Chiron Communications

The Call of the Land is exceedingly loud and urgent. Time to respond wisely.

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callofland

In addition to the blog you are checking out right here on my Chiron Communications website, I maintain another blog entitled The Call of the Land. You’re invited to check it out

The Call of the Land expresses the urgent call of the land as I and a host of other listeners hear it and comprehend it.

In particular The Call of the Land explores positive creative responses to the call that we might have an abundance of clean food and heal the profoundly distressed environment in which we and our children dwell.

 

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A message for this moment: Awakening Community Intelligence

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CSA book coverI’m pleased to announce publication of my new book, Awakening Community Intelligence: CSA Farms as Community Cornerstones. Both print and eBook editions are now available on Amazon.com.

Over the last decades many thousands of people in all parts of the world have come to recognize in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) a vehicle for approaching land, food, labor, environment and community in a healthier way. Now – in an era with increasing shadows of environmental catastrophe – it’s time to expand exponentially the CSA vision and reality.

The opportunity is before us to establish hundreds of thousands of CSA farms in nations around the world, and to thereby employ a proven, egalitarian model to address the radically changing circumstances in our environment, climate, economics, and social relationships.

Awakening Community Intelligence lays out the vision, and sounds a call to action.

Our civilization is now reckoning with profound disruptions associated with climate change, resource depletion and geopolitical instability. We must respond to our circumstances, or be overwhelmed.

Both globally and locally, we absolutely require intelligent strategies to reduce our vulnerability, to build resilience, and to reckon with the increasing disruptions. CSA farms stand out as promising models with a noteworthy track record. If the CSA model is in fact realized in hundreds of thousands of permutations in diverse communities around the globe, it can make a consequential difference in a host of sane, safe, and superior ways.

As a journalist, I’ve been writing about CSA since its inception in the USA in the late 1980s, and I continue to see possibilities. With Trauger Groh, I’m co-author of the first two books on CSA: Farms of Tomorrow and Farms of Tomorrow Revisited. My other books include The Call of the Land, Profiles in Wisdom, Classical Considerations, and the epic nonfiction saga of contemporary America, Odyssey of the 8th Fire.

The ebook Awakening Community Intelligence is available now in all formats for digital devices and computers from Smashwords. And it’s also available in print and digital editions on Amazon.com, and versions for iBooks via the links below:

iBookstore_BadgeAmazon-buynow

 

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What they greatly thought, they nobly dared

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2015 – This year marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the great prophetic,  multicultural Sunbow pilgrimage from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1995 under guidance of traditional native wisdom keepers and the skysign of the Whirling Rainbow.

The journey began — and remains — the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. I’m honored to have had the opportunity to tell this epic tale freely on the web, and grateful for the help that came to support me in doing it.

As the meme below attests, I’m moved this 20th anniversary year to beat upon the drum, to write, and to otherwise let people know about the journey that took place and that in my mind remains unfinished. That’s a key. Via the Odyssey of the 8th Fire everyone has an opportunity to make a parallel literary and spiritual pilgrimage across Turtle Island (North America). From that journey, I feel, much is to be gained.

 

zzGreatThoughts

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Do you have the wisdom necessary for the journey?

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This year marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the great multicultural pilgrimage from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1995 under guidance of traditional native wisdom keepers. The journey was — and is — the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. 

As the meme below attests, I’m moved this year to continue letting people know about the epic saga I authored back in 2007 to tell the tale. As time passes the story becomes increasingly relevant.

Odyssey of the 8th Fire

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Blessing Way: The Healing Art of Anita Rodriquez

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tThe air, the adobe, the soaring mountain vistas and the rich culture of Taos valley in the high Sangre de Christo mountains of New Mexico have been home to eleven generations of the Rodriguez family. At this point in the family’s evolution as Taoseños and as human beings, a matriarch of the 10th generation – Anita Rodriguez – is distinguishing herself as a brilliantly heartfelt, technically adept artist with a compelling, curative vision.

In consideration of her substantive portfolio of work, art critic Rick Romancito wrote: “If artists are the antennae of the culture, quivering precognitively in response to paradigm shifts before the rest of us are aware, then I’m heartened by Anita Rodríguez’s change of palette…” Me, too.

With this blog post it is my pleasure to publicly admire and to introduce the work of Anita Rodriquez to a wider audience. I encourage you to watch the short video embedded below, and to visit her website to appreciate the range of creative expression she has brought forth from her soul through her talented hands. In the video, Anita tells the story of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, and guides a powerfully healing exploration of the painting. It’s a tonic for the soul.

https://youtu.be/F7cBCF57fEk

A prodigy not just at the easel and the word processor, Anita is also possessed of kitchen genius. That genius will be revealed in her forthcoming cookbook, Coyota in the Kitchen: A memoir of New and Old Mexico with Recipes. Technically, it’s a cookbook with recipes of the traditional foods that are part of the cuisine of Northern New Mexico. But the book also tells the wild and uproarious stories that surround the food, and at the same time will offer a visual feast of Anita’s artwork created especially for the book.

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Begin the journey: Odyssey of the 8th Fire

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The year 2015 marks the 20th Anniversary of a great journey that took place over the course of 8 months as a band of pilgrims guided by traditional elders of North America walked from the Atlantic to the Pacific under the sky sign of the Whirling Rainbow.

To help commemorate that walk, I am creating a series of memes letting people know where they can learn the whole of of the true, epic saga Odyssey of the 8th Fire. Here’s is yet another sample meme that I plan send out on it’s own digital odyssey:

BeginTheJourney

I invite you also to begin the journey. Explore what the odyssey of the 8th fire is about, and consider making an 8-month spiritual-literary journey, reading one journal entry each day from the start of the odyssey onward.

With respect, SM 

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In Search of Human Beings

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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.

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.

stNative 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.”

Classical Considerations: Musings Prompted by the Late John H. Finley, Jr.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.

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