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What does forming spirtual community in turbulent times mean for us as a culture and people? Do you see these times as “turbulent”? What are the signs of a “turbulent” time? And what role does “spiritual community” play in riding the rapids of the cultural river? Turbulence can be exciting, but also wearing on the soul when one seeks the placidity and serenity of a motionless lake. To strategize our cultural navigation, we need still moments in which to immerse ourselves in the spirit of togetherness.
When we set out into this rapid-paced world, we need each other’s support, and we need the support of the gods, spirits, and divine forces. This is the role of spiritual community. It connects us not only to each other, but to the Great Mystery that will guide us when we find ourselves in realms we may not want to be, or which we find uncomfortable. Sobonfu’s program will provide one of these still places before we set out down the river… or for when we resist and are flung into the rapids.
As an offer of gratitude to you and to all of our supporters over the years, as a gift toward building the kind of “beautiful” community we all yearn for, the Blue Deer Center will be offering our Fireball 2012 as a FREE event with a potluck smorgasbord. A main dish will be served, but we request you bring a side dish. AND… this is very important… even though this is a free event, we ask that you PLEASE register by clicking here. We will need to have an accurate count of the number of people attending in order to properly care for you.
One function of an elder is to demonstrate the wisdom of our wisest elder: the natural world itself. I say 'demonstrate' because talk is not enough. I can say, 'The natural world sustains itself with balanced relationships, and it can also restore balance, healing and sustainability in human life.' This may sound appealing, but as an idea it is soon drowned out in the din of other ideas clamoring for attention. Even if you agree with it, nothing will have changed from thinking about it. An experience, on the other hand, can be denied and even forgotten, but it can not be un-experienced. Experience changes you forever.
When your heart is touched by the medicine of a plant spirit, you feel the love and wisdom of the natural world. Ideas do not deliver the same touch, therefore this is not a theoretical treatise nor a how-to manual. Mostly this is a book of stories, because stories aim for the heart, where experience lives.
Plant spirit medicine works partially because it has a broad perspective. It does not look only through the eyes of physics and chemistry; it sees human beings as expressions of divine natural forces. It plumbs the human mind and emotions. It gives paramount importance to spirit -- the mysterious core of our lives.
My apprenticeship, initiation, and work as a marakame, or shaman in the Huichol tradition, steeped me in a perspective larger yet than the one I had in 1991 [Eliot is referring to writing Plant Spirit Medicine]. This has enriched my approach and deepened my appreciation for the medicine of the plant spirits.
Dear friend,
My colleagues, the good people of the Sacred Fire Community, are taking a stand for what they feel is deep-down important. I ask you to read this and reflect on it:
We stand for the sacred and interconnected nature of all life. By gathering in community and reestablishing our relationship with the living world, we end the isolation of modern culture and build lives of meaning and purpose.
Does this resonate with you? Could this be what you, too, stand for? If so, I invite you to join in with your declaration by clicking here. This is a simple, powerful act. It creates a field of vibrant, aligned human heart energy. The divine livingness of the world, so long ignored and desecrated by our people, will rejoice in that field and will respond by nourishing all of life.
If this declaration makes your heart sing, please forward this email to your friends and loved ones.
With respect and love,
Eliot Cowan
An Interview by Randy Peyser: Accessing the Wisdom of Our Ancestors
Sent to America by the elders of her tribe, Sobonfu Somé, shares the wisdom of her people, the Dagara of western Africa, as she discusses how we can contact our ancestors in order to heal ourselves, our loved ones and our spirit relations.
Somé is the author of many inspirational works, including: “The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient African Teachings in the Ways of Relationships;” “Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community;” “Falling Out of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing and Wisdom”, and others.
She is also devoted to giving the waters of life to the Dagara people through a project called, Walking for Water. For more information, please visit www.sobonfu.com or www.walkingforwater.org.
Randy Peyser:I understand your name means “Keeper of the Rituals.” Why are rituals important?
Sobonfu Somé:What food is to our body, ritual is to our soul. A ritual keeps us connected to our spirit, our soul and our purpose. Rituals are also activities in which we call the spirits of our ancestors to come forward. Our ancestors can see cross-dimensionally, which means they can help us to plot our course. For example, they can help us connect the [energetic] wires that have become loose within us so that we can regain our health or our consciousness.
