Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 356 – 12/7/2022

welcome to the final full moon of this calendar year and the first full moon since he eclipse season and what a potent dragon moon in gemini conjunct with mars and venus so that you may well be joining me in feeling the electric twins energies of shaking things up simultaneously with the eclipsing energies of overwhelm as we come deeper and deeper into the culmination of so many cycles in this turn around the sun of transformation moving from death to resurrection…

so, let’s come together in these oh so powerful energies to cultivate bodhicitta, the awakened heart, by joining our hands and feeling the love we are passing from one to another to another and with each passing of this peace passing all understanding, the love quickens and progresses geometrically as we slow down syncing in rhythm with our earth mother as we breathe her deeply into our bellies radiating her unwavering support into all the trillions and trillions of wild cells of our one body…

and now, let us call in and thank all ancestors as we take our seats around the fire with the seven generations that have been and the seven generations that will be tuning into our one heart of boundless love and listening for what our awakened heart wants to tell us in this moment… breathing in suffering, breathing out liberation… breathing in dying to the old, breathing out rising into the new…. breathing in release, breathing out celebration….

and if we are called to do so, release with love any hurts, things that do not nourish any longer into the fire thanking these teachers for all they have contributed… when the last peace is released into the fire, embrace a bit of the sacred fire and bring it to the heart igniting a re-membering of all the love we are and how that is to inform, ensoul our every breath, our every moment of eternity…

may we be filled with lovingkindness and compassion, may we be well, may we be peaceful and at ease and may we be free to be the fullest expression of our awakened heart one with the tides of whatever is…

now that we are of one heartmind, i invite our taking a few moments to gather and collect our attention through the art of inquiry, asking repeatedly the same question ( a la A H Almaas) leaving empty space following the asking of each quest ion for us to listen deeply as our deep breaths through the core of our being take us more and more into the stillpoint, the great silence, the great cosmic womb, birthing circle of creation…

~

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you...

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

~

as we rest in the vast spaciousness of this moment, the only moment, may we look through the eyes of the stillpoint of creation seeing the beauty and love and gratitude and wisdom and wonder before us behind us beside us below us above us encircling us in an ever-widening ring of compassion radiating out and in in rhythm with the breath

deep bows to all our relations…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 355 – 12/6/2022

“may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that”

~ Lucille Clifton ~

~

blessings beloveds, safe passage on the deep sea journey…

awakening butterflies

greet this moment of eternity

breathe in and breathe out

~

animated motion

in still wave’s sacred center

breathe in and breathe out

~

walking through shadows

surrendering to the unknown

breathe in and breathe out

~

enter deep mystery

trusting everything is unfolding for our benefit

breathe in and breathe out

~

a wing, a prayer

carrying us  all to there

breathe in and breathe out

~

light, radiant light

at the end of each dark night

breathe in and breathe out

~

we are home sweet home now

welcome to the other shore

breathe in and breathe out

~

always breathing in and breathing out through the core… deep peace of the flowing river…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 354 – 12/5/2022

as we are now in the radiation of the full moon in gemini, let us come together with singing in the spirts, the ancestors who are with us always and feel their presence as we gather round the holy fire of inspiration looking deeply into the anima mundi, great mystery seeing the shimmering thread calling out to each of us to pickup and weave into the seamless world wide web of life, the circle that can never be broken irrevocably…

inspired by the fire, our roots deeply grounded in earth with our branches reaching high into the sky, let us dive deeply into the ocean of being to re-member, to member again a cosmos of heart consciousness, of harmony and peace and compassion and wisdom as we swim in the rhythm of waves that echo to us when we listen that the cosm is a vast spaciousness of original blessing supporting us unconditionally with an ever expanding wingspan…

looking into the fire, i see and hear the world restored, radically regenerating as we midwife the rebirthing of a world where rights of nature is the only law, living each moment as sacred ceremony in right relationship with all creation is the way of this world where we are liberated to be whole with our muscle for pushing, so important in birthing, exercised moment by moment to see and be the truth, to tell the truth of every walk of life so that we live in balance, in interdependence…

and what is the world you see forming and hear breathing when you look into the fire of inspiration and exercise the birthing muscle of pushing to accomplish what may have falsely seemed an impossible and overwhelming task until you do it and real-eyes nature has the final say?

