving process of the Wiping the Tears Ceremony of the Haudenosaunee, a sacred rite not conducted on this scale outside the Iroquois Six Nations Territory in living memory, and by a healing water ceremony conducted by spiritual leaders from South and Central America.

The ceremony was and is private, so words and details will not be disclosed. What can be shared are some of the feelings, thoughts and sentiments of Vickie Downey (Tewa) one of the organizers: “For all the days we were there messages were shared.

Prophecies were told. Dreams were manifested. Songs were sung. Tears were shared. Gifts were given. Relationships were renewed. Prayers were offered.

our thanks Sacred Fire Foundation thanks all of the donors who contributed to our Wiping the Tears campaign. The gathering’s expenses totaled over $46,500; your contributions of $11,488.75 made a significant difference and helped cover transportation and food for this life-changing ceremony.

Our strength returned and we felt Peace in our hearts.

“We were instructed to keep moving forward with the guidance of Spirit and with love. We must continue to meet wherever Spirit wants us to meet. We are obligated to respect and support our Mother Earth. From now on we will speak with words that are purified, not words of sadness. We are healed.” rise2012.com —SHARON BROWN

All Together Now A global humanity besieged by loss and longing may just have found its voice—its singing voice.

Witnesses to an unrelentingly imperiled planet, the Good Earth Singers (GES) are erupting around the world not in violence but in song. In fact, it’s the violence against the Earth that their singing aims to heal.

With the numbers of participants expected to surge to more than a staggering 15 million, the GES are building a movement to assemble the world’s largestever global choir on 12/21/12, the upcoming Winter Solstice.

Inspired by the power of song

From Left: The Mighty Mississippi.

Shyla Nelson pauses at the National Mall during one of her “earthwalks.”

to change the history of civil rights, this time the GES wants the whole world to sing with them to protect the Earth. With local choirs called Song Circles already established in over 20 countries, the GES ditches auditions and says to everyone, “You’re in!”

Born as an unexpected but heartfelt impulse of founder Shyla Nelson to gather her friends and sing songs celebrating the Earth, today that one call to action has seeded not only the GES but the Good Earth Songline Project—an initiative to honor and preserve singing traditions from around the world.

Researchers commonly suggest human beings have been singing long before they even learned to speak. Today the GES are weaving vital connections between that primal past and an ancient future that may heal into harmony our relationship with a living but ailing Mother Earth.

Visit goodearthsingers.org and lend your voice to the global choir.

—CHRIS SCHLAKE Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 29

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WATER DREAMING When confronted with a spiritual illness, what’s needed is a spiritual cure

By Barry Williams and Renata Ritzman

The great sea has sent me adrift, It moves me as the weed in a great river, Earth and the great weather move me, Have carried me away, And move my inward parts with joy.

Inuit Shaman’s Song

One night in my childhood, crossing a northern Canadian lake in a small boat with my parents, I saw suddenly that the enormous, starry realm of the sky was not just reflected in but actually shone upward from the deep, still waters of the lake. It was as if all the outer cosmos were also held in that dark secret matter of the earth. I knew that I was held by the embrace between these two worlds, much as I was held by the embrace of my parents. Water ever since has borne for me the real and symbolic meaning of the great life from the depths.

I am not alone in this. Water from below—as underground river, well, spring-fed pool and lake—has appeared in myth, fairy tale, dreams and story for many millennia. It is the breast milk of 30 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

the earth mother, the healing waters, the mystery of the hidden world, the substance of the unconscious life and the presence of the holy.

I dreamed recently that the sacred water was being forbidden to me.

In the dream, I climb the streets of a medieval town to visit the ancient church at the top of the hill. I enter the gate. The sanctuary is to the right and a beautiful garden is to the left. In the center of the garden lies a natural pool. I quickly go to the pool, kneel down, scoop the waters into my hands and drink thirstily. Immediately, priests appear angrily shouting for me to stop.

They say that I cannot do this, that the water is only for them, for the use of the church.

It would be easy to self-righteously

criticize religious institutions, spiritual communities and belief groups that guard, hide and limit authentic access to the holy. The great problem of the institutionalization and structuring of religious experience is that dogmas and orthodoxies grow up and rigidify around spirituality. These tend to limit and even forbid access to the living waters of genuine spiritual encounter.

Modern religious perspectives seem to have forgotten their relationships with nature and the sacred that emerge so spontaneously from within and below.

But crucially, since this is my dream, I also must own all parts of it as various aspects of myself. Who are these inner priests who prevent me from slaking my spiritual thirst at the spring? What in me does not want me to know the secret that flows so naturally from below, separate from the structured life and thought of the sanctuary? This is a collective question that we all must ask: How do we as individuals, communities and cultures limit our access to the divine? And why?

When I had this dream, I realized it

MACE FLEEGER

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was giving me a diagnosis of a spiritual illness for which I needed a spiritual cure. Shortly after the dream, I returned with my wife and child to our primitive island cabin on Lake Temagami in northern Canada after a two-year absence. We missed the previous year after our young son had a devastating illness that left our lives in disarray and filled us with doubt. He recovered and could now travel to see his friends of the Tema-Augama-Anishnabe First Nation band on the lake. The name of the lake means deep water, and the Tema-Augama are “the people of the deep water.”

The medicine woman, whom we have known for thirty years, warmly welcomed us back. She saw immediately and clearly what we needed. She told us that we were to do four sweat lodges in the next three days. With this she gave

us direct access to the healing waters.

Round after round, day after day, we immersed ourselves in these waters.

The intensity of the cleansing steam of cedar water on the grandfather rocks, the medicine of cedar tea, our plunges into the deep, cold waters of the star filled lake and, especially, the prayers and songs to the spirits of the forest, the lake, the four directions, the ancestors and the animals were healing to our thirsty souls. By the end of the fourth round of the fourth lodge the spirits of the forest, the lake, the ancestors and the animals had gathered in

the clearing, “singing.” Many entered the lodge to be greeted by humans. The forest and the lake were glowing, filled with light that permeated the lodge.

Northern lights—the campfires of the ancestors—played in the sky. The world was restored to us in all its dimensions.

It made itself alive to us so that we could live.

Through this simple, elegant and ancient ritual the invocation and manifestation of the holy overcame the chastising, rigidly forbidding priest. I saw that my spiritual illness was my fear that the fabric of life could not be restored after my son’s near miss with death. I saw that the secret meaning in the spring-fed pool of my dream was too great to grasp, that my intellectual attempt to understand it blocked my capacity to understand. The secret is Everything is simply and exactly the way it is in a complexity, beauty and unity that is absolute.

Through his crisis the boy was trying to teach us the song of the spirit world.

The cosmos has a seamlessness in which eternity brushes up against time so that, through ceremony, timelessness can enter life and give it the great meaning for which we long. That is the spiritual cure. Without the experience of that reality, we are lost in the endless thicket of our own minds and personalities, the dogmas and complexes by which we attempt to live.

The bright world is always waiting for us. The traditional wisdom and ceremonies of those who live in the old ways, close to the land, show that all of us have the potential to open ourselves to the great forces of nature. By drinking from the springs of deep water that open our eyes and hearts we can experience a joy only available from that sacred world.

about the author

Jungian Analyst Barry Williams, Renata Ritzman and their son, Raef, are Huichol marakaté (shamans). They offer healing retreats in New Mexico, Northern Canada and on Grandmother Ocean in New Zealand.

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HEALING & SACRIFICE

The ancient ritual of the Sun Dance is alive with gifts of generosity and deep lessons of exchange B Y J O N AT H A N M E R R I T T

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Photograph By Mike Goss Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 33

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“I can’t believe in any God who requires human suffering in exchange for His favor and help.”

My friend’s words were strident. He was and is a good thinker, an honest skeptic whom I trust to help me sort out and express the strange, sometimes inchoate aspects of my experience in mostly cogent language. We had been talking about Sun Dance, the great Lakota ceremony of sacrifice and renewal that has spread across the west. I had just returned from my second Sun Dance, and our conversation naturally turned toward the physical sacrifices that the ceremony requires because they are, in a sense, sensational and generally out of the realm of what we commonly expect from spiritual pursuit.

The entire Sun Dance was steeped in ceremonial sacrifice, beginning with the tree—a forty foot aspen that was stalked in the forest, prayed to, given offerings and only cut down when the Intercessor, the ceremonial leader, felt that it agreed to give its life to support the ceremony. The tree was then carefully carried back to the arbor, decorated with eagle feathers, images of buffalo and humans, thickly wrapped with prayer ties, placed in a deep hole and raised to preside over the Sun Dance and—with its leaves singing in the wind—provide the connection between earth and sky.

At sunrise the next morning the ceremonial dancers, about thirty men and women who had been prepared and purified, began their four-day fast without food or water. Led by the Intercessor and the White Buffalo Calf Woman, the carrier of the canupa—the sacred pipe—and attended by helpers, the dancers entered the arbor.The men were clad only in red cotton skirts tied with sashes. The women wore simple dresses. Both had mugwort crowns and bracelets. Beaded medallions hung over their hearts, and they carried eagle wing fans. Entering from the east, they made a stately procession around the arbor, stopping to salute the four directions, then spread out in a wide ring around the tree and began the dance. The male Eagle Dancers were skewered above each nipple and attached by long ropes to the tree where they remained, day and night, for the duration of the dance. During the daily processional round, the four ceremonial rounds and 34 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

the recessional round, the dancers danced to the spirit drum, while women sang the sacred songs, men blew their eagle bone flutes to each beat of the drum. The three hundredperson audience, in which I was honored to be included, sang and danced along.

Each day female dancers had their arms pierced and threaded with eagle feathers.

Men—some of whom were ceremonial dancers, others who had completed their four-year obligation to the Dance—were pierced and attached to the tree, breaking free at the end of the round.

Each day a man was chosen to have his back pierced and tied to a set of four buffalo skulls that he pulled around the arbor as a crowd of spectators followed close behind, cheering him on.

These piercings were not personal displays of courage. Rather, individual visions and dreams revealed the sacrifices required for the dancers to receive help with certain prayers. Dancers were only pierced after receiving permission from the elders.

I admitted to my friend that it sounded pretty barbaric, especially from a Western perspective where pain is to be avoided at all costs, unless it leads to a concrete gain. But from another perspective, one that might be called indigenous, exchange is the fundamental principle of this life. When something is received, something must be given. And when someone seeks something great—like healing, growth and wisdom, the protection and prosperity of family and community or a deep and abiding connection with divine creation—then something great must be given. It’s a concept that is mostly foreign to Western culture, which believes that everything is here for the taking, which values accumulation over generosity and which honors individual desire over collective well-being.

“That’s fine,” my friend said, “but what good is their sacrifice?

What’s it all about?”

{ feature } I saw many return to the audience with tears pouring down their faces or vibrating with a certain ecstatic glow.

I remembered, then, the healing round.

On the afternoon of the third day sick people—many of whom had been seated in the audience wrapped in bear skins— were brought to the tree in groups of four.

