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Review of my Soul*Sparks book, Classical Considerations

December 19, 2020 by Steven McFadden Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Steve Leshin for Readers’ Favorite

Classical Considerations by Steven McFadden brings focus to the ancient Greek philosophers and culture that have influenced our modern society in the arts, mathematics, politics, and philosophy. This is accomplished by introducing the reader to the lectures of Harvard professor John H. Finley, Jr., a popular classicist who taught a generation of men at Harvard how to live through his courses, none more popular than Humanities 103 – the Great Age of Athens.

McFadden picks a good sample of Finley’s lectures beginning with a short discourse on Diogenes, the ancient Greek who wandered the streets of Athens carrying a lighted lamp in daylight. When asked why, most people assumed it was to look for an “honest man”. It was really to look for a “human being.” What this means is explained by the late professor in clear and engaging language.

Classical Considerations gives a good sampling of Professor Finley’s lectures and the reader will learn as well as appreciate his knowledge and how the study of ancient Greece is very relevant in our world of the present day. Steven McFadden gives his personal insight and how he formed a friendship with John H. Finley, Jr. after he retired in the 1970s.

I, for one, hope to look at Finley’s study of the Odyssey by Homer. I recommend this book to anyone with an appreciation of Professor Finley and to those who seek knowledge of how to be a human being through the Greek classics.

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Now in print: Classical Considerations

January 31, 2018 by Steven McFadden

I’m pleased to announce that Classical Considerations is now available in a print edition. Life’s foundational questions come elegantly to the fore in this skillfully crafted nonfiction story about the late John H. Finley, Jr.

For 51 years Finley was the celebrated and erudite Eliot Professor of the Classics at Harvard. His musings transport readers on a soul-engaging journey of contemplation. Luminous and compellingly relevant, his story leads readers into direct engagement with the fundamental wisdom questions of a fulfilled life.

Classical Considerations is a small treasure, offering a compact but brilliantly lyrical array of intellectual sparks to help kindle enduring knowledge.

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How We Must Be to Influence the Future

November 1, 2013 by Steven McFadden

Grandfather Leon Secatero

The late Navajo elder Leon Secatero once told me that he saw the Wind Walkers take corn pollen in their mouths to bless their words before they spoke to him.

“The elders talked about positive things, focusing on the positive to make things happen, to bring in good energy so that life will continue. They said to use song, prayer, dance to focus on positive thought, and to help us go forward on the path to the future in a good way, in a sacred way.”

“What I was shown,” Grandfather Leon told me, “was the way we should be, how we must be to influence the future, and also to influence all the plants, the animals, the waters, the air and the fire.

“It’s important. I came to a knowing that the only way you can have the power, is through the color and the light of positive thought and energy. Put all your concentration on this, not other things.

“Put your concentration on the positive. That’s how it’s done.”

– Excerpt from a forthcoming Soul*Sparks book
by author Steven McFadden

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Let us now Praise a Worthy Man: Grandfather Commanda at age 90.

William Commanda marked his 90th birthday on Nov. 11, 2003. He is worthy of honor for having attained great age in a sacred manner, and for having accomplished great good over his many years.

Grandfather William Commanda (author photo, 1996)

Grandfather Commanda is a traditional Algonquin Elder from the Kitigan Zibi Reserve in Maniwaki, Quebec, Canada. He is the Keeper of three Wampum Belts: the Seven Fires Prophecy Belt, the 1700s Belt, and the 1793 Jay Treaty Border Crossing Belt. I’ve known Grandfather since 1989 when I met with him then related part of his story in Chapter 2 of Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth.

At many times and in many ways, Grandfather has expressed his understanding that it’s crucial for all the children of Mother Earth to come together at this time with one heart, one mind, one love, and one determination — to create a fitting legacy for all our children and our children’s children.

Among his many accomplishments, Grandfather provided guidance to the 1995-96 Sunbow 5 Walk from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean — an epic pilgrimage under the sky sign of the Whirling Rainbow.

As the Sunbow 5 Walk made its way from East to West under Grandfather’s guidance in 1995 and ’96, I kept a daily journal. Over the course of eight months, the pilgrims walked south from First Encounter Beach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts to the Qualla Boundary-Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina. Then the walk turned west for the long stretch to Los Angeles, finally turning north to end in Santa Barbara, California, on February 2, 1996.

