Chiron Communications

Native Knowings now in paperback and eBook formats

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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:

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Literary Lights and ChatGPT shine on Deep Agroecology

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Thanks to the enterprise and good graces of the New Mexico Book Association (NMBA), I’ve been invited to a reception Celebrating New Mexico Writers at the convention center in our stucco-studded capital city.

The New Mexico Writers’ Reception is an opening event for the Santa Fe International Literary Festival.

My book Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future is what secured the invitation—an invitation I was honored to receive, and pleased to accept. The reception will perhaps afford opportunities for wider understanding of agroecology and what I regard as its essential role in our raucous era of transition.

Over the last several years my attention has been focused on completing the biography of the late Navajo leader, Leon Secatero (1943-2008). I’ve not given a lot of thought or energy to agroecology or deep agroecology. Yet I still regard them as the Main Chances for positive action in our unavoidable reckoning with climate crisis, food security, earth care, and worker justice.

For the sake of digital experimentation I asked an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) program to declare what it might about “deep agroecology.” Here’s a calculated response from ChatGPT:

“Deep agroecology is a term used to describe an ecological approach to agriculture that encompasses the social, cultural, and spiritual aspects of farming as well as the economic and environmental dimensions. It recognizes the interdependence of all living things and emphasizes the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, and cultural diversity.

“It is a holistic approach to agriculture that recognizes the interconnectedness of social, cultural, ecological, and economic systems and strives to create a more just and equitable food system for all.”

There you have it, the computer brain at work. Fair enough for a start, I suppose. But it’s not enough to cause me to abandon my vocation and stop doing my own writing on this or any other subject.

One fundamental understanding of agroecology in general and deep agroecology in particular is that being directly in touch with the earth promotes good physical, mental, and spiritual health for people, animals, plants, and the whole. There’s nothing artificial about that earth-based quality of intelligence, qualities naturally intrinsic to full health.

Traditional peoples long ago recognized that in times of great personal, family, or community trauma, human beings could find emotional and psychic stability by going to the land, by deliberately touching or lying upon it, relaxing, breathing, and releasing the trauma to the embrace of Mother Earth. That creates a simple, cost-free opportunity to be filled with grounded peace, even if just for a moment. This is one of the many gifts of our home planet. In reciprocity we have the opportunity to complete a circle by offering our gratitude.

As earth changes intensify, we will always have opportunity to anchor ourselves in strength and wisdom, and then to take positive steps forward. That’s true, now even in the context of the authoritative final warning so recently delivered to the world. Positive action is still possible,  still the key.

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Our Main Chance: Agroecology

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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:

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New cover, renewed spirit for Tales of the Whirling Rainbow

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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 

 

 

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2022: The Year of Agroecology

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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.

 

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Light 2022: Notes of the Holy Ones

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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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A message from Messenger

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In this 2021 summer of fires, smoke, and drought, I’m inspired to publish this meme, Messenger. The substance of the meme was first set out in my book Legend of the Rainbow Warriors. Having been through many editions since the 1980s, the book remains acutely relevant.

 

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INVITATION: Engage a heroic journey along a wisdom trail

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Now that I’ve finished telling the tale a second time, via the supplemental medium of memes, I’m happy to invite you (one and all) to engage the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. Through following the journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific you will meet and learn from traditional wisdom keepers of North America. What they share is directly relevant to this moment in history.

My first telling of the story was through an epic-length narrative. That’s a demanding literary adventure for readers, but also, I feel, very rewarding.

But if you set out on the journey through the second telling—8th Fire slide shows that I’ve created and posted to Youtube—you can engage this true, epic adventure with the wisdom keepers, and complete the journey, in less than an hour. Check it out.

The Odyssey of the 8th Fire meme slide show is now live on Youtube at this link. ~ SM

 

 

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Telling the Tale: Lincoln Journal Star reports on Odyssey of the 8th Fire

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Photo of author Steven McFadden by Justin Wan, Lincoln Journal Star

I’m pleased to report that my nonfiction saga Odyssey of the 8th Fire is getting some publicity this week, in both formats: online journal and the work in progress slide-show of memes.  Both of those formats for engaging the tale are currently live and freely available for readers around the world.

Columnist Cindy Lange-Kubick at our local daily newspaper, The Lincoln Journal Star, wrote and published about me and the long journey that is at the heart of the epic, nonfiction saga in our era of profound change.

“The simple reason for the walk ” as the story reports, was to find teachings that had long ago been left by the side of the trail — and to bring them forward into the present so they can be applied as we go into the future..

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Part 4 – Odyssey of the 8th Fire Memes now live on Youtube

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Part 4 of the Odyssey of the 8th Fire Memes – Days 120-160 slide show is now live and freely available on my Youtube channel. The memes at this link tell a shorthand version of the longer true, epic saga available at 8thFire.net.

In invite you to undertake this adventure, to check out the tale, and through the tale to vicariously journey from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic toward the Western Gate at the Pacific, meeting and learning from insightful elders. As the tale of true adventure unfolds, the elders freely share a wealth of wisdom teachings. I recommend viewing the slide shows on a large screen.

To give a sense of how the story is told by memes over the 230 days of travel, I’ve posted three of the memes below as a sample: Days 63, 145 and 159. If you click on the images you’ll go directly to my Youtube channel. There you can access Parts I, II, III, and IV.  I’ll post the concluding Parts V and VI as they are completed in the months ahead.

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