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 353 – 12/4/2022

right now, it’s like this in this moment of eternity, this moment of celebrating the astonishing light of our interbeing calling us to shed tight shoes and girdles and shells that constrict… calling us to an inner journey of  re-membering the dream of the beautiful world we are which reminds me of a divine dream on this very day eight years ago when i had just moved into an unknown space… it came in the wake of leaving my motherland and returning home to a new space i barely know… in the dream i am so very pleasantly surprised to find my new home is not the small space i remembered but a far more expansive space that has more than enough room, a space filled with treasures and natural delights, a pond of flowing water filled to overflowing with honu which i love as they are endangered and here they are in abundance…how amazing the weaving of grandmother spider – it seems this dream was foreshadowing the space where now i dwell with today marking the one turn around the sun of being here… thanks to all the beautiful beings walking this path of heart, inspiring me and all others… today is a day of wu wei complete with our first snow, a perfect backdrop for listening deeply to the wisdom of the keeper of the sacred white buffalo calf pipe:

“I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our ways of beliefs in the Creator.

We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a vital message about a solution to turn these terrible times.

To understand the depth of this message, you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in the reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.

I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.

Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.

The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.

The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.

The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”

The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness much more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of humankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”

The Indigenous people warn that these negative developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more original teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.

There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all Nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. This Prophecy was hard to believe! The water was plentiful, pure,  full of energy, nutrition, and spirit. Today we have to buy clean water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just clear liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.

Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.

Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.

A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.

In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unites spiritually as a global nation or faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me in this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all nations to begin a global effort and remember to give thanks for the pure food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony, or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the vast myth of progress and development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You are the one who must decide.

You alone – and only you – can make this crucial choice, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you are essential to this world. Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.”

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 352 – 12/3/2022

the awakening of the rainbow light of awareness is the beautiful moment when the central sun breaks free within illuminating the soul’s journey on the pathless path…

today begins in a soulful space of re-membering dreams/waking reality of buddhic beings filling life so richly with their unbounded, joyful exuberance of peaceful presence, yes, as the outer day breaks so, too, is the inner day with a dream of my golden retriever bounding wildly through the front door in all his joyous puppy dog energy, yes, riever had come home after being away for 33 years, he had come home to the heart and i re-member our long swims in the sea and wandering in wonder on the beach sands of existence and my longing to live as simply as he which totally mirrors today as i spend so many inner moments of eternity with another golden retriever though this one is of the two egged variety,,, and a little jingle arises in me with the rising of the outer sun…

~

live simply, live free, live in open, spacious reality

die to the old, birth in the new

enter the cave of dreaming womb, transmuting seed into radiant bloom

flowering now in a garden of delight, greeting this day of joyous light

~

i so love dwelling in this spacious field of gold rainbow light and receiving this gift of a golden key of life – to live simply, to live free, to live in open, spacious reality – which has been re-joy-sing me all day long prompting the re-membering of an old shaker song arising from the same open source…

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

on this anniversary of the twenty-sixth moonth of birth, thank you, chase the rainbow, for stopping the world and inviting our meeting each moment fully, greeting each moment with aloha spirit and staying nestled in downy nests in the dream cave of beloved grandmother spider where in the spaciousness of timelessness we are given the gift of co-weaving the world with wisdom and wonder… blessed be…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 351 – 12/2/2022

“let tenderness pour from your eyes, the way sun gazes warmly on earth”

~ Hafiz ~

synchronisticly, Oregon’s state logo, She Flies with Her Own Wings, is  a perfect turn of phrase for  this moment of eternity when we are poised to fledge, to take flight into an openhearted consciousness… this moment is also one of slowing down, turning inward and deepening into the watery depths taking this moment to bathe in the illumination of the central sun within, and luxuriate in her nourishing radiance…

like my state and you, this moment i’m flying on inner wings across a timeless landscape drawing down and up the energy of the self organizing intelligence of the cosmos, of the implicate order, to open our one cosmic heart ever wider to the flow of compassion and lovingkindness that is the very air we breathe…

will everyone join in a moment of gathering the quintessence and our attention and intention in a moment of silent metta, lovingkindness, emanating and radiating from the deep inner ground of being?

may we return to this mantra in sync with our ultradian rhythms which occur every ninety minutes or so and harmonize our nervous system with its natural healing cycle…

may we all be filled with lovingkindness

may we all feel safe and at ease

may we all accept ourselves just as we are

may we all be deep peace

how delighted am i to continue wandering in wonder and awe in the outer and inner dream caves, the stillpoint of creation, the silence of the tiny space of the heart that is breaking wide open in this beautiful moment of presence, of be here now, now here, no where, everywhere in the timeless zone where we are all gathered in the one sacred heart out beyond and deep within listening to our sacred soul song…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 350 – 12/1/2022

“Our greatest endeavor in this life must be to make ourselves irreplaceable, so that no one else can fill the gap that will be left when we die. Each of us is unique and irreplaceable; our soul that is, not simply our life.”