As they knelt and embraced the tree, the dancers—these women and men who had risen before sunrise for three days, had danced in heat and cold, wind and rain without food or water, who purified themselves in the sweat lodge and then returned for the midnight round to dance with the Eagle Dancers, who had been drained beyond any conceivable human limits—rushed the tree, shouting, wildly blowing their bone whistles, stomping their feet and waving their fans to drive away the spirits of sickness. The Intercessor, a slender, graceful man whose every step had been humble and precise, moved roughly among them. Smeared head to toe with mud, he leapt and growled and roared, his body and face transformed into something not quite human.

Again and again the dancers rushed the tree in an impossible expenditure of energy as round after round of people were brought for healing. And, while no one threw away his crutches and shouted “I’m healed!” as he danced away, I saw many return to the audience with tears pouring down their faces or vibrating with a certain ecstatic glow. When the healing round was complete, the Intercessor was breathing heavily on all fours beside the tree, shaking his head slowly like a great bear. He was quickly surrounded by the ceremonial helpers, lifted up and carried, seemingly unconscious, out of the arbor.

“Well, it sounds like great theater. But did anything come of it?”

I told my friend about the feast day that followed the ceremony. After a great potluck meal with salmon and beef, salads, vegetables, fruit, corn, potatoes and pies—an endless all youcan-eat buffet—there was a long line of testimony. Person after person rose to speak of what the Sun Dance had done for them, how it brought them into connection with Mother Earth, with the two-legged and four-legged peoples, the winged and finned and slithering ones, the one-leggeds that stood in the forest, the stone people, the great mountain beings and those that flowed to the sea. They spoke of the way their lives had been transformed through the ceremony, through finding the inipi, the sweat lodge, and the community of people—called a hoop—around it, whom they could trust and with whom they could share a ceremonial life. They talked about the way the Sun Dance renewed them so that they could go into the world and live good lives, the way it had helped their families and communities. Many spoke about the healing they received from the tree, how chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and cancers had disappeared, how their injuries and wounds were mended.

I talked about how the year before Nathan, a fortyish year-

old Asian-American man, the leader of the spirit drum, a science teacher from Seattle, had gone to the tree for healing. Afterwards, he spoke about how he had been diagnosed with hepatitis and, knowing that his life was in danger, had changed the way he lived. He made peace with his enemies and made sure that his friends knew how much he cared for them. He made time every day to be with his young daughters. Faced with the specter of death, he renewed his relationship with his wife so that it was more loving and precious than ever. He began to do those things that he’d always put off—going to concerts, taking trips. His illness had grounded him firmly in the present.

He said, “When I went to the tree and asked for healing, I heard the voice of the tree. It said, ‘If I take this illness away, will you go back to mourning the past and fearing the future? Will you forget how to live in the present?’

“I said that, honestly, I didn’t know.” He was weeping now. “I didn’t know whether, if I was healed, I would be able to maintain my sense of urgency and wonder. I saw how my hepatitis had been a kind of gift that woke me up to the preciousness of life. I wanted to live with the blessing of that gift, to return to play the drum, to watch my daughters grow, to experience everything that life offers, to go even into my death with joy.

“I don’t know whether I will be healed. But I feel such gratitude for what I received as I knelt by the tree. I feel so grateful for the sacrifices of the tree and the dancers, for the helpers and ceremonial leaders, for the elders who opened this ceremony to all people and for all of you who danced here with me.”

This year, when I saw Nathan, I went to him and told him how grateful I was for his words, how I had told his story as well as I could remember it. I asked him how he was doing. He said that, while his hepatitis hadn’t gone completely away, his energy was good and the symptoms were barely noticeable. He said that he had been able to live in the present pretty well. Not perfectly, but whenever he started worrying about what might happen or grieving about something long past, he heard the voice of the tree reminding him to live in the present, telling that this day, this hour, this moment is all we ever really have.

“That always brings me back,” he said. “So my life is very good.”

And I could see that he was filled with joy.

“This, I think,” I told my friend, “is what the Sun Dance is all about. And the sacrifices aren’t suffering but the gifts that are given so that we can come back to life.”

My friend gazed off into the trees. I could hear the wheels of his mind turning. Finally, he said, “Do you think I might be able to go next year?”

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 35

listening

We each have an innate gift to hear the voices of the living world

“Listen to all the teachers in the woods. Watch the trees, the animals and all the living things—you’ll learn more from them than books.”

TRIGGER IMAGE / GLASSHOUSE

Joe Coyhis Stockbridge-Munsee

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FROM LEFT: ROBERT LEON; GENEEN MARIE HAUGEN; BILL PLOTKIN.

The Dance of a Good Life During Ancient Wisdom Rising 2011, the panel moderator asked Swinomish Elder Ray Williams, “Is there a particular way that your teachers, elders and ancestors have shown what it means to live a good life with Creation?”

Ray replied: When I get back home, I’m building a cedar strip dugout canoe to ply the waters.

An elder came up to me after he heard I was building the canoe house. He said, “Did you pick the cedar that’s going to build the first canoe?”

And I said, “No, we’re going up tomorrow to do that. The woman I’m learning from is going to show me how to respectfully take the cedar, to ask the cedar for its life to come down so we can make some canoes.”

The elder said, “Once you select that cedar you pray to it. Eventually when your mind is clear enough, it will speak to you. It will tell you the stories that you need to hear about how to work with it. It will share its songs with you and other most valuable things.”

Three months later I was saying, “Oh boy, all I wanted to

do was get a canoe out in the water. I didn’t know there was all this other stuff involved.”

Three months later we were in the sweat lodge praying for a friend of mine. It was the third day of our fasting and praying.

And sure enough the cedar tree spoke for the first time to me.

It talked about its 350 years of life up there in the old growth forest.

About the new life that was growing in the springtime.

About the weight of the snow in the winter time.

About receiving the sun as it rose every time it got a chance to see that sun in the blue sky.

Talked about the fragrances that came as the flowers bloomed once again.

Talked about all the life that was around it and within it.

It talked about these things and it said, “At first I was saddened that I was going to have to leave my home up here in the mountains, up here in the old growth forest. At first I was saddened, and then I realized that I was going down to your village to teach you what we know, what we know as the ancestors up here in the mountains. And then I knew that it was my turn to speak to you, to share with

you this knowledge.”

And that’s the dance that we have. ancientwisdomrising.com —SHARON BROWN

Love in the Realm of Dreams What the world needs now is... well, lyricist Hal David wrote “love, sweet love.” But if it’s truly the only thing that there’s just too little of, how do we generate more? By engaging the world as a romantic companion. That’s the guiding force behind “Romancing the World: Soulcraft, the Dreaming of Nature and the Mytho-Poetic Imagination,” a workshop created by ecotherapist Bill Plotkin and writer Geneen Marie Haugen.

Of course, the world is a vast and rich terrain. And for Plotkin and Haugen, ro­ mancing our earth mother begins by descending into the underworld of the soul: the realm of dreams, the seat of

From Left: Ray Williams. Cedar canoe at traditional Swinomish ceremony.

Bill Plotkin. Geneen Marie Haugen.

divine imagery. “We fall in love with the world and have our hearts completely broken by its beauty,” says Haugen.

Participants in the work­ shop, to be held at Esalen Insti­tute in Big Sur, California, prior to the 2013 Spring Equinox, begin their inner journey by venturing across the Institute’s 120 acres situated near the Pa­cific Coast.

“Where the wild oceans meet the cliffs,” Haugen says. There is no agenda during these romantic adven­tures, other than to ask questions of the trees, rocks, streams and spend time awaiting answers.

Haugen and Plotkin designed the six-day workshop to be the start of a loving, romantic courtship, one that outstrips a casual infatuation.

The bur­geoning romance unlocks the mytho-poetic imagination, the vast treasure chest

more info “Romancing the World” is facilitated by Bill Plotkin and writer

Geneen Marie Haugen and takes place at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California, March 10-15, 2013. For more information contact esalen.org

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 37

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of arche­types that speak to the human experience. It can also unleash repressed emotions. “By submitting ourselves to our longing, it brings up grief,” Haugen says. She and Plotking guide participants into a descent of their inner storehouse and lead them back as they carry seeds of inspiration. These gifts, which are also accessed through dream-work, drum­ming and dancing, help nurture a deeper engagement with all creatures of the world.

“Clearly, the world needs love,” Atkinson says. “When we’re soul-infused, then we can go out and romance the world.”

—ROSETTE ROYALE

Biology of the Weather Beings Among the earliest peoples being a “weatherman” didn’t require scientific study, precision tools or computer algorithms. Instead, it depended upon a deep and personal relationship with the weather, which, like everything, was known to be alive.

After centuries of ignoring the weather’s living presence, it seems that people 38 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

may once again recognize the weather as a living being.

There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that, indeed, clouds and rain are just as alive as you and I. The early agrarian societies were particularly connected with the Cloud People, the Thunder Beings and the gods of Wind and Rain. Their lives depended on it. Ceremonial offerings and festivals endeared people to the other-thanhuman beings who could coax rain to fall from the sky. This relationship with the Weather Beings was reciprocal: Public offerings of gratitude begat rain, begat more ceremonies, begat more rain, begat more ceremonies. You could call it a feedback loop.

A community’s “weather workers,” “weather dancers” or “weather shamans” were familiar with the unique, living personalities of the clouds, winds and rain and would petition their sky friends for moisture in drought or clemency during a wrathful tempest.

The birth of modern science put a damper on talking to the Weather Beings. Weather was not alive: It was physics.

The 17th and 18th-century

thermometers and barometers led to the 20th century’s weather balloons, satellites and Big Science forecasts. Now, instead of talking to the weather, weathermen talk about it on all-weather-all-the-time TV. Despite (or perhaps because of ?) this technological progress, it seems modern weathermen are wrong half the time.

The weather is becoming wilder and less predictable than ever. Who can forget the forecaster’s call on Hurricane Irene? “Batten down, Manhattan, Irene is coming! Head to the hills...Oops! About that flood—sorry, Catskills.”

Now, finally, it seems that Big Science might be getting a glimpse of how weather really works.

The following news will be no surprise to those who’ve felt a reply as they said hello to a cloud or experienced a rainbow following a thankful prayer to Spring Rain. But some people may experience a new view of the world when they hear scientific proof: There is biological life at the heart of rain.

Most elementary school kids learn how raindrops form: The sky’s dust particles

attract ice crystals; water sticks to the crystals making them bigger; they turn into rain and fall to the ground.

Well, in 2008 a team, led by Montana State University Professor David Sands, determined that most ice nuclei— the “seeds” around which ice forms in clouds—are not inert dust. They are bacteria, those one-celled, microscopic creatures who have been on earth for billions of years longer than humans.

In a 2011 study University of Arizona research biologist Dr. Barbara Zorn-Arnold reported that bacteria found at the core of hail stones may “significantly influence weather phenomena.” Often clouds are not cold enough to form rain, but certain bacterial nuclei can allow ice to form at higher temperatures.

