Help for Standing Rock

Dear Friends:  I write to share with you my request for personal protection during my trip to Standing Rock, tomorrow through Sunday, Dec. 5.   Perhaps that is the only way to have the people protecting the River, be protected themselves. Why doesn’t our President Obama answer the cries of the people being so violated in North Dakota. This is what I’ve written to Senator Bill Nelson, and Congresswoman Gwen Graham, both of whom I know and respect.  I hope you … Continue

Taking a Stand

Dear Friends and Family: To support native rights, and on behalf of the rivers, I am going to Standing Rock, South Dakota for a week, with Erin Josephine Canter. We will join with Deena Metzger and others. Deena writes: “in the past, when a people were gravely threatened, Chiefs, Medicine People, Healers, Shamans, and Elders, called Councils. …People gathered in times of crises; we are gathering now.” We go because what is happening on the banks of the Missouri River … Continue

Mother of Exiles, Weeping

Today, every one of us is trying to figure out how to live with, or through, the results of last night’s election. I am grateful for the wisdom and support of my family and my community in this dark time, as we grieve and regroup. My parents raised me up with the greatest respect for our United States of America.  Above all I was taught that our land was a place of refuge for all in need of safety, mercy and … Continue

The Day of the Dead

Out on the beach, I found these two remembrances of lives gone by: a Gulf fritillary butterfly, short-stopped on its fall migration, and a fragment of very old pottery (most likely made of the red clay in my bioregion). Barnacles had built a home on what once had been an ancient pot. I placed these beautiful remnants side by side, considering their messages of impermanence and beauty. Today, in many spiritual traditions, we honor our ancestors, and perhaps we feel their presence more closely in … Continue