we journey in peace today to the friendship bell overlooking the pacific ocean… this bell was given by the people of Korea to the people of the United States in the hope that friendship between the nations would endure as would their faith in freedom and interdependence which inspires my re-membering…

a thousand years ago, the Great Peacemaker came across the Great Lake Onondaga, now known as Ontario, in a stone canoe to the warring six-nation confederacy of the Haudenosaunee, also known by the French as the Iroquois… gradually his words and actions won the people over, they accepted the Great Law of Peace and they buried their weapons under the Peace Tree by Lake Onondaga and formed councils for making wise choices together… in the Haudenosaunee, historians recognize the oldest known participatory democracy, one that inspired the founders in crafting the Constitution of the United States. …

let us be in this moment peacemakers of the earth mother following the teachings of the Great Peacemaker just as still do the Onondaga Nation, whose name means Keepers of the Central Fire, always beginning gatherings with prayers of thanksgiving for all to come into sacred oneness or interbeing…

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.

Now our minds are one.

We are all thankful to our mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. We send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn our thoughts to the creator, or great spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the creator.

Now our minds are one.

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

Now our minds are one.

~

thanks be…

with Thanksgiving Day upon us in the USA and today being the astonishing light of being day, it feels perfectly in rhythm to share the astonishing beauty of pachamama… may we all be filled with Wopida Tanka, Great Thanksgiving, for this day that came into being thanks to the compassion of the indigenous for the colonists’suffering… may we all be filled with Wopida Tanka, Great Thanksgiving, every day for the boundless gifts always being showered…

let us dance and sing these sacred words together together…

Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of your friends and relatives, and look upon them with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of your pledge.

Be fair in your judgment, and guarded in your speech. Be unjust to no one. Be as a lamp to them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, and a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression.

Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all your acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring.

Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body of humankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility.

~The Blessed Beauty~
(The Spiritual Teacher who revealed this Sacred Teaching, also known as the Ancient of Days)

let us close with the lotus of gratitude meditation by curling all our fingers close to the heart and one by one uncurl a finger like a lotus petal rising from the mud and sound a gratitude for this moment continuing until all fingers are unfurled like a beautiful lotus in full bloom  with its roots grounded in the mud…. now, weave your fingers together and place them on your heart for all of the bounteous thanksgivings to enrich the core of being, our one great heart…

being thanks with every breath…

in these turbulent times, i feel so much the need to re-member the astonishing light of being moment by moment and am so greatful for everyone’s holding the space of light, love, compassion and generosity… so today’s image of the astonishing light of being under the waxing moon is a thousand thousandfold thanks for being the light and anchoring it in every cell of the cosmos… and now from John O’Donohue, a blessing to help in those moments of weariness, lonliness, overwhelm and anxiety…

~

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.