Zorn-Arnold calls for more research on “the feedback loop between ecosystems and the weather,” as her study found evidence that bacterial nuclei may be the ones responsible for precipitation.

Dr. Bonnie Bassler, director of Princeton University’s Department of Molecular Biology, specializes in the

MACE FLEEGER

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{ sparks } Seek the Counsel of Trees, printed with permission of Logosophia logosophiabooks.com

Seek the Counsel of Trees A Song for a Season of Drought James Davis

social networks of bacteria.

Yes, social networks. She’s found that bacteria communicate with each other and work communally towards a particular goal. Using a language of chemicals, they determine the right time to collectively turn on particular behaviors like creating light in fireflies, creating vitamins in guts, or launching an illness in an infected person.

So now we can “prove” it: The clouds are alive. The heart of each raindrop is a bacterium in communication with the other bacteria dispersed throughout the atmospheric mists, working together to determine the right time to trigger a behavior—like a downpour.

So consider greeting the clouds in a new way. Watch them flow and breathe with new awareness. Give thanks for their gifts. Ponder their harsh lessons.

And never curse the rainy day.

—SHARON BROWN

When clouds pass over withholding rain, when springs disappear into the deep and the waterwheel ceases to turn, when rivers run up hill and icebergs collapse in the sea, don’t run to your weather map to track the swirls of highs and low.

Earth is a spirit, beautiful and sensuous, her loins reach deep into the earth; her hair plays in the stratosphere.

If she appears flat, barren or wracked by violence, she has been suffocated by hard hearts and betrayed by greed.

She yearns to be wooed, lies waiting for soft hands and gentle songs.

Go home and cover your loved ones with wet kisses.

Speak tenderly to your neighbors and heap praise on their dogs.

Leave your doors and windows open at night so you can smell the rising of a new wind.

Seek the counsel of trees.

They know how to tap the unseen pools and read the wisdom of clouds.

presenting... Watch Bonnie Bassler’s TED Talk where she describes the secret social lives of bacteria. ted.com

Rub your body into the crevasses of the earth so you can feel her pulse quicken and call for the sweet waters to come forth.

James Davis is an innkeeper, beekeeper, carpenter, cook. He performs weddings and writes poetry at his B&B in the mountains of North Carolina near Asheville.

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REQUIEM FOR SEQUOIA Sometimes teachers appear without notice.

Sometimes they are human—sometimes they are not.

By Heather Dunn

I

Six years before, as a college junior, I set out one Saturday with an Iris Murdoch novel under my arm to find just the right tree to read under. I chose a sequoia, seven feet across at the base.

Its spongy bark where the trunk folded into the roots kept me warm, and its branches hung low and wide and kept me dry from the misty rain. I settled down to read.

I relaxed and my attention began to drift up to the moving branches. Then I felt the branches moving as though they were a part of my body. Soon I could 40 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

feel the entire structure of the tree. Its energy was running through my body. I had become a part of the giant redwood like a growth on its trunk, like a baby in its mother’s womb. I was loved, blessed and so, so humbled.

I spent the next few months getting

to know trees. Some people thought I was a little weird, but my roommate said she couldn’t believe I’d never tapped into trees before. Late at night I snuck out to climb beeches and maples.

I learned the personalities of different trees. An oak tree I met at a downtown

JENNIFER REISWIG

t was 11 o’clock at night in a high-crime section of Tacoma. I sat in my car covered in mud and tears before the house of Sequoia Ladd, my herbalism teacher.

Could I bother her? Would she even open the door? I dragged myself up to her porch and knocked. She gasped when she saw me.

“Heather! What’s happened?”

“My tree,” I stammered. “They killed my first teacher!”

{ essays } intersection seemed positively irate.

Over my final years at school I pursued my friendship with trees and other plants. Most seemed contented and polite. A few refused to open up. When I graduated I made sure to say goodbye to my sequoia.

Five years later while working at a health food store in Tacoma, I met Sequoia Ladd. She had graduated from the Southwest School of Herbal Medicine and apprenticed with several other herbalists. Behind her small house she had a permaculture garden, and in her front parlor she ran her herbal practice, Grass and Roots Botanicals. After a year working together she invited me into a year-long apprenticeship in traditional Western herbalism.

Sequoia taught that plants themselves are the ultimate authority on their medicinal uses. All medicinal herbs have phytochemical components involved in the work they do. For example, the spicy, anti-inflammatory properties of ginger help an inflamed, cramped intestinal tract. But if in your relationship with ginger it communicates—either through a dream, or vision, or an agreement—that it will help your dog’s glaucoma or your cousin’s schizophrenia, it’s your job to listen. Anyone who delves deeply enough into ethnobotanical history finds that for years different peoples have successfully used plants for completely unrelated purposes.

Sequoia also taught a contempt for the idea of stewardship, the concept of taking care of our resources so popular with the current environmental movement.

“It’s paternalistic,” she said. “It implies ownership. I take care of you because you are my property, but we all know what happens when someone decides to take care of something. It ends in domination and exploitation.” A better model is mutual assistance where you honor the sentience of plants and participate in their survival. On wild plant walks she taught us how to collect plants, first asking their permission and

leaving them alone if we didn’t receive it. So it was natural that I turned to her when I learned my first tree had been cut down.

I knew for a few years that the university was planning to build a science center near my sequoia. Despite exploring several ways to save it, the school found no way to move the giant tree. I guess if I had been in their shoes, I would have come to the same conclusion, but when I passed the construction site and saw no black shadow dwarfing the twelve-foot chain-link fence, my heart clenched. I managed to slip through the fence without campus security spotting me. The mud where the huge equipment had churned up the soil was cold and ankle deep. I groped my way through the trenches toward the upturned stump. There was no mistaking her sheer size, the disc of her roots disoriented, tilted skyward. I grabbed a rootlet, smaller than a carrot and keened until I felt strong roots burst through my heart, feeding me with the spirit of the tree, tearing open a space for grief. Then I stopped crying. I could breathe. I could feel her in my chest. What, then, had I lost? I was confused. I wandered the construction site calling on the tree, on angels, on whomever or whatever could help me find seeds. I found four muddy cones that felt familiar buried in a courtyard corner, scales shut tight to keep the little lives safe inside.

Tearful and muddy, I took my sequoia’s seed cones to Sequoia. She smiled and told me I was already thinking like an herbalist. She said that opening myself to the green world meant joining it in the consequences of living beside a culture that didn’t see its inherent value. She told me she had experienced, in the bulldozing of an entire forest, a genocide of friends, teachers, communities and relationships. She suggested I consider performing a funeral for my friend, and she also told me I’d almost certainly dream with a tree that night and to pay

close attention.

I did have that dream. I was crouched, hidden in the courtyard of the construction site. I watched my tree’s stump thrown tumbling into the air and fall. I went to it and heard it whisper, “Take my bark.” I reached out my hand and pulled away a chunk of the spongy skin that had once kept me warm. A few nights later, prepared with Buddhist prayers, incense, a length of hand spinning and hiking boots, I squeezed back through the tall chainlink fence. I prayed and thanked and cried some more. I tied a piece of my yarn around a root so that whatever was left of my friend could be kept company by something I’d made. Then I walked over to the place where I’d seen the stump fall in my dream. There was another, smaller piece of the tree I’d missed before. I grasped the nearest piece of bark. A huge chunk, four by four inches and about a foot long, came away in my hand. I smiled, touched. It felt like her; it felt like me.

The cones opened up in late spring.

Knowing you don’t break these kinds of promises, I took them into Wapato Hills Park, the first stretch of wild land in the U.S. saved by a neighborhood association from becoming a strip mall. The energy sensitivity my tree had taught me was now a little more refined. I let the seeds choose their new home. I held them in my fist and scanned the ground until they crackled. I sent them a little love and let them flutter to the ground. I haven’t been back to see if they’ve sprouted, but it’s only been two years. In tree terms they’re still newborns. If we’re all lucky, by the time I’m close to dying they’ll be old enough for some good, serious conversation.

about the author Heather Dunn writes,

walks her dog, and drinks a lot of tea in Olympia, Washington. She is the book buyer at Radiance Herbs and Massage.

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 41

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SACRED PLANT TEACHERS

B Y E L I O T C OWA N

Their healing powers are undeniable— so what could possibly go wrong?

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Illustrations By Nick Arciaga Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 43

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There is a story told by a traditional doctor from Botswana about a villager who fell seriously ill and called the local healer. After examining the patient the healer went off to consult the mountains, the waters, the animals and the plants in the area. When he returned he told the villagers that someone had cut down a tree without asking permission of the spirit of the tree. This disrespectful act by one had created imbalance that showed up as illness in someone else. The villagers understood the tree was teaching them something and that there would be larger consequences for everyone unless good relationship to the trees was restored. A ritual was prescribed to remediate the offense. The whole village participated; the patient and his community returned to health.

This story should be remembered in any interaction with plants. Plant spirits are part of a web woven of love and respect, giving and receiving. We humans are part of it too. When we tear the web, a plant messenger shows up with a suitcase with something designed to make sure we take the message to heart. The suitcase is labeled “misfortune.” The messenger says, “For the sake of all creation, repair the web. Get back to what supports you, what supports others, what supports everything: love and respect, giving and receiving.”

These days there is a lot of interest in plants and the healing they can teach us, but if you are interested in engaging one of the sacred plant teachers—plants such as peyote, ayahuasca or special mushrooms—you should remember the story of disrespectful use as if your life depended on it. The power of these plants is beyond imagination; you don’t want to see their messenger arriving with his suitcase.

To understand respectful engagement with these great teachers we have to go back to the time when the gods were singing a great story—the story of the world. Their singing brought the world and all its creatures into being, including, eventually, us humans. The Darwinians made their best guess about how this came about, but according to the indigenous wisdom keepers, they didn’t get it quite right. The different human peoples did not evolve out of a common ancestor; they were each born out of the 44 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

womb of their own homeland. We appeared in different parts of the world at the same time.

Each group was as much a part of their environment as the other animals and plants of the region.

Each animal was sung into the world with the equipment it needed: wings, gills, fur, pointy or hooked beak, claws, fast running legs, a keen sense of smell or hearing and so on. The special equipment given to us was the human mind with its unique ability to create the sensation of separateness. However, if our mind forgets that we are part of the web of being, this forgetfulness is the source of illness and suffering. All the original peoples were given teachings and practices to remind us that we are part of the web. Remembering produces healing, wisdom, a flourishing environment and a sustainable way of life.

Some indigenous peoples were given sacred plant teachers as memory aids to maintain this web of being—doorways to sacred realms of knowledge, wisdom and healing. Some of these plants, like peyote, are ingested; others, like the wind tree, are not, but not one of them was brought forth everywhere or for everyone’s use. This is because, as we have seen, people belong to the environment they are born into, and their lives and needs are shaped by their ancestral place. The Inuit is very different from the Amazonian, the Aborigine different from the Celt, the Zulu from the Mongol, and each has different needs. Their souls are made of the ancestral stuff of different lands. The ways of remembering are different for each. Their sacred plant teachers are for them: None is for everybody.