By way of a 90th birthday tribute to Grandfather Commanda for his sure guidance throughout that long walk and far beyond, I offer below some written sketches of him as I recorded them in my journal along the way.

The journal begins with an account of a Thanksgiving Day gathering, seven months before the first steps of the long walk:

Day 0 – Thursday, November 24, 1994 – In the last few moments of a weakly illumined night, tar-dark clouds roiled and raced over all. Then just before the Sun pulled above the horizon on this piercingly cold Thanksgiving Day, a west wind raked across the hills and valleys of Massachusetts.

The wind spiked out over Cape Cod Bay, frothing the blackened waters into angry, spitting caps. A great, bitter wind was upon the land and the sea. Still, the people came. In the face of icy needles cast by the unrelenting gale, 40 people broke from their cars into a wild, scattered search for a place with a scrap of windbreak. They needed protection, for they had arrived to light a sacred fire at First Encounter Beach, just five years before the Millennium.

We found a low place, a depression about four feet below grade of the road on the West, and marked by a wispy picket of marsh grasses to the East. The people gathered and piled driftwood shoulder high in a tipi form, then held up blankets and huddled close around Tom Dostou, sheltering him as knelt to strike a spark. The wind raged, the spark struggled against the screaming elements. Then the fire came. Within moments it was big, strong, and wild. ?Under the guidance of Algonquin Grandfather William Commanda, the group of about 40 people — representing all the colors and many of the spiritual traditions of the world — formed a circle and began the ceremony.

We had come to help open the Eastern Door, one of the spiritual gateways to North America, and to pray for a planned prayer walk of some 3,700 miles that would start from this same beach, and from this same sandy hollow, in seven months. In the minutes after sunrise on Thanksgiving Day, 1994, as the people huddled in blankets about the wildly blowing fire at First Encounter Beach, a sacred song was sung. Pipes were filled then lit. Grandfather Commanda prayed in the Algonquin language. Then Tom Dostou called on four people to speak: one person representing each of the Four Directions, the Four Colors.

Months later the pilgrims walk west (author photo).

When the ceremony ended that cold, windy Thanksgiving morning, we hurried back to the shelter of our vehicles, and fired them up to travel 15 miles to the home of Tom Dostou and Naoko Haga on Bank Street in Harwich, Massachusetts. A river of coffee awaited us, to wash down a wild smorgasbord of turkey, squash, doughnuts, pies, sweet rolls and butter.

After we feasted, Grandfather Commanda settled into an arm chair by the fireplace in the sun-filled living room. He laid out on the carpet a prayer cloth. Upon the prayer cloth he set some of the ancient, elegant Wampum Belts that he has been entrusted to keep since the 1960s: the Seven Fires Belt, the Jay Treaty Belt, and the 1701 Montreal Treaty Belt.

The belts are about four inches wide, and perhaps three feet long. Two of them are beautifully crafted of beads made from wampum, the white and purple shell of the Quahog clam. The softly colored cream or purple beads are strung together with rawhide to serve as records of important agreements, occurrences, or understandings. As I understand it, an elder who reads the wampum does more than faithfully remember what the symbols woven into the belt represent. He or she also communes with the spirit of the wampum beads — for each bead bears its own living vibration, the quahogs being among the Earth’s oldest creatures.

Together the linked wampum beads form a coherent field of meaning that is alive in time and carries authority. The wampums not only serve as records of the past, but also reflect the present and the future. They are a link to Creator’s mind, Grandfather said to the 30 people crowded into the living room. “I don’t own these belts. I just keep them for the people.”

With the support of his helper, Frank Decontie, Grandfather Commanda told the story of the first belt, the oldest belt, the belt of the Seven Prophets and the Seven Fires. His understanding of this has been deepened over the years, as he has interacted and shared with other Anishinabe elders such as Eddie Benton-Banai. Part of the teaching of this wampum belt, the part about the Seventh Fire, indicates that “new people” would arise at a time of great troubles. These new people would have an opportunity and a responsibility to retrace the footsteps of the ancestors to find the sacred ways that had been left behind long ago.

