Respect: People, Animals, and the Earth, Our True Mother

Wisdom learned, wisdom to pass on from Celia Rees' Sorceress, her sequel to Witch Child. The former, what happens to Mary after fleeing the colonists. I'm so grateful the prior reader bought the book as a physical copy and not an eBook, or this story would never have entered my life.


"We cannot win this war. I see a land with no place for us in it. I have looked for an end to the white men coming, but see none. They will make this land their own, and there will be no room for us," White Eagle tells Mary. I often reflect how people fleeing persecution persecuted an entire population that was living here. When I hear the song, "This land is your land, this land is my land" I think of it differently. I don't think this land was "made" for you and me.

"Both groups believed in dreams and portents," Mary says. "The scalplock moon shone down on all alike, and they would have looked back with equal disquiet. A time of trial approached, and both would look to great spirit for guidance and blessing. Be it God or Manitou, what did the naming of him matter?"

Agnes had an aunt, "Aunt M." who was the passer on of knowledge. Isn't it so that often there is the wise older or elderly person who passes the torch of wisdom on to the next generation? Singer Tori Amos recalled memories of her grandfather, who was Eastern Cherokee. "He would tell me stories about his ancestors escaping the Trail of Tears and their walk and their spiritual beliefs. And they felt that they were caretakers for our true mother and it was instilled in me but I guess I didn't think about it in this way until I became a mother myself and I always hear him saying in my ear 'I've put a chip underneath your skin and you will remember.'" In Ben Gadd's Raven End told from the perspective of a raven, the young raven Colin becomes the apprentice of wise old Greta to be the keeper and passer on of the old ways.

In Sorceress, it is Agnes's Aunt M. who "was not averse to adopting and adapting the practices of the older people. The ways to wisdom are many. She did not see one religion, one nation, or one people as having the monopoly on the truth. Her own path had led her to different teachers from different traditions." Looking at those who embrace a hate-filled, one path-only world, I remember these words. I want more than one teacher in life, and to be exposed to different cultures, don't you?

A door in Tangier, Morocco.

Agnes observes the custom of the native people leaving gifts by the stream (white pebbles, quartz crystals, a bead or two), "Offerings to the Mother, for water springs from her and flows free and pure to give us life. People had thought that from the beginning of time."

I think of what we leave now. Remnants of our disposable society: plastic water bottles, bags, and cups and more I've picked up during the Hackensack Riverkeeper cleanups I volunteered at. Waste which could have been avoided if people made different choices. I reflect on how we are so reckless with the water that bears the names of Indian peoples and languages, like the Hackensack River.

To the great hunter Jaybird, "all life was sacred. He would stand in solemn prayer before the creature whose life he had taken, saying "We are sorry to kill you, little brother, but our need is great. We do honor to your courage and speed to your strength."

I don't challenge people's right or desire to consume meat and animal products. I don't eat meat but do have some animal by products in my diet. My issue is with the great exploitation that comes with a population that wants to consume them in such excess and at the cheapest prices available and an entitlement attitude that we can treat animals in any manner we please and show no respect for their lives. Things are "cheap" for a reason: because of factory like conditions where animals are treated like machines.

Why can't animals live a natural life? Why can't we consume a little less? There's is a life too. I stand with Jaybird: All life is sacred.

There are prayers said before meals thanking God for the blessings about to be received, but what about the acknowledgment for those here in Earth who made the meal possible? For each meal...

For the farmers who so nurtured and toiled
For the animals who sacrificed life
For the land whose soil bore its bounty
For the water, giver of life
For the spirit above
I give thanks and gratitude.

In this New York Times article, A Northwest Journey by Canoe to Reconnect With the Old Ways, it spoke of "a deliberate effort to recapture cultural, linguistic and intertribal connections they said they had nearly lost as Indian ways of life were overwhelmed, first by European settlers and more recently by substance abuse and suicide."

I think many of us long to recapture and maintain a way of life that has been threatened. I want to connect with what matters most, and I want to be a caretaker, not a taker, of the land, its animals and its people.

A Letter Praising Books

Dear readers,

I'm writing to you in letter format again, since I'm hoping to keep up the awareness and art form of letter writing, even if it's composed over e-mail or other technological form.

This week, I got a delivery of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies from a co-worker, with the most beautifully written thank you note on a stationary with her name attached to it. I thought I couldn't remember when I last received such a fine note, and this one from a child. Even on Christmas cards, I barely get more than "Merry Christmas." Truth be told, I don't recall receiving any letters in the mail since my college years.

Here's the reason for today's letter...

Some women covet shoes. Others bags. Here's what draws me like a moth to a flame: books. Filled with words that move me and stay with me, actually become part of me, ideas that challenge me, stories that make me dream, time that knows no boundaries.

Books: actual turn the page, put a bookmark in it, flip back to a cherished passage you were lingering over - those books. I hope they remain stalwarts.

I considered this recent New York Times article that Amazon will begin selling $114 Kindles which will include ads as screen savers and at the bottom of the home screen, and selling special offers. Why does consumerism need to be infused in every element of our lives? Shannon Hoon sang in Blind Melon's No Rain, "All I can do is read a book to stay awake, and it rips my life away but it's a great escape." There's no escaping commercials.

I don't despise eReaders the way many book lovers do. A friend thinks they will co-exist peacefully among books. And promoting literacy in our age of arts and education cuts is a good thing.

But I find so much of what I read through thrift shops and library book sales. I discovered my favorite new author, Keith Donohue, at thrift. His latest, Centuries of June, is coming out May 31st, and I'm actually giddy. Giddy over a book. My last read, Witch Child, which still haunts me and my mother is now enjoying, was 25 cents from a library book sale. I would have never been exposed to either if the physical books weren't bought and passed on. I love passing on a cherished book once I've read it (I keep a few for my own).