In the old days it was perfectly clear who could benefit from a sacred plant teacher. For example, if you were a member of a group that had been through countless cycles of living and dying

{ feature } If it’s all about you, then the plant teacher will see you as disrespectful.

It may ignore you; it may play a little trick on you, or it may send its messenger with a bulging suitcase.

MARIJUANA

cannabis sativa where the ayahuasca vine grows, then you and ayahuasca were made for each other. If you were from someplace else, ayahuasca was not for you. These days it is more difficult to know whether a plant is right for you. Very few of us live in our ancestral homelands, and we no longer practice the ancient funerary rites that keep the soul close to its ancestral energy. We have become soul mutts. It is, therefore, very hard to know if our soul energy is Amazonian, Inuit, Celt or Zulu or something else. Here, therefore, are some essential questions to think about: Are you considering whether the plant you wish to heal you sees you as one of its people—the people it was brought into the world to help? Or is it all about what you want? If it’s all about you, then the plant teacher will see you as disrespectful. It may ignore you; it may play a little trick on you, or it may send its messenger with a bulging suitcase. These days you need the help of a trustworthy guide who can look into your soul to see whether you and the sacred plant teacher are soul mates.

Actually, a human guide has always been needed; the sacred plants insist on it. They were brought into the world to benefit us. They open into vastness we cannot navigate on our own.

On our own we easily get lost, and a lost person is of no benefit to himself or others, except as an example of what not to do. A good guide has himself had a guide. He—or she—has walked the path and is still walking it. He knows the direction, the twists and turns. He knows who belongs to the medicine and who does not. He has seen many receive blessings and some who have suffered misfortune. The successful ones, like himself, stayed true to the traditions given by the plant and passed down through generation after generation of ancestors.

The unsuccessful ones wanted to have it their way.

In the tradition of the Huichol—the People of the Peyote of western Mexico—this is what it takes to become a guide for peyote: First, there are at least five years of grueling apprenticeship under the supervision of a tricky, hardball-playing shaman.

Then there is a dangerous initiation ritual. If candidates make it through initiation successfully, they have themselves become shamans and must take on a life of service to their community.

Still, they are not ready to guide others. They must now work as

shamans for another five years. If they are seen to be effective healers and devoted to the welfare of their people, they may ask for a second initiation, which is even more dangerous than the first. After running that gauntlet they present themselves for a third initiation as a guide to peyote. In that final initiation the ancestors, the gods and peyote itself at last declare them ready to help others who would ask this sacred plant teacher for help.

Preparing to become a guide is always a big responsibility. The one who disregards tradition, who looks for shortcuts, who declares himself a guide—that person is a dangerous fool. These days all kinds of people offer themselves; some are authentic, some are deluded, some are after money, sex or power. Make sure your guide is properly initiated and has your interest at heart.

Due to their enormous popularity, two sacred plant teachers deserve special mention here: marijuana and tobacco. Let’s consider marijuana first. Its homeland is Central Asia. In the Western world it is rare to find a person with substantial soul relatedness to that land and plant. It is even more rare to find someone initiated into its indigenous protocols and rarer still to find a properly initiated guide willing to teach others. Marijuana tricks people into believing they are benefiting from it. Outside of its sacred context the sacred teacher becomes a trickster carrying an intriguing, prettily decorated suitcase.

TOBACCO

nicotiana tabacum

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lophophoria williamsi

The rituals of engagement between sacred plants and guides are not invented by an individual; they are not even invented by a culture.

Many more people have relatedness to tobacco, but very few recognize and respect its sacredness. These days it is feared and condemned as a poison, and the numbers of smoking-related deaths and illnesses would seem to support that view. But tobacco like all sacred plants becomes destructive when treated with disrespect. The statistics do not prove the malevolence of this plant; they only demonstrate that it is massively abused.

Tobacco was brought forth in the Americas, and I have never been anywhere on these continents where it does not have an important place in indigenous spiritual practices. It helps people hear with the ears of the heart, so it is a special adjunct to prayer—the source of many blessings. Ironically, the plant, which produces healing and protection in the indigenous world, produces danger and illness in the modern one. In most cultures tobacco does not require elaborate conditions for its proper use, but it does demand unfailing gratitude and respect. A minimal ritual setting is good for keeping the user focused and honest about his intentions.

that the journey may be postponed for lack of funds.

Along the way there is much protocol to attend to, culminating at the entrance to the holy land with a specific purification rite that leaves the fasting pilgrims innocent as young children.

There are moments to move and moments to stay still, moments to speak and moments to keep silent. A fire is built, consecrated and lovingly tended. An altar is constructed, festooned with ofThe rituals of engagement between sacred plants and guides ferings and anointed with the blood of the deer and the bull. are not invented by an individual; they are not even invented by The sacred medicine is prayed to, searched for, found, prayed a culture. They were given to the peoples along with the plant; to again and again, blessed by the attending shaman and finally actually, they are part of the sacred presence of the plant. When eaten. The prayers, the offerings, the altar— everything is done the moment arrives to invoke the medicine of the sacred plant with scrupulous and loving attention to the prescriptions given teacher, what kind of situation is the sacred plant teacher invited to the ancestors at the beginnings of time. The pilgrims vigil into? Is it focused, respectful and safe, as the plant desires? Or is it through the night. At dawn they sing the traditional prayers of scattered, contaminated by egotism—an invitation to misfortune? gratitude and start the long journey back to their village.

A trustworthy human guide follows the instructions given to the Traditional indigenous peoples understand such pracancestors about how to build a proper ritual container, and he tices; they know the practical value of rituals, and they take listens carefully for guidance on moment-to-moment adjustments. great care with them. Modern Western people often feel these When the Huichols want to ask their things are quaint and obsolete. When sacred plant teacher for special gifts, dealing with sacred plant medicines, they take great care with the ritual setsome will say, “I have good intention. I ting. First, the human guide sets a date am respectful. There won’t be any probfor a pilgrimage to the birthplace of their lems for me.”

Join Eliot traditions. There is a preparatory month This is naive. Yes, sometimes naive In March of 2013 Eliot Cowan will begin a of abstinence from sex, salt and bathengagements work out okay, but somenew cycle of classes for Plant Spirit Medicine ing. A deer is hunted and killed with the times they don’t. If we wish to be blessed (PSM) at the Blue Deer Center in Margaretville, NY. While this offering is for those who proper prayers and respect; a bull is also with knowledge, wisdom or healing, it is want to become Plant Spirit Medicine healers, purchased and properly sacrificed. Spenot for us to say what we must give in it is also a wonderful experiential opportunity cial offerings are constructed and prayed return. It is not for us to say how we for those interested in learning more about over with love and devotion; later these must demonstrate our respect. The spirhow to be present in and communicate with will be left at the sacred site. The journey its of the plants will make the call. the living world. For more information write is long—until a few years ago it took a psminfo@plantspiritmedicine.org or visit the month of walking. These days, trucks and PSM website at plantspiritmedicine.org This article was excerpted from the upcoming new edition of Plant Spirit Medicine. buses can be hired, but the cost is so great 46 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

lifeways

Ceremonies and practices that deepen relationship with each other and the living world

KELLY REDINGER / DESIGNPICS

“Behold, a sacred voice is calling you.

All over the sky a sacred voice is calling you.”

Black Elk Lakota Sioux

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Preparing for the Next Step Birthdays, homecoming, graduation—for many young people in the U.S. these events are the signposts on the road to adulthood. But with the rise of the “kidults” (contemporary slang for adults who act like kids) it seems these markers to maturity are leading to a dead end. Young people need more direction.

At the Ojai Foundation that direction can be acquired during youth retreats, three- or fiveday gatherings hosted by the foundation where teens walk up to the precipice of adulthood— and gain confidence for their next steps in life.

Situated on 40 acres in Southern California, the Ojai Foundation hosts programs that allow any visitor, regardless of age, to awaken to self, others and the natural world.

The foundation achieves this goal by employing a practice called the “council.”

Adam Rumack, the foundation’s marketing and outreach director, says the council has four guiding principles: speaking from the heart, listening from the heart, spontaneity, and the ability to answer honestly the question at hand. Often 48 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

youth will gather and in council ask a question—one as simple as “How are you today?” or as complex as “What does it mean to be a woman?” Holding a talking piece, one young person speaks as others listen. Everyone takes a turn. “The council is the thread that ties them together,” says Rumack.

The thread connects in many directions. The foundation hosts additional programs that welcome young people from groups in the area including a foster youth organization and a street poet collective in L.A. and students from neighboring Oxnard High School.

The council model is also used in 63 schools in the L.A. Unified School District.

The lure of the council sometimes draws a young person back to Ojai: Rumack participated in a retreat when he was 18 years old. Now 30, he says taking part a dozen years ago provided an unexpected opportunity. “It was the first time I felt seen or heard for who I was,” he says. The youths who attend today’s retreats meet a similar opportunity: “They come to build connection to the world.”

—ROSETTE ROYALE

Braveheart Women’s Society

On the grassy banks of the Missouri River in southeastern South Dakota a tradition nearly lost to the ravages of genocide has quietly, if insistently, taken root. For the last thirteen years, adolescent girls who are on the cusp of transitioning to adulthood have made a priceless discovery—who they are as women.

Thanks to the Brave Heart Women’s Society, the Yankton Sioux traditional coming-ofage ceremony, known as Isnati Awica Dowanpi, is returning to the great plains and transforming women of all ages in the process.

“Childhood was really rough—lost, floating and drifting,” says one initiate. “By my early teens, I was a pretty strong alcoholic.” Now 21, she returns each year to assist with the four-day ceremony that teaches young women to respect themselves, their bodies and their roles.

Brave Heart was reestablished by a group of women elders inspired to bring back traditional knowledge by “calling home the spirit of the culture.” Historically, the

women’s society was charged with retrieving the dead and wounded from the battlefield and supporting families facing grief. “In a way we are doing the same thing today.” says Faith Spotted Eagle, “Bringing back our people from emotional death.”

Illegal up until Jimmy Carter signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978, the ceremony returned in a community camp setting after Brave Heart members interviewed grandmothers scattered across three states, asking what they could remember about the traditional rite of passage.

The story of this revival of ancient lifeways—recounted in slideshows, video, written narrative and audio—was produced by NPR’s Kitchen Sisters as a part of their new multimedia series The Hidden World of Girls. www.kitchensisters.org/girlstories. Scroll down under “Radio Stories” to “Brave Heart Women’s Society” and experience the way, even amid a legacy of oppression, traditional wisdom is re-engaged to address the deepest of human needs.

—CHRIS SCHLAKE

FROM LEFT: LESLIE ROBERTS; COURTESY BRAVE HEART SOCIETY AND RUNNING STRONG FOR AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH®

From Left: Youth council at the Ojai Foundation Land Sanctuary. Girls on the Yankton Reservation participate in the Coming of Age Ceremony.