It was at this time, as I heard Grandfather recount it, that the light-skinned race would be given a choice. If they choose the right road, then the seventh fire would light an eighth and final fire: an eternal fire of peace, love and brotherhood. But if the light-skinned race makes the wrong choice of road — the road of greed and materialism — then the destruction which they brought with them on coming to this great Turtle Island continent will come back to them, causing much suffering and death.

“It is time to walk,” Grandfather Commanda told the gathering that Thanksgiving Day in 1994. “It is time to retrace the steps of the ancestors and find what was left by the side of the trail. It is time to walk now.” ?When Frank and Grandfather finished speaking, Tom Dostou (Nabesse Pishum) huddled with guest after guest, making plans for the long cross-continent pilgrimage that would start in just seven months, in June, 1995. Tom was to be the head man. He had been afire with the idea of a long walk since the Cry of the Earth Conference in New York in November 1994 — and since he had participated in a second walk for native rights in Canada. The walks had stirred him deeply.

Sunbow – Whirling Rainbow

With his wife Naoko Haga, Tom shared a vision of the Sundog, or Whirling Rainbow. When this natural phenomenon occurs, a full 360-degree circle of a rainbow appears in a wide ring around the Sun. Tom and Naoko spoke of it as the Sunbow, and added the number 5 to it to signify five colors of human beings: Red, White, Black, Yellow, and Brown. The long walk, Tom said, would be called the Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth.

The Sunbow, or Whirling Rainbow, represents an emerging understanding. In some indigenous communities, it is considered a sign from the Creator. It has long been held that a time of great change, or transition on the Earth, would be signaled by an increase in the number of visible Sunbows.

These full-circle rainbows around the Sun, elders say, may be understood as a sign to people of the necessity to live a life in respect and harmony with all the creations that make life possible: plants, animals, waters, minerals, winds, and other human beings respecting all races and religions. But there is a lot to learn about the Sunbow. We are just at the beginning of our understanding.

Day 14 of the Sunbow 5 Walk – Thursday, July 6, 1995 – As they were making their steps today the walkers realized that they had covered a far stretch of road over two weeks. They had walked across Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and then West along the shore of Connecticut toward New York City. This day — the 14th on the road — the walkers covered about ten more miles across New Rochelle and the Bronx, ending at the Willis Bridge on the margin of Manhattan.

Though the walking distance was short, it took over five hours for the walkers to make all the steps, for the way was congested and the road was hot to the point of torment.

Valaine Lighty and Erika Haga looked about them as the walk approached New York City, and they discussed their experience. Reaching for descriptors, Valaine asked: “Have you ever seen the film Koyaanisqatsi? That’s what it was like.”

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word and concept. It means chaos, or “world out of balance.” From 1975 to 1982 a film was made under this title depicting traffic, pollution, hatred, and the desecration of the earth, air, and water — all set to a musical score by Philip Glass that intensifies the experience to an excruciatingly painful degree.

Throughout their long day on the road, Valaine, Erika, and the other walkers, heard horns honk and various machines ratchet, throb and grind. They saw jagged stretches of pavement, burned-out buildings, graffiti, trash, people engaged in furious argument, and drug dealing. They saw unattended children bawling on the street, beggars, and not a few people just sitting and blankly staring. They saw a woman try to cross the street and almost get run over by a car. They heard her cry out: “What? Do I not exist?” For the walkers this overheard cry of frustration and despair seemed to epitomize the voices of far too many souls in the modern world.

The walkers prayed as they went. They put down tobacco in places where they saw trash, decay, or suffering. They contemplated their visions, and their mission. They kept walking. ?Meanwhile, Grandfather Commanda and Ned Pashene (Naskapi Cree) arrived in New York via Air Canada, to accompany the walkers to their meeting with officials at the United Nations on Friday.

After Grandfather and Ned got off the plane and greeted the walkers, they told everyone the story of their difficulties in crossing the international boundary from Canada to the United States.

They had been detained and hassled at the border by immigration officials — as they often are — because they are not citizens of the US or Canada, but rather First Nations people. In being stopped at the border, Grandfather said, there was for him always a bitter irony. That’s because, in addition to the other sacred artifacts he keeps, Grandfather is the keeper of the Jay Treaty Border Crossing Belt.

