Green Tribe of Belonging

  Green Magic As a farm kid, eating plants was part of the culture. I loved spinach, turned my nose up at salads. Sweet corn was a treat, but no way would I consider cooked tomatoes. Eating green beans took will power, but I did it to please my mom. She grew all these vegetables in her garden. As a young mother, I was moved to plant a garden too. The thrill of green shoots appearing above the soil, All from tiny seeds, the miracle of continuing life, It pulled me for good into this new world of plants.  They became my friends, and I watched them grow. Yet even then, the green world had more in store for me. From my neighbors, I learned about herbal medicine. Growing medicine in my garden?!  How intriguing. These plant helpers were already existing on their own, Along the roadsides, at the margins, in the woods. Now the green world is my teacher. We humans have used herbs for healing since ancient times  But how did our far ancestors know what to use? What guided them...

  Great Cosmic Wind Looking at the sky. Clouds moving, birds moving. Our round world Also moving, spinning around Toward night, then toward day. And also, journeying around the sun Forever. What makes this happen? No one worries that this movement Will stop. Worries that day will not come, Or winter last forever. Round and round the worlds go Circles within circles. Some mysterious rhythm drives them on. Such order, such constancy. And this small piece of life Looks upward, wondering, As the universe, like a beating heart, Holds us all, moons, planets and stars In its embrace. 

 This week at Prairie Hill, we had a special guest at our "Tasty Tuesday" weekly meal. She is the mother of one of our new members, born of the Lakota peoples from the Pine Ridge Reservation. She has taken on the task of talking to groups about Native American life in this country, past and present. We watched her powerpoint presentation and heard about her own history as well as a wider view of the Native American presence in this country. And she brought along special items from her family including a scoop made out of a buffalo horn and a huge owl feather she uses in prayer. We also enjoyed a special traditional pudding she made for us with choke cherries (including the seeds). This evening that focused on the Native American worldview resonated with me because I had just been reading about this. I had run into the phrase "Mitakuye Oyasin", and then JJ's mother used it in her talk! It means all my relations, and it expresses the belief that everything in natu...

 Continuing on the theme of communication, my phone pops up with news items off and on all day. Lately I've taken to reading some of them, and although a few items are benign (such as forecasts of sun flares), most are reminders of the remarkable dysfunction of humanity here on earth. We see so much news thanks to our digital forms of communication.Through these snapshots of happenings, one can't help but notice that human beings are in trouble. Conflict is everywhere. Cooperation seems a quaint idea from the past. If we step back and look with any perspective, it would seem that our species has lost its way, and one can't help but think we're heading to a bad end. Was it always this way? No, I don't think so. I've been reading about indigenous cultures of humans. And it was common for many of these cultures to see themselves as part of a larger living community of life. They thought about the earth as a whole. They respected its elements and saw interactions ev...