{ essay }

MAYAN PROPHESIES 2012 Words of advice for the coming changes, spoken at a Council Fire at Ancient Wisdom Rising 2011

By Tata Omeakaehekatl Erick Gonzalez

© ROBERT LEON / WWW.ROBERTLEON.COM

They call our Mayan people time travelers and time keepers.They had the most accurate calendar because they understood about the mechanics of the cosmos. Our history talks about how the earth was destroyed four times and how the Fifth Sun that we live in today is coming to its end.They call it December 21, 2012.

The prophecies say that everything that we have done to the earth, to the spirit, to the elements—these things won’t go unnoticed. So that’s why our people have strong recommendations. Stay close to the fire and honor life. Respect mother earth.

Stay close to those spirits because they will give us instructions on how to get through these changes.

Our elders have talked about these things for a long time. We’re following instructions, finding out where the water is, where the canyons are and the caves.

What do we have to do to store the seeds to create diversity? How can we create our alliances and restructure our communities to heal the sacred hoop for our people? Our prophecies will guide us and give us a clear path to follow So that’s what we’re doing. We’re creating the places for ceremony, for gathering so that we can remember our role in life. We are reestablishing our connection to the earth and spirit and focusing on each other, finding our alliances. That’s why our people have been

on a pilgrimage. We don’t just come around to visit. We go out and touch our forehead to the earth to remember.

These are the original instructions.

Many people say, “Yeah, well, we’re all going to die.”

Sure it’s going to be like that. But do we need to take the other species with us and have that kind of karma? We call it carrying the tokh, the payment.

Maybe some of us say, “So what?

We’re going to die so let’s enjoy the last of it. Let’s take the last tree down.” Well, someday somebody is going to ask, “Why did you do that?” It might be the Spirit— the Oneness—that is going to ask. What will we have to say for ourselves?

We want to say that we did try. We

gathered like this and told our stories. We worked to bring our families back home, to bring our people to relationship, to honor the elemental beings again, to respect and rebuild that which we have shattered and to feed what we have ravaged.

Our visionaries said it’s going to take a long time to come back to that place.

We’re going to have to hunker down for a generation or two to be able to survive and be able to welcome the Sixth Sun. For us it’s a time for our re-flowering.

This gift is an opportunity to begin anew.

Maybe our elders will tell stories so the young people will understand our history—how we became worse than termites.

How is it that our minds got so dark that we destroyed life itself? How did our hearts become so crooked that we learned to hate each other? Our prophecies say Remember and document everything you see. Don’t just look and hear but document it. And those stories will talk to the next generations like prophecies.

where will erick be on 12/21/2012? At the ancient pyramid of Patziapa on the shores of Lake Atit­lan, Guatemala., along with elders from the Maya, Tewa, Lakota, Dine (Navajo), Shuar, Oromo (Ethiopia), Choctaw/ Chicka­saw, Metis and other indigenous traditions to welcome the dawning of the Oxlajuj Bak’tun. For information about joining them, visit mayanshamanism.com

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 49

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FIRE OF PURIFICATION A month spent feeding the fierce Dorje Khadro, Tantric Destroyer of Demons

By Rob Preece

BUDDHA STATUE IN THE MAHAKALA CAVE.

T

Soon after I arrived in India in 1980, my Tibetan teacher suggested I should do a retreat on a fire deity known as Dorje Khadro, particularly oriented to clearing emotional and energetic obstacles. To do this I needed to find somewhere fairly isolated where I would not be disturbed. In January the follow50 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

ing year I found the ideal place.

Near Bodhgaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment, sits a range of small mountains where there is a cave dedicated to a wrathful Buddhist protector deity called Mahakala. Many years ago it is said that the ferocious black form of Mahakala appeared in a vision

to a yogi meditating in this cave. He was so shocked that he ran out of the cave, and Mahakala then dissolved into a huge rock just in front of the entrance.

Around 60 years ago two young Tibetan monks built a small gompa, or temple, on the site of the Mahakala cave, which became a pilgrimage place

REINHARD GOLDMANN

he stresses of our materialistic lifestyle have an impact upon both our outer and inner environment. We know that they pollute the outer natural environment, but we also accumulate a kind of emotional and energetic toxicity that lives in our bodies and can become increasingly debilitating if we are unable to clear its effect.

Our challenge is to know how to clear ourselves of this accumulation. Within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition there are a number of ways to clear this toxicity, one of which is a very special meditation practice associated with the purifying capacity of fire.

{ essays } for Tibetans and Indians alike. I decided to pay the monks at the gompa a visit to see if they would allow me to do my Dorje Khadro retreat there. When I arrived at this little monastery nestled in the mountainside I was overwhelmed by the feeling of the place. I fell instantly in love with it and was very relieved when the abbot, now an old man, agreed and showed me a room looking out across the plains where I could stay.

A meditation practice that requires us to be outside working with the element of fire is very powerful. Like many similar rituals in the Tantric tradition the preparation for this practice is as much a part of the process as the actual practice itself. Creating the space in which the ritual is to be performed, gathering wood and the ingredients for the offering and then setting and lighting the fire are all part of the alchemical mix.

Preparing the substance to be offered, in this case black sesame seeds mixed with a little broken up or powdered incense, is particularly important.

After a few days making arrangements I arrived at the monastery for a month-long stay. There was, however, one small catch. I was awoken at three in the morning by the sound of loud, deep drumming and cymbals crashing.

As the gatekeeper, the abbot rose early each morning to perform his devotions.

Sitting by himself in the black walled Mahakala temple lit by butter lamps, he was a one-man-band with a huge drum and cymbals attached to strings so that he could play them all together. After the first sleepless night, I decided to give in to the drum and adjust my day to suit the abbot’s schedule, and on many mornings I joined him in the dark and did my own practice.

In this magical location I began my relationship with Dorje Khadro, a ferocious blue-black emanation of the purifying wisdom of fire in the Tantric tradition. In The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2002) I explain that in Jung’s view for an archetypal deity to

have the power to hook, subdue and transform the darkest aspects of our nature, it must bare a similar aspect to what is being transformed. The archetypal nature of Dorje Khadro, described in the traditional text, sees him as a dark blue, wrathful cannibal who is the destroyer of demons.

Dorje Khadro is an emanation of our minds’ innate Buddha nature appearing in a demonic aspect. He inhabits the darkness of the underworld amongst

sessions of intense meditation each day I sat with the fire and went through the process of making offerings. I felt the purging, cleansing heat of fire passing through me as I recited Dorje Khadro’s powerful mantra. Seated beside the fire, I gazed into the mouth of a blazing white-hot furnace gaping upwards, devouring whatever I offered. Sometimes it was excruciating, but I felt I could really allow the worse side of my nature to be what it was. In releasing it to the

I sat with the fire and went through the process of making offerings. I felt the purging, cleansing heat of fire passing through me.. the demons that dwell in the shadowy side of our nature. He is at home in that realm. Unperturbed by even our most vile negativity, he feeds on the demons of our dark side. He gains power and wisdom from transforming our most poisonous nature, and so we offer it to him in the fire. Here was the place where I could openly offer up my dark and demonic side, safe in the knowledge it would be totally accepted and transformed into fire’s wisdom energy.

When I began my retreat I felt both excitement and some trepidation.

I feared the process might wake up something very dark within me. I knew that it was beneficial to go through a process of purification to clear aspects of my history that were destructive and toxic, particularly the pain and fear that closes the heart. I understood that for my true nature to manifest I needed to purify what obscures it. I did not know how it would feel to sit hour after hour for a month with the purifying fire of Dorje Khadro. Through four, three-hour

fire rather than the pain I expected I began to feel purged of its presence and to experience a huge sense of liberation.

It became increasingly blissful as my energy began to clear.

Eventually my month of cleansing came to an end. I felt I would love to just remain there and go deeper and deeper, but reluctantly I packed away my ritual things and said a very fond farewell to the monastery, the cave, the mountain and particularly the old abbot I had grown to love dearly. I felt clear and peaceful as I made my way down through the fields that sit below the mountain back into the turmoil of India. Whether I had cleansed myself as fully as I might wish, I have no way of knowing, but my respect for and appreciation of the healing and purifying nature of fire has always remained with me. To this day Dorje Khadro is a fierce but compassionate presence I can awaken in the fire when I need to clear something that has become toxic or harmful.

about the author Rob Preece, author of

The Wisdom of Imperfection, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra, Courage to Feel and Preparing For Tantra (Snow Lion) is a psychotherapist, spiritual mentor, leader of Tibetan meditation retreats and an initiated Granicero (weather worker) in the Nahua tradition. He lives in the UK with his wife Anna and two sons. mudra.co.uk

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A NIGHT AT THE GREEN CORN FAST Dancing until sunrise to the song that births the world anew

By Christine Staub

D

ays of fasting, acts of courage and ceremony have prepared the way for this moment. White feathers fluttering in their caps, the two men serving as ceremonial “ground lenders” for this Muscogee Green Corn Fast near Okmulgee, Oklahoma call the next group of lead dancers to circle the Mother Fire.

“Cenhomatetvt ponhecketonkv”!” they cry. (“Your leader we have found for you!”)

I watch the lead dancer take his place by the fire. The men, women and children of his extended family spiral around the center in single file behind him. In silence they begin walking. The leader starts a call-and-response song, to which the men answer. The leader changes his walk to a stomping gait, and one after the other those behind him join in.

It is past midnight under a July sky brimming with stars, the air almost cool after a short but intense late afternoon rain. This blessing of the Weather Beings, who have made their presence known two days in a row after six weeks of drought, does not go unnoticed by those attending. For the annual Green Corn Fast is a time of gratitude, when the first fruits of the land are paid in tribute to 52 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

the Creator from whom all things come.

Mr. Sam Proctor, a respected Muscogee elder, culture bearer and descendant of the great Creek leader Opethleyahola, watches the proceedings. This Green Corn Dance is hosted by his family and community. His heart is warmed by the presence of the many young people participating in even the most demanding ritual aspects.

These Muscogee are determined to maintain their precious traditional ways as they raise children within the mainstream culture. They have to help them navigate the influence of media, cell phones and video games. Every year brings more challenge because the last of the native speakers are dying, and those who remain feel the time running out.

“The last of the really old ones, those in their 90s and even 100s, are gone,” says Mr. Proctor. The native Muscogee

language, and the way it describes relationships and values, is absolutely vital to maintaining a way of life that promotes balance and harmony with family and strangers alike.

“We chastise the parents who are too harsh in disciplining the children here on the ceremonial grounds,” one of the grandmothers confides. “We want the children to have positive thoughts about the time they spend here.”

The Green Corn Fast is a time of celebration and also a time of purification and renewal, a time for righting the wrongs and settling the grievances of the past year, of moving forward with a clean slate for all people of the community.