A belt of beads is the traditional Algonquin device employed to record the solemn and binding agreement they entered into in 1793 with the US and Great Britain. This was a time when the newly formed government of the United States was defining its corporate existence upon Turtle Island and the Canadian nation did not yet exist. Native nations were full and equal partners to the treaty, with the same standing as the United States and Great Britain. But the Algonquins did not use black marks upon paper to keep important records; they used beads woven into beautiful, long-lasting belts.

The Jay Treaty has many provisions. One article stipulates that First Nations peoples would always have the right to freely cross the border between the US and Canada. After all, the native people had never drawn lines on the earth to define regions, but rather had accepted the natural boundaries of the earth. Native peoples considered the idea of drawing lines on a map, and designating them as “real boundaries,” to be both artificial and arbitrary. Many of their traditional tribal homelands overlap what is now the US-Canada border.

As agreed upon by all parties, the Jay Treaty states explicitly that Native Americans may travel freely back and forth across the U.S./Canadian border, and that this is a permanent understanding: “The Indians dwelling on either side of the…boundary line… {shall have the right} freely to pass and repass by land or island navigation…and to navigate all the lakes, rivers and waters thereof, freely, to carry on trade and commerce with each other.”

The way the Algonquin people recorded this permanent agreement — as with all important matters — was to fashion a belt of beads in a pattern that would plainly symbolize the understanding. For the most important agreements, they used beads fashioned from the shell of the Quahog clam (venus mercenaria), known as wampum in Algonquin. ?Grandfather Commanda is the contemporary keeper of the Jay Treaty Belt — but that is of scant relevance to US or Canadian officials when he crosses the border. He gets hassled anyway, just as Native American people often are when crossing. As Grandfather put it, their right to recognition as Native people is often not respected.

On this July day, after a long delay and intensive questioning by border officials, Grandfather Commanda and Ned Pashene were finally admitted to the United States, and traveled on to New York to join the walkers at the United Nations.

Day 15 of the Sunbow 5 Walk – Friday, July 7, 1995 – At 9 AM the walkers met at the Willis Bridge and began walking down Second Avenue to 44th St. and then over to United Nations headquarters, which sits close by the shore of the East River.

The House of Mica – UN Headquarters

As the walkers passed through Harlem many people offered warm smiles, and said “good morning.” It was an easy journey, and their spirits were peaceful as they walked and prayed. The walkers soon reached the technological and bureaucratic wonderland of the United Nations (UN), perched upon the fabled $26 island acquired through an infamous 1626 trade between the Manhattan peoples and a company of European merchants.

While at UN headquarters the walkers met with Delphine Redshirt, the chairperson of the UN’s Committee for the “International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (1995-2004),” and with Elsa Stamatopoulou, an official of the UN’s Centre for Human Rights. The Sunbow walkers and Grandfather Commanda had come to reiterate the messages presented during the prophetic and historic “Cry of the Earth” conference in 1994.

Grandfather Commanda opened today’s meeting with a prayer, and then Ms. Stamatopoulou welcomed the walkers to the UN. In her remarks she outlined what the UN was doing for the Earth and for indigenous peoples.

Tom Dostou responded with a brief speech. “Many of the nation states that belong to the UN are afraid of indigenous peoples. But we have no guns, no money, and no systems of power of the kind that they need to be concerned about. We have our spiritual basis. That’s about it. We don’t want to overthrow the nation states and create more fear, hate, and harm. That won’t help anybody. We don’t feel we ‘own’ the land, but rather that we are all — every color, and nationality, and religion — tenants on the Earth Mother. Indigenous people are trying to help show the industrial-commercial nation-states how to live on the land, how to be in good relation with it. That’s something that we all need to know. It’s important, and it’s important now.”

Grandfather holds the belt.

After this statement Tom rested and Grandfather Commanda opened his medicine bag and withdrew the Seven Fires Wampum Belt to show it to the walkers and the UN officials. The Seven Fires Wampum Belt is primarily dark, purple wampum beads, with a pattern of seven white diamonds, each diamond representing a ‘fire,’ or epoch of time. The middle fire is represented by a double diamond, indicating the promise of an Eighth Fire, or epoch, if people heed the foundational lessons of honesty, love, caring, sharing, and respect.

Grandfather Commanda explained to everyone about the belts, briefly telling the meaning of each of the seven diamonds shown on the belt (representing the Seven Fires).

