Further along the trail  I was interviewed recently by Lyn Goldberg on her radio show about the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012, and the boundless range of traditional understandings associated with our momentous personal and planetary pilgrimage through the years ahead. You can listen to the interview here, or download the conversation in MP3 format.

Review from Amazon.com: “Tales of the Whirling Rainbow is a stunningly powerful little book. It puts the whole 2012 story in a new, more authentic, and vastly richer and more hopeful context. By seeking out the traditional keepers of medicine wisdom for our era, and having traveled the road of adventure with them, Steven McFadden has assembled a matrix of powerfully intersecting tales, all true and all with immediate relevance. I loved this amazing little ebook.”

At the UN – Grandfather Commanda (center) displays the Seven Fires Wampum Belt at The House of Mica – UN headquarters on Manhattan Island.

Dear Relatives – Grandfather William Commanda died early on the morning of August 3, 2011, two days before the start of his annual gathering in Maniwaki, Quebec, Canada. He was 97 years old.

Among the many accomplishments in his long life as a protector and defender of the land, Grandfather served as Spiritual Advisor to the Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth in 1995-95, a walk chronicled in Odyssey of the 8th Fire.  The story of Grandfather’s leadership of this epic walk is also at the heart of the project to create an audiobook based on the nonfiction Tales of the Whirling Rainbow. I am honored to have known Grandfather, and to have traveled with him, since 1989. He was a remarkable man with a brilliant soul.

Rest in Peace, Mishomis (Grandfather)

* * * * * * * *

One vivid memory of Grandfather’s resolute nature comes from Friday, November 24, 1995 in the desert to the west of Rio Rancho, New Mexico. It was Day 155 in the Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth, what I have come to describe as the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. In his 80s at the time, Grandfather served as Spiritual Advisor for the walk and its epic quest across Turtle Island (North America).

Grandfather was leading us from Atlantic to Pacific to meet with and learn from wise elders of all traditions, and to seek out “what had been left by the side of the trail long ago” as described in the Seven Fires Prophecy.

But our grand pilgrimage for peace and unity had hit the wall of human nature by the time we got to New Mexico. We had been arguing viciously among ourselves, and fractured into four or more groups — each group filled with suspicions and hostility.

As we arrived at a desert knoll to hold our council and air our ferocious grievances against each other, the wind rose. It blew so hard — 45 to 50 mph — that the air literally began to scream across the desert. The unrelenting desert gale blew stinging sand into everyone and everything. The storm rocked across the desert relentlessly, whipping ceaselessly through our gathering as we huddled low on a dune, seeking a windbreak. We prayed.

In the western desert, Grandfather listened to us for a long, long time, and then confronted our brokenness. His hands shook and his eyes filled with tears. He wiped his tears and then spoke. “No,” he said. “This is not my way, this is not the way. You must all stay together. You must stay in unity.”

He was unshakeable on this point: “You must all stay together as one group, one circle,” he said. “You can’t kick people out of the hoop. That’s not the way forward. You must find a way to stay together…You cannot fulfill the Seven Fires teachings any other way…”

In this manner it was settled. We were all to walk together — one reconciled, reunited walk.

* * * * * * * *

With the help of his companion Romola Treblecock, Grandfather Commanda developed his own website, a Circle of All Nations. Among the many treasures in his spiritual legacy to the people, he left his vision for Asinabka – an indigenous guided island for personal and planetary healing, located downtown in the river that runs through the heart of Ottawa, Ontario and Hull, Quebec.  Grandfather Commanda’s final vision is only part way to fulfillment. It needs wider support to come to full realization.

You can support the project not just with a donation, but also by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, and so forth.

Tales of the Whirling Rainbow is a true account of some of the key spiritual mysteries of North America and the land that supports all life. It’s also an arresting exploration of how those mysteries are resounding through real time.

Earlier this year I wrote the nonfiction stories as an e-book. But now I want to record the tales as an audio book and MP3 file for iPods, iPads, Smart Phones, any computer or digital audio player, and also on CD — so people can hear the tales told in a range of formats.