During the annual ceremony the central sacred fire is extinguished, its ashes added to a mound, which grows over the years, marking the continuity of the relationship between the people and the land. The women ceremonially dance to clear the chaff of the previous year, and a new fire is lit. Its embers, and messages of practicing right and moral living, are shared with all the surrounding hearths.

This evening’s celebration builds

{ essays }

Muscogee Elder, Mr. Sam Proctor

MACE FLEEGER

the importance of ceremony

as one at a time each woman adds her stomping gait to the dance. The women wear rattles on their legs, precious sacred items. Most are made of carefully polished turtle shells attached to leather sheaths, others shine in an array of gleaming tin cans.

The sound crescendos. What follows is a magical sound, an echoed chorus of that song which births the world anew time and time again. The cicadas join in. The bullfrogs add their voices. The glow of the flames lights the faces of the

innermost dancers, their gratitude for the gifts of fire and community and proud tradition clearly expressed.

I join other families and guests as we find our place in the spiral. We all catch the rhythm of the Stomp Dance. And then—a sudden shift. It’s time for walking and silence. Then a new call rises, a new response, a new building of the sound of feet that says, “We are here.

Notice us.”

When the dancing ends with sunrise, the footsteps on the packed sandy soil

for the well-being of community cannot be underestimated, even in these modern times.

There is a relationship between people and the places where they live, between people and the foods they eat and the waters they drink. For many people this relationship is fuzzy, like a long-buried, uncertain memory. But in these times of rapid change many people feel a deep longing to reconnect with the living earth.

One place where people can begin this reconnection is an Ancient Wisdom Rising retreat. Produced by Sacred Fire Foundation, these gatherings feature teachings, stories and ceremonies from indigenous elders and traditional wisdom keepers from around the world.

Mr. Proctor presents his stories and traditional wisdom at Ancient Wisdom Rising 2012 on land outside Atlanta that historically was under Muscogee protection before their forced removal to Oklahoma.

“The Ancestors are still here,” he said during a pre-gathering trip to the retreat site.

For more information or to be included on the mailing list for the next Ancient Wisdom Rising retreat, visit ancientwisdomrising.com.

will be left untouched, a testament to the sacrifice, the fasting, the bravery, the generous service which the people have demonstrated to their ancestors and to spirit. The dancers leave with the satisfaction of having offered their gift, a sacrifice that will bring blessings to their community and to these lands through the coming year.

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LAST OF THE SPIRIT KEEPERS

Surrounded by the growing influence of evangelicals, a Lacando’n Mayan Elder tries to keep the godpots burning.

B Y C A R L A W O O DY

Lacandon Maya boy at Cascadas Lacanja in Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 55

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Along the narrow dirt path, a ceiba tree stands sentinel guarding the rainforest enclave holding the godhouse of Lacandón Maya elder Don Antonio Martinez. The cosmic World Tree of the Maya holds the Upperworld and Underworld stable, creating a portal for humankind to communicate with the gods. But in the village of Najá in Chiapas, Mexico all that the sacred ceiba symbolizes is quickly being lost.

Don Antonio is a man with the unique features of a spiritual leader, a certain presence, an underlying humility that marks a true wisdom keeper. He alone has been holding a torch to the godpots like his ancestors before him. Following in the footsteps of his late father-in-law Chan K’in Viejo, the great too’hil (spiritual leader) of the Lacandones, he practices his traditions quietly, attempting to shut out the outside influences increasingly difficult to ignore. He refuses to give up and take his godpots to the burial caves as others have done. He is the last remaining Spirit Keeper of the Lacandones.

For many years, I have led spiritual travel programs, particularly in Peru and Mexico. I bring small groups of Westerners to engage with native spirit keepers who are willing to act as a bridge and share their sacred ways. I have a longstanding relationship with Andean mystic Don Américo Yábar and Q’ero paq’os, the wisdom keepers descended from the Inca priest class.

In the summer of 2006 I was engaged in a despacho ceremony, a traditional prayer ritual, at Huaypo Lake outside Cusco, when an inspiration to bring native spirit keepers together began to take form. I founded Kenosis Spirit Keepers, a nonprofit extension of my original organization Kenosis, to sponsor cross-cultural interchanges between native elders and young adults and to support other community-building projects in indigenous villages.

My work in Chiapas has thus unfolded, through relationship, over a number of years.

I brought my first group to Najá in 2008 to meet Don Antonio. He expressed sadness, perhaps sensing the impending demise of the Lacandones predicted by old Chan K’in. He told us 56 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

there was no one to whom he could pass on teachings. His sons weren’t interested. Within a tribal culture used to doing things in community, practicing alone was foreign to him, as foreign as the outside influences that threaten the continuity of the gods.

The Lacandón Maya live in a few small villages scattered through the rainforest between Palenque and the Usumacinta River that serves as the border with Guatemala. Their unique appearance, dress and spiritual practices separate them from other Maya peoples, offering at least a couple of possibilities as to origins. They might have migrated to the area from some faraway land. Or, perhaps because they were sequestered deep in the rainforest for eons, their culture developed distinctly. A gentle people, their beliefs are based on inclusion instead of exclusion, to the point that, when the Jesuits showed up centuries ago with stories of Jesus Christ, they incorporated Hesuklisto within their pantheon of gods, identifying him as the son of Äykantho, the god of foreigners responsible for commerce, medicine and disease.

Back in the 1950s a slow influx of missionaries began making headway in the Lacandón Rainforest. Only the hardiest ventured into that then-dense environment which kept outsiders at bay. Now, due to greatly increased accessibility via roads cut by loggers, the evangelistas have arrived in great numbers. They teach a message of exclusion: Only their way is true. All other ways, including the ancient traditional ways, are sinful. It’s an aggressive dogma, a sad pattern that has occurred across the globe. The peace-loving Lacandones have simply been overwhelmed, from the outlying hamlets to the most interior jungle settlement, casualties of their own inclusive values.

It is January 2009. We are traveling the winding roads from Palenque toward Najá. Along the way, I witness once again the changes in the landscape. For miles we pass pasture and farmland that had, not too long ago, been jungle. While still beautiful, the rapid destruction of the rainforest serves to reflect the intense pressure Don Antonio is under to abandon his ancient traditions, applied consistently by the members of the new religious sect in the village. The mist partially obscuring the green hills in the distance gives a sense that we are entering unknown territory.

And in a way, we are.

Our primary purpose on this journey is to bring Hopi leader Harold Joseph to meet and share traditions with Don Antonio. Harold has been chosen by his spiritual leader as an emissary from his home village of Shongopavi located on Second Mesa in northern Arizona. Dawahafvoya is Harold’s Hopi name. As a member of the Snow Clan, his traditional role is to make sure that cultural activities are carried out in a respectful, harmonious way.

Arriving in Najá, we walk to Don Antonio’s godhouse located in a clearing at the edge of the village. The jungle surrounding it is held at bay, but given any opportunity the space would be consumed. The thatched, open-air godhouse holds

{ feature }

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: CARLA WOODY; DARLEEN DUNNING (2); CARLA WOODY.

Clockwise from top: The godhouse of Don Antonio Martinez in the Lacandón Maya village of Najá. Men offering drinking gourds to the gods. Don Antonio Martinez lighting copal that fills the godpots. The sacred ceiba, or World Tree, of Maya creation stories.

central space, accompanied by the small “kitchen” containing the necessary accoutrements to prepare ceremonial tamales. The dug-out canoe, covered by palm leaves, has its place nearby. It is the receptacle for fermenting balché, a ceremonial beverage made from mashed bark and honey.

There, inside the godhouse, we find Don Antonio, but he is not as I am used to seeing him. He seems fragile this time, his face deeply lined, his eyes hollowed.

He greets us politely as Harold and some of the others, there for the first time, are introduced. But then he lets us know it is a very sad time. Just a few days prior, his son Chan K’in suddenly, inexplicably passed away—a young man. We are all struck still with shock at the tragic news. After a time, Don Antonio says he wants to go ahead with the balché ceremony planned for the next day and asks us to return early in the morning when all will be ready to start.

The balché ceremony, undertaken by the males in the community, is a conduit for blessings, prayers and a way of honoring. Individual gods are represented through terracotta godpots, which bear the face of each god and have an interior meant for burning copal. Any godpot may be chosen for use during the traditional ceremonies. Don Antonio, as caretaker of the godpots, communes with the gods that hold the world together.

And when he feeds the godpots copal, tamales and balché, he is feeding the gods, the universe and everything in it.

The ceremony and its preparation take many hours. Traditionally, women do not enter the godhouse. Their role is to prepare the ceremonial tamales and provide ancillary support. During our travels there, Don Antonio graciously allows the women in the group to sit just inside the godhouse, along its edges, and participate in the ceremony, including drinking balché.

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 57

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When we come to the ceremony the next morning, Don Antonio is still setting up the godhouse. The godpots are already in their place on the ground in the middle as ritual dictates. A small fire is burning in the corner of the open-air structure to reduce the slight chill and the drinking gourds specific to each god are put before the godpots. Clutching a sweater around his traditional white shift, bare feet in the dirt, he looks even more fragile than the previous day. Young men begin to show up, more than I’d seen with us during previous ceremonies—all in traditional dress this time. Don Antonio is obviously grieving, and, since he is to lead it, I wonder how he will get though the ceremony.

He sits on a log in front of the large balché pot, his knees pulled up. As he ladles balché into bowls, Don Antonio shares the inner turmoil he feels as a result of the evangelistas’ influences in the village. It is now even stronger than before. Grabbing a stick he traces a jagged line in the dirt and points to it.

“They told me my path is a crooked one.” He draws another line and continues, “Not a straight one like theirs. They said I am the cause of my son’s death because I do the balché ceremony. They said if I stop they would take me to see their god.”

Cruel, ignorant words spoken to a father enduring loss, while extolling the glories of a trip to Jerusalem.

The village loudspeaker starts blasting nearby. It continues off and on throughout the ceremony, a cacophony of disrespect repeated to the gods. Yet prayers chanted in the godhouse still make their way upward on copal smoke. “They do this when I am in the godhouse doing the ceremony,” Don Antonio says, clearly believing these broadcasts are an attempt by the evangelistas to further interfere. One of the young Lacandón men points, saying he sees one of the godpots crying.

Don Antonio laments that the gods don’t come so much any more. “There was a time when people would be healed through the balché ceremony, but not any more.”

Harold sits directly in front of Don Antonio and begins to tell him, through a string of translators, about his Hopi traditions, creation stories, some of the ways of the kiva and the meaning of the cycles of nature to the Hopi. Only after the fact do I discover that the ancient migration paths of the Hopi originate in South America, extending to their present homeland in Arizona. The Quechua, Maya and other indigenous peoples along that path are their relations, sharing similar creation stories, symbols and other sacred ways.

Subtly, a beautiful intensity builds in the godhouse. The young Lacandón men begin to talk over each other to translate for Don Antonio in the traditional dialect, which I’d never seen happen before. I take this as a display of their respect for Don Antonio since he understands Spanish just fine. They compare things they have in common, the Hopis and the Lacandones.

