CREE QUOTATION

 

"Only when the last tree has died

    and the last river been poisoned

  and the last fish been caught

  will we realize

         we cannot eat money."  

    -Cree proverb

              

POEM BY SAKAKI

Photo by Nicholas Sawyer

                             "Enough" 

                              by Nanao Sakaki

                             "Soil for legs

                              Axe for hand

                              Flower for eyes

                              Bird for ears

                              Mushroom for nose

                              Smile for mouth

                              Songs for lungs

                              Sweat for skin

                              Wind for mind   Enough"  

                        

Cedar Winds/ "BEING WITH"

Let us not patronize Mother Earth. Always ask first how you can best help rather than presuming that you know best. Do this through prayer, meditation, and ceremony.

Wait for a leading before you go rushing in to save the day. Respectfully seek her strength and wisdom and do not impede her cycles. Be watchful and aware of her condition but intervene to assist only if necessary. Most importantly do not undermine her cycles by imposing man made solutions upon her. Mother Earth was created with her own toolkit for self-repair and balance.

Earth and sky are so interdependent, so married~ the health of one deeply affects the well being of the other. The jeweled dew drops, laden with bitter deposition of metals cover the grasses of early morning.

The lowly earthworm is more an ally to the earth than is man in his arrogance, outpacing his own ability to be fully aware. It is man alone whose actions have compromised the health of earth and sky and thus himself, and yet he will prefer in his feelings of entitlement to displace the blame for the myriad consequences being visited upon himself. And feeling thus victimized he will try to war against the effects using essentially the same mindset that produced the imbalances to begin with.

Human attempts to produce technological solutions will continue to spawn unintended outcomes unless he learns to become a midwife instead of a conqueror. The good midwife is one who is respectfully “with” the birthing woman. She intuitively takes her cues from the birthing woman’s nature rather than imposing her own will upon the process. So much the wiser our applied sciences and technologies would become if we would look to the ways of nature itself for our leading.

~Diana Ramsdell Newman