~ Miguel de Unamuno ~

welcome to one of my favorite of the moons – deepening december where we extend our roots ever more deeply into the earth and sky and soul and spirit of our interbeing…. today’s picture honors a wise elder who transitioned three years ago on the day before the day of mourning/thanksgiving day in the usa… known as a “Living Treasure” by her tribe, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, and as a “Living Cultural Legend” by the Oregon Council of the Arts, Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim as an ambassador for our earthmother touched and touches the lives of people from many lands, helping us remember sacred ways of living… almost eight years ago, a dream took me on a mission to gather sacred water to anoint all bodies of water i met along the path reminding me of Grandmother Aggie, listen now to this irreplaceable soul’s message from eight years ago…

~

“I’ve been talking about Water around the world for about 15 years.

The Creator called upon me to be a Voice for the Voiceless and for a long time I didn’t know what that meant.  But then I hit upon that one of those, that needs our voice, is Water.

And spirit said, all humans came from water in the amniotic sac of our mother’s womb and that Water is our first medicine. We are to take care of it and guard it . Not just for now but for seven generations to come in the unborn.

Water is very sacred. We are all born in water. We have an obligation to take care of it.

75% of our bodies are made of water. There’s water in our blood, water in our tears, water in our spit,  and water in our brain. The brain has zillions of cells and each one needs to be coated with water.  The elements that are in good water are what we need to oil our joints. If you’re an elder like me you listen, so you can have those elements flowing through your body.

And I found out water can hear. So talk to the water inside of you and thank it for your life. When I use water — whether I’m  drinking it or cooking with it, taking a shower, washing my hands, washing my clothes, brushing my teeth of flushing the toilet… Wherever I use water, I bless it.

I believe that if you do a ritual with water every morning and thank it for your life – even if you do that for two weeks – you will find a difference in your body.

Here  I am going on 90 years. Water keeps me agile and strong and well because when I drink my water I tell it, “I love you! Do whatever you need to do to take care of my body. You know your job and I will always bless you.”

When I’m standing in the shower, “Bless me. I love you.”

When I’m driving my car over a bridge of water anywhere in the world I say, “Bless you water. Thank you for all that live in you and drink from your banks.” And I thank it in that way.

When I’m in an airplane and I look out the window and see lakes and rivers and oceans, I bless the water.  I thank it for taking care of the habitat and the whales and all those that are out in the water. Us humans, us two-leggeds are the caretakers of this planet.  It is our job.

A long time ago the Beloved Creator woke me in the Dreamtime and he said, “Go and be this Voice for the water.  Tell everyplace you go about water, that it is our first medicine.”

Everybody has to take care of the water. Not for the adults so much, but for the children that are going to come after you and for the next seven generations of the unborn.

Water should be everyone’s concern. Without water we all die. All life dies. Water is precious.

I pray that whoever sees this, that you too will take care of your Mother Earth wherever you live and you will care for the water that surrounds you and the water that is within you.

Thank water for your life.

~

in this moment of eternity sharing the astonishing light of interbeing, there is another to be honored for sixty-seven years ago today, Rosa Parks, another wise and adventurous rebellious spirit stood in a state infamously known for racism and acted from a stance of quantum love holding nothing back when she refused to move to the back of the bus, an action which galvanized a yearlong community boycott and ushered in a new chapter on the freedom road…

courageously asserting and honoring all peoples’ inalienable rights, Rosa was not the first to be arrested on a bus nor was it her first act of resistance against second-class citizenship; Rosa symbolized the black community’s refusal to be pushed around. Her aim was both local and global – to end all oppression. 382 days later, Montgomery buses were integrated and a young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr would emerge as the leader of the civil rights movement inspiring us to keep moving onward and reminding us that only light drives out darkness and only love drives out hate… thousand fold thanks and deep bows for all the irreplaceable souls who listen deeply and follow their weird, their genius and weave a culture of care and compassion, a world of peace built on justice and guided by love…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 349 – 11/30/2022

in this moment of eternity, in this moonth of the numinous, on this pilgrimage along the rainbow trail and in this life of being in the unknowable, in uncertainty, a moon, a month where we have taken a long pregnant pause in the cauldron of transformation luxuriating in being here now in this powerful portal moment of eternity which asks us to imagine the world anew and choose to walk through it lightly, without past baggage, in an awakened way, let us bless this space between us, this numinous space, this sacred space of vast open spaciousness where the spirit of all that is always flows through us, where we are one heart always being love…

