Native Knowings now in paperback and eBook formats
Many years ago I compiled a concise eBook with some key native knowings about the earth, and about the era of transition we are living through. Much of that book came from my notes about meetings with traditional native elders, and other people learned in the ways of earth and spirit. Our current national and global circumstances prompted me this past month to update the eBook and slso to publish it in a paperback edition for the first time.
With that background and intention, Light and Sound Press, LLC hereby announces an important addition to the Soul*Sparks collection of gift books–-small treasures recognized for their enduring insights. As of late May 2023 Native Knowings is now available in a slender, handsome, and impactful paperback edition as well as the eBook edition.
Indisputably and on many levels of experience and understanding, profound changes are underway in the world. My hope is that this small volume will in some ways help us to move through the changes more wisely. The root teachings of North America—native knowings—can truly help. This I know in the core of my being.
The words of contemporary leaders in particular bear notes of urgency. They share a sense that the time for us to make profound changes in our attitudes and our behaviors is short. As Native Knowings makes explicit, they encourage us to consider their voiced offerings promptly and carefully.
The back cover of this small treasure gives a sense of what lies within:
Flowing into 2023
My wife Elizabeth treated me to a movie for my birthday just before 2022 came to a close: three hours of the new Avatar film in 3-D at an I-Max theater. Great beauty we beheld in The Way of Water. Although I have to say that as is true for me with most modern adventure films I find the endless battles to be tedious at best, deranging at worst.
More emphasis on story in 2023, I say to Hollywood, and less focus on ways to maim or terminate ourselves and other entities.
In that regard, I’m interested to share a link to a two-minute video clip on water and the IMAGES we hold and project into the world. May we all find ways to do this with greater skill and beauty in the new year and beyond. Peace, S.
Our Main Chance: Agroecology
The phrase main chance generally refers to the most advantageous prospect available, the opportunity for the greatest progress or gain in any given set of circumstances. I use the phrase now in regard to our tempestuous environmental, climatological, social, and spiritual circumstances.
In a historical context, playwright William Shakespeare employed the phrase main chance memorably in a speech by the Earl of Warwick in Henry VI, Part 2:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
figuring the nature of the times deceased,
the which observed,
a man may prophesy, with a near aim,
of the main chance
of things as yet not come to life…”
With my nearest aim, I now prophesy for the future that our main chance would be wisely grasped in reference to collective ambitions that we must of necessity awaken in ourselves: ambitions for survival and well-being through climate chaos and more, for a clean Earth, for health, for respect, for purpose, for the next seven generations, for beauty, for spiritual maturity.
All of this is what farms are for, what they can be for if we set our minds and hearts to make it so. Farms and food are the key to our physical, moral, community, and spiritual survival and evolution. Our main chance to realize all of this lies in the realms of agroecology and deep agroecology.
For your consideration, here’s a sample of five memes I was inspired to create by the main chance theme:
Chiron’s Museum of Marvelous Memes – Gallery I
Dear Readers –
In recent years the web-birthed form of communication known as “memes” has become a creative outlet for me. By combining an image with a few words to create a meme, anyone can bring an idea into sharp focus. By now (summer 2022) I’ve probably created several hundred memes over the last 7-8 years, relying on the talented photographers of Pixabay, and the design capabilities of Canva. They are worthy of praise and gratitude. Thank you.
The memes in this digital museum bring to light some of the ideas in the books I have authored. Yet by now the memes are scattered across the Internet like individual digital snowflakes. I felt the memes, at least some of them, deserved to be gathered in one place. Thus, with a wink and a nod, I hereby establish Chiron’s Museum of Marvelous Memes.
This is Gallery I. Gallery II at this link. Gallery III. Gallery IV. Gallery V. Gallery VI. Gallery VII. Gallery VIII. Gallery IX.
May you scroll in beauty, Steven M.
m
m
Click here for Gallery II
Gallery III
Gallery IV
Gallery V
New cover, renewed spirit for Tales of the Whirling Rainbow
Dear Readers, I’m pleased to announce a facelift for an old book that is, I feel, acutely relevant to all that’s going on in the world. It’s the slimmest of volumes, but it still goes right to the heart of the matter. As of today the new cover and format edition is readily available as either print or eBook.
Here’s an image of the new cover, and below you will find the updated text from the book’s back cover:
Tales of the Whirling Rainbow is a journalist’s account of some of the key myths and mysteries of the Americas, and an electrifying exploration of how those myths are resounding in real time.
Veteran journalist Steven McFadden weaves the living myths together seamlessly. Like an atom of gold, this wee book radiates deep beauty. It delivers authentic inspiration for our 21st Century souls.
Tales of the Whirling Rainbow conveys critical insights into core wisdom teachings at the heart of North America’s unfolding saga. Respect for these knowings is fundamental to our survival, and to our spiritual development.
As the Sun awakens and Earth changes intensify, our lives attain high velocity. At this time and in this manner, elders across The Americas informed the author, the human beings who are the different colors and faiths of the world will have opportunities to heal their web of relationships with each other, and with the natural world.
“Absorbing, engaging, thoughtful, thought-provoking, exceptionally well written…unreservedly recommended.”~ Midwest Book Review
Council Circles: a perennial way to mark Earth Day
In 1993 I had the honor of serving as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day USA observation. When appointed to the position, I reached out to the Seventh Generation Fund. We formed a project partnership, and together we developed a plan and a protocol for community council circles.