After a time, Harold asks permission to do his traditional Hopi prayers. He questions Don Antonio if he can do the prayer bare-chested as Hopis do. But Don Antonio seems confused by 58 {SACRED FIRE } Issue 16

this question, it not being a tradition of the Lacandones, and Harold withdraws the request. Long hair freed, hanging down his back for ceremony, he walks barefooted over to the line of godpots. Through the haze of copal smoke, Harold prays softly in Hopi over each one, his resonant voice still reaching us. His prayers that find a resting place in my body. Moving from one godpot to the next he sprinkles cornmeal from the small bag he carries with him.

At this point Don Antonio collapses into the arms of the men around him, losing physical strength, sobbing loudly, surrendering to what seems an overwhelming grief. Witnessing the depth of his sorrow is heart wrenching. The men hold and console him.

He lifts his eyes to a corner of the godhouse and cries out, “My son. My son is here!”

There is a vibratory shift in the godhouse to something robust and vital that was absent just moments before. Harold sees the godpots enliven, acknowledging that there are those who still maintain connection. Others present witness the same thing.

As the day wears on, the young Lacandón men take an active role in the full ceremony in a way I’d never seen and apparently hadn’t happened in a very long time. They line up with Don Antonio in front of the godpots—chanting, offering the balché bowls to the gods. They dip palm fronds over the godpots, coating them with copal smoke to ensure their prayers travel to the Upperworld. Clearly, they are immersed. No rote activity here.

Earlier I’d asked Don Antonio if he has an apprentice to receive the teachings, but he said, “No. The boys are empty. They only come to drink the balché.”

But not today! Through intervention by an outsider, a Hopi wisdom keeper from Shongopavi, something ancient is reawakened in the young men—spiritual grounding. That day, the evangelistas’ incessant proselytizing can not touch them; other Western influences are forgotten. They have the courage to talk to Harold about their feelings, their own distress about the intrusion upon their beliefs. I hear one young man cry out, “I just want to have my religion. The evangelistas can have theirs, but not force it on me.”

Harold’s presence supports Don Antonio those few days we are there, bringing his own traditional prayers to merge with Don Antonio’s, offering the Hopi creation stories so like those of the Lacandones, speaking about the plight of his own people.

By the time we leave, there is a glimmer of expectancy—one that touches all of us present.

Harold’s parting words to Don Antonio: “Hold on!”

A few days after we leave Najá, Harold asks me, “What happened, this is what you wanted me to accomplish?” I reply that, for me, it’s just about creating the space, and what filled that space was perfectly beautiful, more than I could have imagined.

Our conversation leads to talk of Don Antonio and the space he holds for the ancient traditions and his community.

{ feature } “We Hopis do this. This is our contribution. We have this common thing,” Harold continues excitedly. “This balché is the strongest experience! Its healing cleared my body and uplifted the spirit.

This is sacred medicine water! We were connected with everything!” Indeed, that is the outcome of our experience together. But in the early morning hours of the ceremony, I couldn’t have predicted it.

On the airplane out of Villahermosa Harold and I are seated together. We just settle in when I glance out the window, and my breath catches.

“Harold, look!” A double rainbow, each arc as visibly brilliant as the other.

“Be humble. Be humble,” he cautions. “We have accomplished what we needed to do and in a humble way. This sign tells me so.”

Harold returns to Shungopavi and takes part in the Bean Dance. There he shares his experiences with elders and other spiritual leaders. He speaks of all the places we visited. The hieroglyphs of temple ruins told him that his people and the Maya share very similar creation stories and symbols of strength. He relays so many sacred things he saw. And he tells the story of Don Antonio and the situation in Najá.

The elders grow excited knowing that Harold has actually been to places contained in their oral history. And they express deep sorrow for Don Antonio, a desire to lend strength. The elders realize how things can happen if these pressures from the outside are allowed to gain a foothold. “We have those things on Hopi, too. But my elders know we must continue. This story of Don Antonio helped renew their commitment,” Harold reports to me later.

By bringing Indigenous people together who have common roots, I hold the intention that such sharing will enter another level altogether—one of great healing. And I absolutely know that the health of the world community depends on integrating beliefs from native spirituality that accepts there is a web of life connecting us all. What you do here will have an effect there. For some, it may seem like the work we undertake engaging with native traditions, supporting their preservation, learning through them is inconsequential or even meaningless.

I see otherwise. The positive effect on all who are involved is pronounced. Ours is a way of peacemaking through honoring, a quiet antidote that contains its own powerful influence—one that carries on the wind.

the sacred practices. Soon afterward, he formally entrusted the caretaking of his godhouse to his son-in-law Chan K’in.

Turning over care of his godhouse to Chan K’in signaled apprenticeship and continuity—the same way old Chan K’in had passed traditions to his son-in-law Antonio when he was a young man.

With this news I prepare for our next journey to further these connections.

Chosen again by his spiritual leader in Shungopavi, Harold is to return. And this time, Gerald Lomaventema and Augustine Mowa will accompany him.

In January 2010, a small group of Hopi Spirit Keepers and other travelers supporting the work arrive in Najá.

This time the visit is radically different. A good number gather for the balché ceremony, too many to fit comfortably in the godhouse, and the atmosphere is light in a way I had never witnessed. There are lots of smiles and laughter. Don Antonio is visibly shining. Aside from the traditional chanting and prayers, music is played on guitar. And, for the first time in my experience, a very young Lacandón boy is present, participating with the others. The gods display happiness. Their godpots blaze, none of them exhibiting shyness by refusing to light, as they did the first time I had come. The perfume of copal fills the air.

Back on Second Mesa, months later, we plan a third visit to Najá for January 2011 with the intent to continue the connection and mutual support, to keep the value of community strong. We agree that holding the integrity of heritage is paramount—whether folk art, language, right livelihood, traditional religion or cultural practices—those things that nurture the soul and hold the world together. Through such interaction, we are taught to protect and retain what is of value to us—to disallow attempts by others to pluck away pieces of ourselves.

But when we arrive in Najá I notice a number of changes that sadden me greatly. The young man who in 2009 spoke so passionately of his desire to retain his traditions has shorn his hair and no longer dresses traditionally. He is not at the balché ceremony as he was always previously. Indeed, there are noticeably fewer young Lacandón men present. The remaining traditional dug-out canoes are half-sunk at the edge of Lake Najá, replaced by fiberglass boats. The very air in the village seems different. Even the balché is reluctant to ferment, delaying our ceremony by a day. No explanation is given as to the absence of the young Lacandón men who were so engaged the year before.

The ritual is beautifully touching, but the question of how long the Lacandón traditions will endure remains unanswered. Still, Don Antonio is there in his godhouse, a quiet presence, honoring the gods, lighting the copal.

“Be humble.

Be humble,” he cautions. “We have accomplished what we needed to do and in a humble way. This sign tells me so.”

The effect of our visit in January 2009 and its moments of compassion and quiet camaraderie are revealed over the next year. In March I receive news that, during a village gathering in Najá, Don Antonio made a public announcement confirming his traditional religion. He emphatically stated he would continue

Issue 16 {SACRED FIRE } 59

LIFE RESOURCES CREATIVE ARTS

Tools and Art to Nurture Connection Rawhide drums, rattles, spirited housewares, toys, medicine bags, jewelry, original artwork and more, all celebrating our connection with nature and the divine, by the hands of artist and craftswoman: Sylvan Thorncraft emeraldspritestudio.com etsy.com/shop/EmeraldSpriteStudio

COUNSELING AND GUIDANCE

Exploring the Phenomenon of Prayer My gift is in helping others connect powerfully with the divine through prayer and from there to pray effectively. I offer workshops, personal coaching and companion prayers.

Sherry Morgan 860-656-6817 (USA) 250-483-5273 (Canada) sherry.morgan@primus.ca Feeling anxious, trapped or stuck in life?

“The Enemies of Learning” work puts you back in appropriate relationship with the mind & restores a sense of wonder and of life-long learning.

Dan Sprinkles Shamanic healing: Marakamé, Granicero. Enemies of Learning program. enemiesoflearning@gmail.com 845-810-0200 Feng Shui Wind and Water BlessingsTransform your Life with the Wisdom of Nature.

Feng Shui consultations for your home and business: on site and long distance by using your floor plan.

Megan Montero 831-335-3865 windandwaterblessings.com

Initiation into Womanhood Sacred Emergence ~ Initiation into Womanhood is a sacred rite of passage for girls and young women 16-25 that lays a foundation for deep self-awareness to emerge. Summer 2013.

Apply by Feb 15, 2013.

Contact SacredEmergence@ gmail.com sacredfirecommunity.org/ lifeways/sacredemergence/ Shamanic Astrology “As above, so below.”

Planets and stars speak to us and offer guidance about our life purpose, relationship intent, initiatory opportunities and how to live life in alignment. I offer astrological readings and counseling.

Yuma, AZ USA. SkyFox 928-210-5092 foxxita@gmail.com

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Living Earth School of Herbalism Living Earth School of Herbalism offers online distance-learning and in-class workshops in traditional Western herbalism and related subjects either for general interest or for those who wish to pursue a career as a professional herbalist. jill@livingearthschool.ca; livingearthschool.ca Plant Spirit Medicine and Integrative Bodywork Connect with the sacred healing of the natural world. Experience the harmony and balance of Plant Spirit Medicine and the nourishment of therapeutic bodywork.

Santa Cruz, CA USA Marilyn Berta 831-427-2987 brightspirit@cruzio.com centerforhealthsc.com

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Plant Spirit Medicine, LMT, CPES, Student Midwife Experience the profound healing of the plant people. Offering Plant Spirit Medicine, massage, and placenta encapsulation in Palisade, CO USA. Kathy Reid 970-623-1297 plantspiritmedicine-ut-co. blogspot.com PlacentaBenefits.info/KathyReid

CANADA

ONTARIO Toronto Mai Duong torontofires@gmail.com (416) 651-0869

COLOMBIA

Medellin Willington Osorio wilyoso@gmail.com 57 4 2544172

MEXICO

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Individual Distance Training in Quickbooks Specializing in small business owners with heart.

Receive private one-on-one training via secure internet web site with a gently compassionate teacher.