blessing this space, this unified field of the divine, this pathless path of awakening the heart, of cultivating bodhicitta with one small step and another and another, this journey of healing, of becoming more and more whole as we transmute the holes into the holy, the wholeness we always are even if we have forgotten, numbed out to or in denial about true reality…thanks be for it all – every breath, every moment, every relative, every trial, every tribulation, every suffering, every liberation – for everything is the teacher bringing us to this moment of peace, of love, of joy, of harmony,, of wisdom, of compassion and grace…

thanks be for you and your amazing gifts of kindling fire, the inner flame of spirit, of inspiration, of breath, of our breathing together through our one heart and of our real-eye-sing we are one seamless web interdependent on each of our relatives picking up the thread destined for me and thee to re-weave the web into an ever more expansive and boundless tapestry with beauty behind us, before us, beside us, surrounding us, within us blessing us, blissing us, dissolving us into great mystery…

to anchor in our intentions for this moon, for all moons, let’s gather ’round the ceremonial fire on the completion day of this moonth taking each other’s hands to conspire, to breathe together, to let go fully getting down to bare bones, shedding the skins of conditioning, simply breathing into now, this wild and precious moment of presence with nothing to do  and nowhere to go , simply be now here in loving presence…

with our next inspiration, listen to this breath flowing through, animating us, expanding our being and feel the golden light of the cosm showering us, pouring in, hollowing in, flooding all the arteries and veins in the deep river below the river flowing within…

let us take one more breath together in the river of numina re-joy-sing in the place where spirit lives, re-joy-sing in the space which is of love and light and peace and truth, re-joy-sing in the sun and moon and stars above,  re-joy-sing in the fire and earth and water and air, re-joy-sing in the river below, re-joy-sing in the center within, re-joy-sing in our recognizing ourselves in each other re-membering we are one, onederfilled heart of creative imagination so designed for these challenging days of re-weaving the world with wisdom and wonder thus co-creating a world that works for all relatives…

yes, let us take courage and be of strong heart to awaken the dream of the world we all share and long to real-eyes… a world of peace built on justice and guided by our essence, our essence of love… let us be repairers of the breach finding the way to relate to and listen to each other taking deep breaths and opening ourselves, our one heart to great mystery trusting a greater force beyond understanding is orchestrating the symphony while we play our parts as gracefully as is given to us… a simple task but not an easy one this flowing with unfolding mystery… empty, empty, coming home to our true heart of intending a world that works for all…

thank you for walking this pathless path of heart with me, staying off the bypass, the external to turn within , listening to the core. following your wyrd, your genius, your soul song attuned to perfection with whom and how you are to be… aho!

here’s to our continued and perpetual weaving the world with wisdom as we wander in wonder welcoming our eternal inspirited souls traveling as one with the caravan of re-joy-sing…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 348 – 11/29/2022

“Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

today, i’m imagining that i’m in one of the most beautiful and contemplative of places on mama gaia re-membering and grateful that each of our relations is one of a kind gifted uniquely with a purpose that when shared makes an enormous difference in the world – wow breathe that in and dance in awe at the amazing web grandmother spider weaves…

we so need each other to be of courage, of strong heart when all over the planet, life is out of balance and we know we must change the dream we’ve been living… when we listen to the indigenous, the people of the land who listen to the all that is, we hear the clarion call to love our mother and each other… water, air, trees, sun, moon, stars, all our relatives, and we are all relatives, woven together intricately, inextricably, interconnectedly… we must now, in this sacred moment of eternity, band together, stand together in love, throw off the illusion of separation, re-member the reality that we are one…

so, yes, let us take courage and be of strong heart, awaken the new/ancient dream of the world we all share and long to real-eyes… a world of peace built on justice and guided by love… and as we collectively dream and dance harmony back into the cosmos, thank you for being the one of a kind person you were born to be  and shining your light so radiantly like a lighthouse illuminating the stormy sea so we can traverse the pathless path with equanimity coming home to our one heart to live forever free as wanderers of wondrous rainbow mystery…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 347 – 11/28/2022

in honor of being in a moonth celebrating Native American Heritage, here’s a poem from our (USA’s) poet laureate Joy Harjo entitled Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings…

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.

You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.

2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters “as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run.”

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. “It feels like wartime,” said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange “as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run.”

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould…

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That’s what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones… Don’t forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp’s neck.

4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no  “I”  or “you.”

There was us; there was “we.”

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.

5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.

6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS’ CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.