I created this meme for my blog at The Call of the Land and felt it was also worth sharing with visitors to this associated Chiron Communications blog.
In Search of Human Beings
A legendary elder of ancient Greece, the man named Diogenes gained renown by walking through the streets of ancient Athens in broad daylight carrying a lighted lamp. When people would ask him why his lamp was lit in the day, he would reply not that he was looking for an honest man, as is so often reported, but rather that he was “looking for a Human Being.”
Diogenes – was born in Sinope, Turkey (4th Century BCE) but moved to Athens and became the leader of a faction known as The Cynics. Diogenes modeled himself on the example of Hercules, believing that virtue is revealed in action and deeds, not in theory or talk. He lived on the streets and by his wits, without luxuries. Photo of Diogenes statue in Sinope courtesy of Creative Commons.
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Diogenes’ quest for Human Beings struck home with me. His search in classical Greece parallels one of the core ethical considerations in classic Native American wisdom ways. For me, someone who has walked hundreds of miles on Native pathways but only a few steps on the marbled hallways of classical Greece, this point of reckoning seems eminently worthy of consideration.
The various cultures that have come to North America over the last 500 years have not yet completed the process of grafting healthfully with the root native culture that has been on the land for many thousands of years. There is a great need for this interweaving to proceed, and here is a foundational point of union.
Understanding of what it means to be a Human Being — in any era of time and any place in the world — is a fundamental wisdom question contemplated in the Americas for millennia.
Native orators have often given eloquent expression to the idea. Among the well- spoken tradition keepers, I include the late Leon Shenandoah (1915– 1996), an elder and a statesman for the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people of The Great Turtle Island (North America).
In the pages of To Become a Human Being, Grandfather Shenandoah says that becoming a Human Being means attaining the highest level in this life, rising above instincts or base emotions to reach a place of equanimity and integrity, recognizing that we are all spiritual beings. A spark of spirit dwells in all life, and a Human Being knows that and acts in the world with that reality held mindfully.
“To become a Human Being is to rise to an expanded level of consciousness by living in physical and spiritual communion with the Earth and the various creatures who share life with us on the land,” Grandfather Shenandoah observed.
Grandfather Shenandoah encouraged everyone to “be the firekeepers that we all are, so that we’re able to instill small fires in each human being and give them hope so that they’ll begin to do good for other human beings.”
My intent as author of the ebook, Classical Considerations, was to strike such sparks by passing on the teachings of some faithful firekeepers, in particular the late Harvard Master and Classicist, John H. Finley, Jr.
“The doctrine of Horatio Alger, of getting ahead in life, continues to be important,” Finley told me during one of our interviews. “Yet the purpose of mind is not chiefly for you to get some place in society. Our gift is mind; we can see things. That’s what it’s all about. It really is.
“In your brief span, to make sense of all the interesting people you’ve known, all the interesting books you’ve read. This panorama…is increasingly your reward in life.
“After all, the self is both the hero and the villain in life. It is the villain insofar as it reduces the great and beautiful world to the idiotic closet of one’s identity. It is the hero insofar as it tries to go to the window, look out, and see how big the world is and how many people there are and how beautiful the sunlight is.
“It seems to me that waking is far more desirable than dreaming.
Three Overlooked Seeds at the Core of CSA Farms
Three seed ideas were among the many elements that underlie the actions of the first CSA farmers who in 1985-86 established new ways of farming in America. Those ways have emerged in subsequent seasons to yield as many as 10,000 contemporary community supported farms (CSAs) in cities, suburbs, towns, villages and churches across the land.
Photo by Maggie Mehaffey
The CSA model has proven to be a natural for adaption and innovation. Many latter-day CSAs, however, have overlooked or bypassed some of the seed ideas as they have established a wide range of variations on the CSA theme. Yet the seeds of the initial CSAs remain viable, perhaps even more so in our era of profound global change. They were explored in the book on CSA that I authored with Trauger Groh, Farms of Tomorrow. And they are freely available to anyone who chooses to cultivate them.
Alice Bennett Groh is part of the founding group for the Temple-Wilton Community Farm, in New Hampshire. In November, 2014 when she spoke at a Peterborough Grange ceremony to honor CSA pioneers, she put her focus on three of the seed ideas that helped community farms to become established in the USA and to grow.
With eloquence and economy of language, she told of how her husband Trauger Markus Groh partnered with Anthony Graham and Lincoln Gieger to cultivate new thinking, and thereby to initiate their highly productive, economically sustainable, and environmentally radiant Biodynamic farm on rocky, rolling hills flanking the Souhegan River…
The rest of the story in follows freely on my blog for Deep Agroecology: The Call of the Land.