My teacher – the longest practicing Reiki Master in the West – John Harvey Gray passed away peacefully in his home in New Hampshire on January 12, 2011, three months prior to his 94th birthday. At his bedside, were his beloved wife, Dr. Lourdes Gray, his daughter-in-law Monika Gray, and his faithful Yellow Lab, Mickie.

I met John and learned Reiki from him in the late 1970s, later receiving his instruction and guidance as I also became a Reiki Master.  John was a wonderful teacher to me, and to many hundreds of students.  To read his full obituary, follow this link to the John Harvey Gray Reiki Center.

Temple of Ku’Kulkan - the grand pyramid El Castillo at Chichen Itza, on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

The full title of the ebook is Tales of the Whirling Rainbow: Authentic Myths & Mysteries for 2012. It is available in over a dozen ebook formats, including Kindle, Nook, PDF for any computer, and also in iPad, IPhone and Smartphone formats, and its sold at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and other popular online retailers. For now, the most up-to-date version of the book is available at Smashwords.com.

The new chapter, based on interviews with traditional Mayan Daykeepers, expands the scope of the book by exploring the key role of the 21,000 pyramids and temples of Meso-America as they figure in the 2012 teachings of the Maya. This elaborate network of sacred centers, the Mayan Daykeepers told me, has a key energetic role to play in keeping the balance as Earth Changes intensify, and our human lives attain high velocity.

The tales offer many dynamic insights associated with 2012, including the role the Sun may play. The true tales are told in plain, precise language, creating a quick but deep investigation into the mythology of this moment in time.  “The calendar of 26,000 years is new for the dominant civilization,” Mayan Daykeepers told me, “but the calendar portends big changes.”

As of this weekend, I have published a new ebook Tales of the Whirling Rainbow: Authentic Myths & Mysteries for 2012.

The book is my account of some of the key myths and mysteries of the Americas, and an exploration of how those myths are echoed in real time as we edge toward the signal year of 2012. The true stories in the book arise out of my experiences over the last four decades, and also out of the venerable tradition of storytelling.

This ebook is in part a pastiche of elements I have written for other books and articles, now woven together in a new telling both by the context of time as 2012 approaches, and also by the living, mythic image of the whirling rainbow.

In his book Transformations of Myth Through Time, Joseph Campbell noted that a society that does not have a myth to support it and give it coherence goes into dissolution. “That,” he wrote, “is what’s happening to us.” And that, I feel, is why it is worthwhile to tell the rainbow tales again in yet another way in this ebook, to contribute a word picture of what I regard as a supporting and coherent myth for our times, a mystery to engage the fullness of the contemporary soul.

We talked also about the teachings of the south and north as they originate here on Turtle Island (North America), and directly pertain to this stretch of time and world development. From the south direction, we echo the voices of the Maya on the subject of 2012 and the oil spill, and from the north direction we echo the venerable teachings of the Algonquin peoples about the era of the 8th Fire and the health of the land and sea which sustain us all. We spoke also about fusion, the ethers, and their emerging role in the world. Finally, Wendy and I spoke of the hopes and healing potential that arise with the agrarian impulses being given creative expression by so many people in North America and around the world.

Follow the links below to either listen on the web, or to download the 1/2 hour podcast to your iPod, iPhone, or any other digital listening device.

Listen on the web or download the podcast “Steven McFadden, The Call of the Land” dated July 21, 2010.

My uncle Paul Michael Fitzsimmons, writer, passed away on July 11, 2010 at the Bath VA, where he received excellent care in his last year of life. He was the person who inspired me to become a writer — an occupation I’d never conceived of until hearing him tell of his life.

The obituary that follows was written by Paul’s children, my beloved cousins.