How do you work with the ancestors? Are their prayers that you invoke?
In the Dagara tradition, the ancestors are the ones you go to before you go to God. The ancestors know you. They know how you feel. They know about certain issues. You might tell the ancestors, “I know there are all these other people screaming at God to help them. Would you please go to God when He or She is not busy? I need to get my prayers in, and I am really in a hurry here.”
It’s that simple? You just ask them to help you?
It is important to create a relationship with the ancestors first, but it cannot be a one-way kind of relationship. Your relationship with your ancestors is a relationship that must be nurtured like any other relationship. Anytime the ancestors come through in answering your request, you take a gift to them. That gift can be something that was in your family, such as an ancestral food that has been passed down from generation to generation, or something old or antique. Your gift can either be something they like or something that you like.
When you give them the gift, you would say something like: “Ancestor, I am really grateful for what you have achieved. I’m very happy that you stepped forward, and you really made this happen. As my gratitude to you, I have something that I hold dear that I really enjoy. Here is a flower. I really love gardenias. Here is a gardenia for you. Thank you.”
• • •
How does a person receive this message from an ancestor?
Through dreams, or through feelings, such as by feeling uncomfortable about things that have happened in the family. Sometimes a person has an uneasy feeling in which they wonder why nobody ever talks about a particular ancestor, or how a person died in a certain way, or why nothing has been done about it by anyone. When you are the one who has been picked by that particular ancestor, you continue to think about the ancestors.
When calling on an ancestor, should we only contact those beings who were from our immediate families?
If it is difficult for you to go to an immediate ancestor, you can go to what we call, “the pool of the ancestor.” The pool of the ancestor has nothing to do with your genealogy; it can be anyone who is an ancestor. It can be the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr, or the spirit of Gandhi, or Eleanor Roosevelt, and all the brave, “crazy” women who encouraged women to speak up and not let their voices go silent.
Trees, animals, rocks, rivers and mountains are also considered to be part of the pool of the ancestors. In the case of someone needing help in creating a bridge to their ancestors, they could call unto the pool of ancestors to come and give them instructions.
• • •
Calling on our ancestors and working with them is one very powerful way in which we can work with ritual. What are some other things that women can do to reclaim the sacred in their lives?
The number one rule of women is that we need a women’s circle; we need to create trust between women. One of the most heartbreaking things for me is to realize, that in the West, we don’t have trust. In Africa, when I was growing up, it was a given that you were always honest and truthful with other women. When I went to another woman and said, “between women,” that term meant that you were not allowed to cheat or to lie; you could only say things the way they were. The understanding is that women work with the web of life.
As a result, if someone comes to you and says, “between women” and you lie, then you are shooting lies into that web of life, and impacting all women around the world. Bettering our relationship with other women is very important.
In my tradition, the best ally of a woman is a woman; and your worst enemy is also a woman, because a lot of times, how we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of in the world comes from an ingrained voice from a sister or mother who always said: “It’s okay to let someone abuse you.” When you are in a relationship and your partner is abusive, a lot of times you can hear your mother’s voice, saying: “It’s okay honey. Just take it.”
There is a lot of healing that is needed in the root, in the foundation of the feminine. We need to do what my grandmother said, which was to: “Speak your gut. Liberate your mouth. Speak it out!” so that we no longer have women who are silent and just surviving, and who just take it, and take it, and take it until they collapse. The backbone of society rides on women. In order to have a healthy community, you have to have healthy women.
In the Dagara tradition, they say the best way to destroy a culture is to destroy the women first. My suggestion is that we work on ourselves and on each other in bettering our relationship with the feminine. As we work on our relationship, we can have a stronger relationship with other women so we can have a balance and the kind of powers that enable us to carry out a healthy relationship with men. Remember that to be a woman is an honor. Learning to harness the power of the feminine will help us get to our purpose.
[To read this interview in it’s entirety, visit www.Sobonfu.com]
The Blue Deer Center is here to promote listening, the deep listening that comes from hearing, not with our minds, but with our hearts. To bring balance back into the world, we need to listen to the people who have come before us -- the ancestors. We need to listen to the people alive today whose traditions remind us of the stories and lessons that served humankind for thousands of years. And we need to listen to the living spirits of nature that are there to help us awaken to all of life.