The New York Times wrote a beautiful love letter of an article to typewriters, and I thought of the parallel to books. Here are some of my favorite passages from it:

"Manual typewriters aren't going gently into the good night of the digital era.

For one, old typewriters are built like battleships. They survive countless indignities and welcome repairs, unlike laptops and smartphones, which become obsolete almost the moment they hit the market. "It's kind of like saying, 'In your face, Microsoft!'

Young typerwriter afficiandos...chafe against digital doctrines that identify human "progress" as a ceaseless march toward greater efficiency, the search for a frictionless machine.

Louis Smith, 28, a drummer from Williamsburg, stated "It's about permanence, not being able to hit delete. You have to have some conviction in your thoughts."

I loved this, and I consider the concept of permanence in our world of texts and e-mails gone so quickly, stories never passed on, and a book outlasting decades while gadgets get upgraded.

I'll write again soon, as I have a fine book calling my name. As you can see, I have far too much to read, but in my book (pun intended), that's the best kind of excess in life you can have. Happy reading.

Warmly,
Catherine

Lessons from the Native Americans: Go Lightly on this World

In "Wampum Prayer" off of Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk album, a sonic road trip around America, Amos (who has Cherokee blood on her mother's side) calls upon the voice of an old Apache woman. She describes it as bestowing a curse or a blessing on the settlers who have come to America and taken and taken and taken.

"In our hand an old, old, old thread.
Trail of blood and amens.
Greed is the gift for the sons of the sons.
Hear this prayer of the wampum. This is the tie that will bind us."

Native Americans tribes inhabited the area I live in (the northern tip of New Jersey) for 10,000 years. It only took a few hundred years to wipe most out through disease, alcohol, bloodshed and relocation, as was recalled at the Bergen County Historical Society's Lenape New Year.

From their site:

"The first Dark Moon after the Long Moon marks the arrival of Chwame gischuch, the Shad Moon, and the New Year of the ancient Sanhicans and Minisinks, locally known as the Hackensacks and Tappans. Native peoples returned from their winter villages, gathering at the narrows of the great streams, in places such as Acquackanonck (Garfield) and Aschatking (New Bridge), to set their fykes and weirs and catch smelt and later shad as these fish ran up the rivers in great numbers."

Reflect on the idea of living in harmony with nature, and how very far removed we are from that in modern times. Like the settlers hundreds of years before, we take, and take, and take.

Tobacco leaves, which were left on the animal after it was killed and the animal was asked for its forgiveness for its life. Consider the respect given to animals in the Native American culture, versus the exploitation that exists in factory farming today.

Wayne Pacelle, the CEO and President of The Humane Society of the United States, observed, "We have so much power in this relationship [with animals], and for so many years we've treated that power as license. That we could do whatever we wanted with it." Mr Pacelle has a new book out, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.

Lower than the animals is how one Presbyterian minster described the Indians. Savages. Who are the true savages?

Nothing was wasted - animal, plant, material. Squash shells for bowls.

A red blanket from the Hudson Bay Company. The two stripes represented the numbers of furs the blanket would be traded for. How upsetting today to see people mindlessly wearing fur trims and coats with no care for the animals who suffered for senseless fashion vanity. No one needs fur today to survive. But the life of animals, disregarded in our culture. Most feel entitled to exploit them for their wants (not needs) of the day.


A snapping turtle rattle used by the medicine men. How often healing is mind over matter.
I recalled my friend Jennifer's tale of her father shooting a snapping turtle, and the often disharmonious relationship between animals and people. You can read "Why I Don't Like Pink" here.

Speaker Bob Wills from Sunrise Trading Post, holding up a deer hide (note George Washington watching over his shoulder). Deer are now slaughtered in New Jersey for being a nuisance. Again, who is the nuisance to Mother Nature - man or animal? I wonder this observing the litter lined roads on my bus in and out of New York City everyday, and on garbage night with the abundance of perfectly good items heading to the overflowing landfills. Even in economic lean times, we are the land of excess.

Mr. Wills recalled telling some Native Americans he thinks they have been wronged and would give the land back to them if he could. They replied they wouldn't want it - we've screwed it up too much.

"They live in the forest in nakedness, in sin and degradation. They make nothing of the land. They live worse than beggars," says Goodwife Anne, in Celia Rees' Witch Child, a novel based on the premise a collection called "the Mary papers" was found hidden in a quilt from the colonial period guessed to be from 1659. Mary says, "I want to shout, cry out about how little she understands. The Indians go lightly on the world, that is all. They make their homes from living trees, only take what they need before moving on to let the land replenish itself." Replenish, go lightly? Why can we not do the same?

When the old Indian man is dismayed to hear of colonists killing wolves, "He says everything has its own place in the world, wolves and men."

I love this photo of Mary (of Indian descent) who does the cooking in the Dutch out kitchen.

Gathering at the tavern after over hoecakes (corn cakes) with blueberry jam and hot cider. Maybe I'm romanticizing it, but I love the idea of the tavern as a meeting house for sharing ideas, lively talk of the politics of the day, local activism. Meeting of the minds often occurs online now, but wouldn't it be nice in person sometimes. How I wish, readers, we could all gather in a room to discuss our nation, which seems a bit troubled on its path.


As I admired on the daffodils popping up, one of Mother Nature's gifts for the eyes, I vowed to continue to go lightly on my path as much as I can, with respect for other species who have their own place.


"What do you plan to do with all your freedom? The new sheriff said, quite proud of his badge.
You must admit the land is now in good hands. Yes time will tell.

I used to think that her destiny should have been mine.
Big brave nation, but instead, her medicine now forgotten. Leaving terra." - Tori Amos, Scarlet's Walk.