Paul was born in Boston on June 12, 1923. He was the son of Edward and Julia (Coveney) Fitzsimmons and brother of Marie McFadden, Fred (Audrey) Fitzsimmons, Celestine Gookin, Joan Stinson (deceased) and Richard Fitzsimmons (deceased). Paul was a veteran of World War II, serving in the Merchant Marine in the Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean as second mate and navigator on the U.S. Rum River. He was licensed to sail any ship, any tonnage, on any ocean. One of his most stirring memories was meeting up with his brother Freddie in the midst of the war on the island of Guam, where Freddie was serving with the United States Marine Corps. Their mother, Julia, wept with joy to receive word that her sons had such a reunion in the midst of such times.

Uncle Paul at age 87 with birthday cake and three grandchildren: Sophie, Rowan, and Colin. Photo by Marie Fitzsimmons Peters.

Paul was a passionate defender of the Constitution and a devoted patriot of the principles of democracy. Until his dying day, he maintained an impassioned plea to the nation to peacefully rebel against the corporate takeover of our liberties. His People’s Manifesto was last published in the Watkins Review in 2008.

Paul is the father of Robert (Mindy) Fitzsimmons, John Fitzsimmons (deceased), Paula Fitzsimmons (Philip Davis), Marie Fitzsimmons (Kirk Peters), and Daniel Fitzsimmons (Dorothy Elizabeth). He is the grandfather of Dr. Coveney Fitzsimmons (Gabriel Gomez), Liam Fitzsimmons, Jores Peters, Jared Peters, Sophie Fitzsimmons Peters, Hilary Davis, Colin Davis, Connor Fitzsimmons, Rowan Elizabeth, and William Fitzsimmons. He is the great grandfather of Zade Ixchel.

Paul began his writing career in New York City, where his early literary successes included Family of Five (1956), End of the Road (1957), By the Light of the Moon (1957) Green Goods and Gold (1959), A Ring is a Precious Thing (1957), The Oracle Machine and Mr. Kessler (1957) and The Way of a Dog (1957). Paul was commissioned by Beacon Press to write the Howard Hughes story and to bring his family to Hollywood to write screenplays. Instead, the family moved to Burdett to an old farmhouse with 100 acres and began their lives in upstate New York.

During that time, Paul authored “Confessions of a Year Round Hunter” for True Magazine, scripts for plays, eloquent poetry, and impassioned political articles. He acted in local theatre with the Burdett Players, worked to bring about the Citizen’s Party, demonstrated against the closing of Sampson State Hospital, and wrote prolifically. After the Flood of ’72, Paul wrote a sweeping ode of the Chemung River Flood. His Christmas Dream, written for his daughter Paula, was loved by Katharine Hepburn, who was touched by the magic of Paul’s writing. Paul resided for many years in Front Royal, Virginia, where he wrote guest editorials for The Washington Post and The Riverton Press. In 1982, at age 59, Paul fulfilled a lifetime dream of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail, 2,175 miles from Springer, Georgia to Mt. Katahdin, Maine. His story was published in the Appalachian Hiker. In 2000, Paul made a trip to Scotland to see his beloved friend and fellow AT hiker, war correspondent Jack Willis. The two writers had a special bond borne from their restless natures and adventurous souls.

Paul recently celebrated his 87th birthday at the music recital of his grandson Colin, enjoyed a beer at the Stone Cat Café, and ate homemade cake prepared by his son-in-law Kirk. More than anything, Paul was most proud of his children and expressed enormous gratitude to their mother. Paul died having held each of his four children on the last day of his life.

As Paul lived by the pen, your remembrances may be sent to C/O Fitzsimmons Family, 5550 Peach Orchard Point, Hector, New York 14841. Perhaps you would like to buy a lottery ticket, make a contribution to the Watkins Glen Library to offset his many late charges, or hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail in his memory. Or simply start a peaceful revolution. As Paul would say: “Good Deal.”

The family will receive friends at the Stone Cat Café near Hector, New York on Saturday, July 17th from 2-4 p.m.