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Kelly Tiedemann (413).588.1452 Kt.bookkeeping@gmail.com KTBookkeeping.net

SACRED FIRE CIRCLES

These communities host Sacred Fire Circles every month. For more information, contact a Sacred Fire Community Firekeeper from this list, or visit sacredfirecommunity.org

AUSTRALIA

NORTHERN TERRITORY Alice Springs Roger & Reyna Menadue rmenadue@gmail.com 61 8 89535605 WESTERN AUSTRALIA White Gum Valley, Perth Phil Roberts phil@walkingwithheart.com 61 8 94331292

MORELOS Tepoztlan Jaime Velez jaimevelez56@yahoo.com.mx (739) 39 51111 Tepoztlan Ana Cortés ana.jacaranda@gmail.com (739) 39 53434 Tepoztlan Erica Cohen jinpakartso4@yahoo.com (739) 39 51227

UNITED KINGDOM

AVON Fishponds, Bristol Carole Fofana fofana@blueyonder.co.uk 01179397368 BEDS Clophill Richard Diss richarddiss1950@tiscali.co.uk 01525 862278 CORNWALL Hayle Michael Locke mjlocke@hotmail.com 01736 756600 Par Claire Marie France claire.marie.france@gmail.com 01726817922 * *Firekeeper in Training

DEVON Ashburton Anna Murray Preece murray.preece@virgin.net 01364 654044 Otterton Wizz and Chris Holland chris@wholeland.org.uk 01395 568349 HAMPSHIRE Southampton, Hants Lynn-Amanda Brown lynn-amanda@hotmail.co.uk 02380 842102 SHROPSHIRE Newcastle on Clun, Stropshire Lucy Wells lucyinwenlock@yahoo.co.uk 07579001855 Michael Locke mjlocke@hotmail.com SUSSEX (EAST) Beddingham Anne Lynn Lewes kestrelswing@yahoo.ca 01273 858154

WALES

Pembrokeshire Jeff Bartlett jeffbartlett@btinternet.com 0044 1239 891130

SCOTLAND

MORAYSHIRE Forres Jane Ditchburn janeedit56@yahoo.co.uk 01309 677825

USA

ARIZONA White Mountains Minda Simmons minsimm@yahoo.com (928) 532-7393 ARKANSAS Eureka Springs Melissa Clare Tomalin tomalinmc@yahoo.com (479) 253-8252

Life Resource Listings: $35 (1 issue), $90 (3 issues), $100 (4 issues).

Order online: Sacredfiremagazine.com> Advertise> Resource Listings

CALIFORNIA Long Beach John Huang johnthepisces@hotmail.com (626) 807-2244

MAINE Blue Hill Noah Lorio nlorio@yahoo.com (207) 266-9628

Malibu Marie Bathum mariebathum@gmail.com (310) 457-7672

MARYLAND Maryland Line, exit 36 off I-83 Linda Felch MDPASacredFire@gmail.com (717) 668-3175

Ojai Angela & Anthony Ocone aocone@mac.com (Anthony) ahocone@mac.com (Angela) (805) 640-8589 Santa Cruz Don McVay donmcvay@skyhighway.com 831-588-6258 Santa Monica Alan Kerner kerners@aol.com (310) 452-0658 COLORADO Grand Valley Grand Junction Debra Patton Davis debrapattondavis@gmail.com (970) 241-4525 Paonia Phyllis Swackhamer pslyons@tds.net (970) 527-4034 Plateau Valley Grand Mesa Deanna JennĂŠ and Gary Weidner djbutterfly5@gmail.com garycharlesweidner@gmail. com (970) 241-7256 CONNECTICUT Colchester Maggie Freier and Mark Gionfriddo mefreierlawoffice@gmail.com markgionfriddo@gmail.com (860) 281-4317 (860) 281-4318.

GEORGIA Carrollton Sherry Boatright sherryboat@bellsouth.net (770) 854-5551

MASSACHUSETTS Brookfield Gwen Broz & Tim Simon timgwen@charter.net (508) 867-9810 Pepperell Kateri McCue kmccue326@yahoo.com (978) 877-7367 MISSISSIPPI Poplarville Karla and Tim Cole kcole0506@gmail.com elocwmit@gmail.com (601) 403-8215 NEW HAMPSHIRE Hancock Laura Clayton Pollaro laurakclayton@gmail.com (603) 525-4089

NORTH CAROLINA Asheville Lisa Lichtig and Patrick Hanaway lisalichtig@main.nc.us path@main.nc.us (828) 645-0166 Chapel Hill Alison Gayek alisongayek@gmail.com (919) 967-3976 Chapel Hill Vinny Marra vinnymarralmbt@gmail.com 919-824-5630 / 919-932-6262 Greensboro Christine Staub carolinablueowl@gmail.com (336) 643-3124 Raleigh Rita & Tim Kesler tkesler@mindspring.com Western Carolina Maggie Valley Cindy Fogle cindyfogle@me.com (828) 712-2678

OREGON Bend Jessica De la O & Larry Messerman bendfires@gmail.com (541) 306-6448 Portland NE John Ritz John.Ritz.OR@gmail.com 503-309-6411 Portland NW Jonathan Merritt meansitt@yahoo.com (503) 643-2462 PENNSYLVANIA Shrewsbury, exit 4 off I-83 Linda Felch MDPASacredFire@gmail.com (717) 668-3175 SOUTH CAROLINA Florence Annie King annieking@sc.rr.com (843) 665-1340

TENNESSEE Leipers Fork Robin Lockwood robloc@bellsouth.net 615-794-3577 Oak Ridge Mary Beth Robinson mrobin15@utk.edu (865) 387-0977 Summertown Susan Skinner sueskin@bellsouth.net (931) 964-2452 WASHINGTON Olympia Sharon & Peter Brown p2b52@yahoo.com sbrown@sacredfiremagazine.com 360-943-9373 Seattle Buffy Aakaash buffeliscious@yahoo.com (206) 726-4806

NEW YORK Boiceville Claire Franck clairefranck@gmail.com (845) 657-2929 Germantown Rick Haug rlpsm@hotmail.com (914) 466-9805 Hurleyville Anna Lena Hilton annalenahilton@hotmail.com (845) 434-0520 Margaretville Annie Eagan eagannie@gmail.com dansprinkles@gmail.com (845) 810-0200

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THE MESA LIFE PROJECT A residential community guided by heart and the wisdom of the land.

Come Alive!

Off the grid. Natural Building.

Centered in the spirit of fire.

Beauty Abounds.

MLP is now accepting applicants.

Email us: apply@mesalifeproject.org

www.mesalifeproject.org

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glowing

embers

One of the world’s many sacred places, Cerro Quemado, the birthplace of the Sun, overlooks Mexico’s sacred desert Wiricuta

Close Encounters with Sacred Places We fasted for a month, gathered in the pilgrimage camp, practiced our prayers and crafted our offerings. On the third day we rose before dawn and hiked in silence, fasting and praying, to the sacred place, the home of a magnificent Being.

It is not a difficult hike, over hills, across grazed meadows alive with wildflowers, through live oak forests and dense brambles, up a steep rocky slope. But that year, when I reached the sacred cairn I was utterly broken, my legs rubbery, my breath coming hard.

I dropped my pack and, desolate, fell on the ground. My comrades gathered wood and built our vigil fire, rousing me only when it was time to place our offerings. After we broke our fast, I still felt my desolation. And when the blessing descended upon us, I felt that I missed it. I felt great sadness as I huddled into my sleeping bag.

But in the deep night I woke to coyotes howling, and that howling became a chorus of native women singing, and that singing became the song of a million birds, and that song became a single infinite chord, rich and deep and full like a great bow drawn across the string of being. The richness and beauty of that blessing vibrated through every cell of my being. I carried that blessing through the night and back to the camp and home to my people. I carry it still.

In every land there are certain secret springs, mystical lakes, mountain caves and cairns, ancient groves, desert canyons, hilltops, meadows, waterfalls and coves that are especially imbued with living spirit.

These places were well known to the original peoples. The wise ones knew that these great Beings guard over the land, provide protection and abundance, connection with the Weather Beings, wisdom, vision and healing, sites for ceremony and initiation.

They knew that the life and well-being of the people depend on maintaining good relationships with them through cycles of exchange, through ceremony, offerings and sacrifice.

These sacred places are still alive, still pouring out their blessings, although many have been paved over or mined, clear cut or dammed. Most have been forgotten in our rush to

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modernity, and the traditional knowledge—the preparation, the specific offerings and prayers, the manner of approach to those sacred sites—has been lost. In many cases, these great Beings feel animosity toward the descendants of those who destroyed the ancestral traditions, who still desecrate the sacred waters and lands.

So when someone stumbles upon a sacred place uninvited, or improvises a ceremony, the danger can be real.

Some of those magnificent sacred sites are calling us to renew our relationships. It is slow work and dangerous, dependent on the wisdom, vision and guidance of wise teachers. But if we open ourselves to that calling and approach with humility, reverence and integrity, the blessings of those great Beings may be received once more and the people may once again live in harmony with the world.

DAWN PALEY

By Jonathan Merritt

Thanks to you, Sacred Fire Foundation is accomplishing goals beyond our wildest dreams!

Look at what we’ve done together…

Wiricuta

Wisdom Fellowship Award

Many of Mexico’s Huichol Indians, the Wixarika, can no longer afford to travel the great distances to make their pilgrimages to the sacred desert of Wiricuta. These pilgrimages are vital to maintaining their tradition, their culture and their connection to this sacred place. Because of your generosity, we raised $30,000 to help fund pilgrimages to their most sacred site, Cerro Quemado, the birthplace of the Sun.

Your generosity makes it possible to fund our first annual Wisdom Fellowship Award, presented to indigenous leaders for lifelong achievement. This year’s recipient is Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan and member of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, Haudenosaunee. This award is being presented at Ancient Wisdom Rising.

Wiping of the Tears The late Haudenosaunee elder, Jake Swamp, had a dream of hope and healing for his people. Your outpouring of support generated $11,400 to help make his dream a reality. In late June, indigenous people gathered from North, Central and South America for an historic ceremony to ease the burdens of the historical grief and trauma caused by the atrocities of colonization. Happiness, strength and well-being are some of the blessings spoken of by those who took part.

Du-yu ko-dv-i (The Right Path) SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING PROJECT

There are only 280 remaining fluent Tsa-la-gi (Cherokee) speakers in the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. In a race against time, you are helping to preserve the language by funding $2,500 to produce and widely distribute language CDs to young adults outside the classroom setting. This is a beautiful project birthed by elders and dedicated young adults enrolled in the Du-yu ko-dv-i program to help ensure the language lives on.

Sacred Fire magazine New look, new feel. Few things are as important as demonstrating the relevance of heart-centered ways and traditional wisdom as guides for how to live in these times. Your ongoing support brings this wisdom to the world and enables Sacred Fire to reach new audiences through collaborative partnerships with organizations that seek to restore balance to nature, our communities and the world.

Ancient Wisdom Rising This retreat happens for three extraordinary days, bringing people together with the most honored indigenous elders and wisdom keepers from around the world. Your donations make this event possible by funding the outreach and preparations which lay the groundwork for bringing AWR to life.

We ask you to join hands and hearts with us to continue bringing this beautiful medicine into the world…

Please, give generously to help us reach our year-end goal of $60,000 by December, 31st. We invite you to visit us at sacredfirefoundation.org to contribute online by credit card or PayPal. Or donate by check, money order or credit card with the envelope provided, or by mailing your donation to the address below.

A special thank you to all those donors listed on the inside front cover of this issue of Sacred Fire. It is your generosity and belief in our work that are making all these timely and important projects possible.

Sacred Fire Foundation PO Box 11014 Marina Del Ray, CA 90295