Eliot Cowan, Founder of Blue Deer Center
We have two special raffle items offered this year – “Ukilai: A Retreat for Men” and “Sacred Partnership with the World: Living With Totem”. These raffles are being offered to underwrite the cost for producing this year’s free Fireball – Celebrating Our Elders.
“Ukilai: A Retreat for Men” is lead by Tsaurirrikame, David Wiley. There is a time when withdrawing in retreat is necessary to reconnect to the essential being of the masculine, to discover one’s heart, to clear, refresh and renew one’s direction in life. This 5-day program has a value of $850.
“Sacred Partnership with the World: Living with Totem” is lead by Tsaurirrikame, Eliot Cowan. Honoring animals as wise brothers and sisters, our distant ancestors lived in sacred partnership with the world, receiving what they needed and offering back their gratitude. You can live that way too, for your soul is connected to certain animals wanting to help you. This 5-day program has a value of $950.
Tickets can be purchased on-line or during the day of the event at the Center. Raffle tickets are $50 each. Click here to purchase.
As the beauty of the land around the Center begins to awaken and the plants come alive in vibrant colors of green and yellow, we are reminded that there are many plants and seeds that still need careful tending. We are asking for your assistance, a simple donation to the center for an upcoming event, the Silent Art Auction.
The “Fireball: Celebrating our Elders” is taking place on June 2nd. This year the Fireball is free, and we are welcoming everyone to come to the Center for a wonderful day of activities and food.
As the schedule of events is well on its way to completion, we are looking for donations of Works of Art for our silent auction. We would like to feature approximately 15-20 works. If you are interested in making a donation or helping us assemble the Silent Art Auction, please contact Jenn Schuman at the Blue Deer Center 845-586-3225 ext 5.
The Integrated Planning Committee has been laying the groundwork for stakeholder engagement in the process of planning a better BDC! We will soon be reaching out to supporters of the Blue Deer Center to ask for advice and opinions. Many people responded to the Dream Catcher Survey last year.
Building on those responses, leaders of the IPC will be reaching out to dig a little deeper, dream a little more, and most importantly build a collaborative vision of how the Blue Deer Center buildings and grounds, and program areas can be more successful. All recent donors and volunteers (whether or not you participated in the past survey) will receive a letter describing the process of the IPC and providing a series of questions to think over. A member of the IPC will call or email to set up a convenient time for a conversation with you. The results of these conversations will help to guide the future of the BDC. As the Blue Deer Center prepares itself for greater success, all stakeholder voices are important. We'll be talking to you soon! K'Anna, Jane, Karen and Andi
“People in indigenous communities are changing, and so is their system of values…
The fact is that now some people no longer fit in the village. They don’t feel that they are limited by village law. They are part of the village at a distance, and have accepted a more powerful system that allows them to do things for themselves first. The setting has changed. At what cost!
I see myself standing at the threshold between the young and the old and between the indigenous and the modern. I honor my ancestors’ wisdom, and at the same time I know how to maneuver in the contemporary world, with computers, flight schedules, faxes and traffic lights. They are both equally “me.”
. . .
It is a dangerous time right now for indigenous societies, and I am like a compass to help my village see what direction our old systems can go. My goal is not to bring back Western ways to exchange for village ways. My goal is to try to find out what is fated to go and what shouldn’t be lost. We know that eventually things are going to change, but where is the middle way? Wherever it is found, it must be a place where an embracing community holds together the world of each individual.”
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the Blue Deer Center community. I am very happy and excited to be joining this wonderfully spiritual community. A little bit about myself:
I have lived in Roxbury, NY for about 25 years. I have had a long time spiritual connection to the surrounding mountains and the land. I enjoy the outdoors and spend much of my free time hiking, walking and gardening. I am a graduate of SUNY Cobleskill and Hartwick College in Oneonta where I received a bachelors degree in Anthropology. I studied many of the tribal traditions of the regions in Southern Africa.
I have spent the last ten years fundraising for my local community and assisting with many initiatives involving local students. With a committee of community members, we have worked together to launch a local organization dedicated to providing programming for students.
It is from this background in fundraising that I now give to the Blue Deer community. I found a connection and feel very passionate in directing my energies and experience to the Blue Deer Center.
Thank you for inviting me into your wonderful community. I look forward to connecting with all of you.