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees.
- Those dying generations – at their song,
The Salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

- William Butler Yeats

Winona LaDuke

“I’m always a little surprised when I hear people say that they are getting on a plane and heading off to the Holy Land,” Winona LaDuke said. “Because the Holy Land is here. This is it right here in America. We are standing right now on Holy Land.  My people have known that forever, and it’s time everyone came to understand it.”

Winona was the keynote speaker at the 5th annual Chief Standing Bear Breakfast, served up in the Heartland, May 21, Lincoln, Nebraska. As she uttered the last syllable of her pronouncement about holy land, the Earth responded, as it often will in a moment of truth. The ground began to tremble. The subtle shudder continued for 20 seconds or more. It was definite. I felt it. Others felt it, too.

Currently serving as director of Native Harvest and the White Earth Land Recovery Project, Winona spoke simply but eloquently for 25 minutes before an audience of about 400 people. In the course of her remarks she mentioned her late father, Sun Bear, an old friend and colleague of mine. Sun Bear was an actor, an activist in his own right, and convener of the influential Medicine Wheel Gatherings in the 1980s and 1990s. “Very often,” Winona told the audience, I heard my father say, ‘I don’t want to hear your philosophy if it won’t grow corn.’ It took me a long time to understand what he meant, but I get it now. He was on to something important.

“I know also,” she added, “that when you grow your own food it makes you a better human being. It connects you to the land you live upon, and it relieves a certain poverty of spirit.

At the breakfast event the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska announced plans to advocate for a national holiday to honor their late chief, Standing Bear, and to strive to have him recognized as someone as important to civil rights as Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chief Standing Bear

In 1879, Standing Bear challenged decades of U.S. policy when, in the course of federal prosecution in Omaha, Nebraska, he demanded to be recognized as a person. That was the first time an Indian was permitted to appear in court in this country and have his rights tried.  The government argued that Indians were not entitled to the protection of a writ of habeas corpus because they were not citizens or even “persons” under American law.

Late in the afternoon as the trial drew to a close, the Judge announced that Standing Bear would be allowed to make a speech in his own behalf. No one in the audience had ever heard an oration by an Indian. Standing Bear rose. Half facing the audience, he held out his right hand, and stood motionless. After a long pause, looking up at the judge, he said: “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I prick it, the blood will flow, and I shall feel pain. The blood is of the same color as yours. God made me, and I am a man…”

Standing Bear spoke for several minutes more. When he was complete the courtroom crowd, moved by his logic and his eloquence, erupted with a resounding shout of support. Thereafter, in time, the federal judge handed down a ruling that Indians are in fact human beings — persons within the meaning of the law. This was a historic ruling on the status of Native peoples on the land they have inhabited for many thousands of years — land that, according to their ancestral traditions, they have a definite and special spiritual responsibility to protect.

Scholars have likened the impact of Standing Bear’s case to the impact that the Dred Scott case had for the rights of African Americans.  So signal was the case that NET has produced a TV documentary exploring the issue – Standing Bear’s Footsteps — that will be broadcast later this year.

In what resounded as the morning’s unexpected coda to the case of Standing Bear and all human beings, Winona ended her talk with an observation.  There is currently, she said, a great national debate raging on the subject of immigration. The debate is being stirred by SB 1070, a law recently enacted in Arizona (a law that has become a model for legislation that other states, including Nebraska will be voting on the months ahead). “In the circumstances of this law and its impact there is a cruel irony,” she said. “Most of the people who are intended to be excluded from this land by laws like this come from a genetic lineage that has always been here — family lines that trace back in North America for 10,000 years or longer.”

These relatives — mostly people from Mexico and Central America — are in many cases farm workers: people who labor in the fields to grow our grains and vegetables, or who toil like machines in the vast Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and slaughterhouses that yield our chicken, beef, and pork. Whether we acknowledge and respect them or not, these are our Ambassadors to the Holy Land. They touch the Earth on our behalf. They raise up the food that we eat. They, like Standing Bear, are human beings, too.