Our Ancient & Worthy Responsibility
Twenty Years Ago – Thanksgiving Day, 1995
November 24, 1995 – A band of pilgrims gathered at First Encounter Beach on Cape Cod Massachsetts with Grandfather William Commanda and Frank Decontie of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, and Jose’ Lucero of the Santa Clara Pueblo.
In a circle around the roaring ceremonial fire on the beach, the pilgrims vowed to begin a prayer walk in June of 1995 from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean to the Western Gate at the Pacific.
“Moses made pilgrimages to the mountain, and Jesus spent forty days in the desert. All throughout history, people have made sacred journeys.” – don Jose’ Matsuwa
The rest of the story… http://www.8thfire.net/Day_0.html
No No Nano: Community Food as Firewall
On one of my other blogs, The Call of the Land, I’ve just published the following story. To read the rest just follow the link. – Steven M.
No No Nano: My Macro-Objections to
Micro-Machinations of Industrial Processed Food
“To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.” – Wendell Berry
Steadily, stealthily, corporations are driving the goodness of natural life itself from our food, and cleverly – though unwisely – infesting it with dim bits of microscopic material substance that are obscured from human awareness. I object. Wholeheartedly.
Just as synthetic chemicals, manufactured additives, irradiation, and then genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been corporately imposed upon processed food, now a micro-invasion of nanoparticles is gaining momentum. Patented lab-created nanoparticles are even penetrating the realm of organic food, as the USDA’s organic program chooses to do nothing.
The rest of the story is here.
Reunion: Eagle-Quetzal-Condor
What is the Purpose of a Long Life?
Throughout history most successful and long-lived civilizations have held a place of respect for elders, and benefited from their life wisdom. By and large this tradition is missing today, to the detriment not only of elders but also of society.
Each moment, each day, each one of us grows older. Thanks to medical advances and wide emphasis on personal fitness, most people will live long enough to be considered old. The average life span has, in fact, been steadily increasing since the dawn of the Twentieth Century, and this trend will likely continue in the Twenty-first Century.
This reality raises some critical questions: What is the purpose of a long life? What can and should older people do with their extended years? What roles do older people have in modern societies?
As far back as five millennia ago the Greeks knew a basic life lesson that remains relevant today. Socrates put it succinctly: “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
With that foundational understanding in mind, and after a career of interviewing learned and insightful elders, I assembled an eBook of quotations, from all times and all cultures: With Keys for Adept Aging, me intention was to inspire readers to reflect on how we might most wisely journey through advanced maturity.
I learned a lot putting this book together. I am pleased and honored to share it.
Age is very mysterious because the essence of the human being – the soul – actually never ages. It’s only the outer covering of the individual that changes.” ~ Beatrice Wood
A Primer for Pilgrims: Responding With Devotional Intelligence to Urgent Geospiritual Imperatives
By all scientific accounts we are in profound crisis on the physical plane. The Sixth Great Extinction is no longer a possibility, but has become a brutal unfolding reality as plants and animals become extinct at a mind-numbing rate 1,000 times faster than they did before humans walked the land; meanwhile the climate crisis steadily intensifies to the level of planetary emergency. On the land the most obvious causes and responses are physical, but as important are metaphysical causes and responses.
In recognition of this foundational truth, I am pleased to announce that I have authored and published a new Soul*Spark eBook: A Primer for Pilgrims. Pilgrimage can serve as yet another healthy response to the call of the land, in this case with devotional intelligence and action.
In a wealth of ways across a wide span of traditions and hundreds of generations, pilgrims have sought out holy places: forest groves, healing wells or springs, pyramids, mountains, churches, temples, stone circles or labyrinths. Millions of people have traveled for a host of reasons.
In the end, whether we go willingly or unwillingly, whether we regard ourselves as tourists, business agents, or sacred travelers, we are all, pilgrims. A pilgrimage is a journey, not only outward to a faraway place, but also, inevitably, inward toward spiritual understanding and growth. In our era pilgrimage can be as well a critical geospiritual deed to help maintain the balance of our land, our planet, our lives.
This eBook is an invaluable guide to personal spiritual growth, as well as to earth healing. It’s also a collection of riveting and beautifully told true stories about critical geospiritual actions in North America
This nonfiction eBook by veteran journalist Steven McFadden also acknowledges, honors, draws from and strives to integrate the many cultures and traditions which have streamed onto Turtle Island (North America) over the last 500 years or so.