People came together with their neighbors in a respectful matter to talk about something they (and their children) all have a stake in: the health of the earth, their responsibilities, and their opportunities.
That year Earth Day was marked with formal Council Circles in over 500 US and Canadian communities, a host of other activities from the Boston Esplanade to the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska, and circles along the Pacific shore.
Now, 29 years later, the materials are still relevant for all kinds of communities. They describe a way to bring people together in a respectful and positive manner.
To access the guidelines and protocol for hosting a community Council Circle (on Earth Day or any day), follow this link then scroll down to where you see the scanned copies of the original typewritten documents.
Council Circles remains a powerful tool for any group of people needing to address serious issues. The circles function as a perennial way of democratically developing and engaging community wisdom and strength.
Council Circles – an Earth Day Perennial
By Steven McFadden – April 16, 2022
In 1993 I had the honor of serving as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day USA observation. When appointed to the position, I reached out to the Seventh Generation Fund. We formed a project partnership, and together we developed a plan and a protocol for community council circles.
People came together with their neighbors in a respectful matter to talk about something they (and their children) all have a stake in: the health of the earth, their responsibilities, and their opportunities.
That year Earth Day was marked with formal Council Circles in over 500 US and Canadian communities, a host of other activities from the Boston Esplanade to the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska, and circles along the Pacific shore.
Now, 29 years later, the materials are still relevant for all kinds of communities. They describe a way to bring people together in a respectful and positive manner.
Having dug the original typewritten materials out of storage, and then scanned them page by page, it feels right and fitting to share them again, and to make them freely available.
Council Circles remains a powerful tool for any group of people needing to address serious issues. The circles function as a perennial way of democratically developing and engaging community wisdom and strength.
NOTE: If anyone should be motivated to volunteer to type up these antique scanned fax pages for Council Circles so that digital text can be posted for easier reading and download, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can use the contact form to connect.
2022: The Year of Agroecology
By the authority vested in me (and everyone else) by virtue of being someone with something important to say, I hereby declare 2022 to be The Year of Agroecology. Someone needed to do it. It’s time.
I hope the other 7.8 billion human beings on the earth are listening—not to me necessarily, but rather to the swelling chorus of farmers and food workers around the world who are leading the way forward, building a foundation for a clean, healthy, just, and sustainable future. That’s the essence of agroecology. That’s the opportunity before us. And that opportunity addresses a range of critical issues from climate chaos and social unrest to food quality and food security.
Although the word agroecology may sound abstract, it’s a term that’s both plain and exalted. It’s about the food we all eat, the human beings and animals who are part of that web of relationship, the essential care of the earth we all depend upon for our lives, and the utter necessity of our spiritual growth to the point where we human beings efficiently and gracefully engage our responsibility as caretakers of the earth.
We all have an opportunity to help advance the vision of agroecology, and thereby to participate in setting right the ways we human beings are in relationship with farms, food, and the future. This is the vision described in my book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future. Agroecology is a vision now held and practiced by millions of human beings around the world. The year 2022 (and the years beyond) hold the potential and the necessity of agroecology becoming a vision held and supported by billions. That’s what it will take. That’s what we need. 2022 can be, and with wisdom will be, The Year of Agroecology.
Light 2022: Notes of the Holy Ones
In this season so busy—things changing so fast—I happened upon this dark passage: the cautioning utterance of a spirit long departed:
Everywhere the wasteland grows;
woe to him whose wasteland is within.
~ Thus Spake Zarathustrua (Nietzsche)
Stark words. From one vantage as we head into 2022, it’s as if this ancient cautionary couplet were engraved in ominous foul-tempered clouds looming over our moment in history. Dangerous rumbling darkness. People in need of light. Woe indeed.
Not really a new sensation. Same as it ever was, going back through our long global history of tragedy, enslavement, rioting, rebellion, fascism, war, and staggering natural disasters. We’ve been here before. Most of us have learned that when we honestly face the inner wastelands, we can create ways to regenerate. These are matters of will and intention. Inner and outer landscapes can be seeded with flowers, fruits, and light.
Observations about light remind me of something the late Grandfather Martin M. Martinez said one day in 2004, another time when seasons were changing. We were sitting with Navajo elder Leon Secatero at the time. We were talking, drinking hot coffee and eating berry pie. Leon translated Grandfather’s words from Navajo to English as he shared something about the medicine songs he had mastered as Hataa’lii, a traditional chanter in the Navajo way.
“Many of the songs are keys to repositioning and setting right vibrations,” he said. “These are what we call the notes of the holy ones, such as the Song of the Mother Earth. Our ancestors have always told us, this is the way…It is known throughout the indigenous world that light and vibration directly connect all living beings to our environment. This first light from the stars and their vibrations are explained in our Blessingway songs.”
For me, this first light serves as a reminder of what we human beings have learned through the millennia about how we can best generate light in times of darkness. We do it through the verities, or eternal verities as they are sometimes called. Basic stuff. Honesty, caring, sharing, respect, and that ineffable attribute which some possess and which all may cultivate—grace.
When we embody and express these virtues, when we sing or chant in beauty, we add light to the world. When we add light we are traveling upon what Grandfathers Martinez and Secatero spoke of as hózhó jí, the blessingway. This is good. Very good.
In 2022 and beyond, with the seasons so busy and things changing so fast, may we all find ways to keep our hearts, minds, and feet traveling forward in beauty on the blessingway. May it be so. ~ Thus spake Steven.
Now that the Eastern Door is open…
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