Author Steven McFadden walks the labyrinth.
We have long needed, and finally have begun to find ways to graft the far-flung traditions from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Asia, and beyond — onto the rootstock that is so deeply embedded here: Native ways. So many teachings make beautiful sense, in both the short and the long term, in ways both common and rare. We need all the wisdom we can summon to meet the challenges of our times, and native pilgrimage teachings offer a deep foundation.
The book offers a wealth of insight about the challenges that arise in pilgrimage and the profound good that such a spiritual exercise may bring – not just for the individual pilgrims, but also for the world at large.
Pilgrims may set out to do penance for past evils, to find answers to questions, to invoke blessings, to pursue spiritual ecstasy, or to seek a miracle for a friend or family member. Increasingly in our era, pilgrims also set out to help heal the earth.
In most mystical traditions it is said that the human soul itself, every human soul, is on a pilgrimage, consciously or unconsciously. He or she is bound for a holy place and therefore life is not just for enjoyment, but the soul also has dharma, a purpose or objective that must ever be kept in focus.
Now as you set out on the literary pilgrimage of reading this book, my hope as the author is that it will offer up useful compass points to help you maintain your bearings.
Journeys to luminous locations are often undertaken by people with scant understanding of what pilgrimage is and the principles that have been found to enhance it. Thus, they may see only what they have come to see, whereas intentional pilgrims may more readily open doors of perception, encounter revelation, and gain constructive power.
To the extent any or all of us are alienated by modern life from the natural world, a pilgrimage to a sacred place can help heal and restore this. The energetic atmosphere of sacred places can awaken a slumbering soul, providing not only renewal, but also a clearer sense of purpose. The energy can invigorate and promote balance — assisting human beings to realign through physical, mental, and emotional planes.
Pilgrim Marie McFadden
Just as I finished writing and prepared to publish this new eBook, my mother died. Marie Dolores Fitzsimmons McFadden was herself an inveterate pilgrim. Over the 92 1/2 years of her life she traveled to just about every region of the planet, and to an impressive number of sacred sites including Jerusalem, Rome, Fatima, Lourdes, El Sanctuario de Chimayo, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and many other places. To honor her memory, this new book is dedicated to her, as well as to all of us who are “on the road” in an era when extreme circumstances call out for our presence and our intelligent healing participation.
A Primer for Pilgrims delivers nonfiction insight, excitement, inspiration, adventure, and more. It’s available in 10 different eBook and Smartphone formats through Smashwords, and also available for Kindle through Amazon.com and for all Apple devices such as iPad and iPhone in the Apple bookstore.
Remembering an Epic Walk for the Earth
Walking under the sign of the Whirling Rainbow
Nineteen years ago today – June 23, 1995 – a small band of pilgrims set out walking from the Atlantic to the Pacific on an epic journey that I have come to regard, and to write about, as the Odyssey of the 8th Fire.
The saga of their journey is well worth knowing, for it remains critically relevant to the journey all of us are making now through an era of profound change upon our Earth.
As well as the tale of the pilgrims’ travels on foot across Turtle Island (North America), Odyssey of the 8th Fire is the essential story of their meetings with dozens of traditional, learned elders of North America. They gifted the pilgrims with messages to deliver to all the people.
Reading Odyssey of the 8th Fire online is a demanding quest. The story is exceedingly long. Because of this, and because many of the elders who are part of the story noted that their teachings take both time and attention to understand, I recommend this literary pilgrimage be undertaken step by step, over a span of eight months or so.
Odyssey consists of a lengthy Prologue, and then 225 accounts, one for each day of travel. Those journal entries are ordered chronologically.
By engaging this online account of the epic walk one day at a time, a reader can make a steady eight-month literary and spiritual pilgrimage from East to West across Turtle Island (North America). The journey proceeds place to place, elder to elder, teaching to teaching.
“I ask you to listen not just with your minds. I ask you to listen with your hearts, because that is the only way you can receive what it is — what we are giving. These are the teachings of our hearts.
“This walk is going to take eight or nine months. There are lots of elders out there across Turtle Island, and they have many beautiful teachings, many teachings that all the people need now. It is our hope, it is our prayer that they will come forward now that the Eastern Door is open
“It is our prayer that they will meet us as we walk; that they will teach and share what they understand from their hearts. Be patient. Listen to the elders. You need patience to receive these teachings. It doesn’t all come at once. You need patience.”
– Frank Decontie, Algonquin – June 23, 1995 – First Encounter Beach, Massachusetts
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