I noted the core of his message during a phone conversation later that day that day, Grandfather told the officials: “We are in the time of the Seventh Fire now. That’s the reason for this Sunbow walk. We need to maintain our honesty, and to bring things into keeping with the way the Creator intended. That way we can bring the double-diamond at the center of the belt together, to make one diamond representing the lighting of an Eighth Fire. That fire does not have to burn or destroy, but can illuminate this world that we are part of. It’s up to us which way it burns. We have the choice now, and can use our will as we want. It’s up to the people.”

“The first key in this healing,” Grandfather said, “is forgiveness: to forgive those people, and nations, and races that we feel have done us harm. We may not forget, but we have to forgive. That will begin to heal the hurt. We have to forgive ourselves, too, for the harm we have done to ourselves and to others. It’s very difficult. It’s not easy. But that’s what’s required. Those are the teachings that have been handed down to me. That’s part of what the wampum belt is about, and that’s what I have to share.”

“If all the races will come together,” Grandfather Commanda said at the UN, “and stop doing what they are doing, it can begin. Forgiveness, peace, love, respect — those are the four important things. With all of that, then the waters can again be pure, the air can be clean, the Earth can be healed, and the children can live. Whether it will happen or not, we don’t know. The people have the choice. The time to choose is now. We pray for the good things. That’s why the walk.” Many months later.

Day 224 of the Sunbow 5 Walk — Thursday, February 1, 1996 – The rain kept coming on and off. We all sat on logs and chairs and tarps around the main campfire at Circle K Ranch, in the hills just to the East of Santa Barbara, California, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. From the coals they cared for, the firekeepers had built the blaze up big. We talked for a while, getting ready for the closing ceremony that was planned for the next day, and we looked around the circle at ourselves, soggy and tired.

Aroundthe fire at odyssey end: Ned Pachene, Joe Soto, Grandfather Commanda.

Grandfather was wearing his silver cowboy hat with beaded band, and a black vest as he sat by the fire, with his daughter Evelyn at his side. Someone had placed a blanket on his chair. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter he had brought with him, dated January 26, 1996.

He read the letter aloud: “Greetings Walkers, It is very pleasing to hear that you have completed your walk. It has been a difficult journey, and you have certainly sacrificed yourself for this sacred purpose. This walk is a history that will be remembered, respected, and honored…You have done your job, the message is delivered. May the California Sun shine into your hearts and minds. – Frank Decontie, Algonquin Nation.” ?Grandfather folded the letter back into his pocket, and looked up. “No more walking after this,” he said. “Let nature talk to us. Observe it. We’ll see if the people will listen.”

– end –

Note: By the time of his death at age 97 in August 2011, William Commanda held many honors from both Native and international nations. He was holder of a Key to the City for Canada’s capital of Ottawa, and had also been recognized with the highest civilian honor the nation offers, Officer of the Order of Canada.

Some teachings from Grandfather Commanda’s tradition can be found at this link.

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

What does it mean to be a human being? What is the purpose of scientific knowledge, or any rational knowledge?

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 Classical Greece and Classical Native America, as well as hundreds of other traditions around the world.

Becoming a Human Being means rising above base instincts and emotions to reach a place of equanimity and integrity, to rise to an expanded level of consciousness and generativity.

For 51 years Professor John H. Finley, Jr. made the archetypal dilemmas of life compellingly relevant in the lecture halls of Harvard. In the pages of Classical Considerations, his story and his thinking unfolds.

Like shards of pottery, the fragments of Finley’s life and his beloved classics gathered in this digital volume allow readers to put some pieces together, and thereby to experience some of the insight and inspiration that he nurtured at Harvard.

Classical Considerations is available in 10 different eBook, Smartphone and computer formats at Smashwords.com, for Kindle through Amazon.com, and on all Apple devices through the iTunes and iBook stores.

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Cachora Comes to the Holy City: Don Juan in Santa Fe

Copyright 2002 - by Steven McFadden

Saturday night, January 12, 2002 — two days before his 88th birthday, a man named Cachora, spoke with an audience of about 170 people at the Church of Religious Science in Santa Fe, NM, a city noted for its spiritual history and destiny.

An elder of the Yaqui Indian Nation, and a Nahual (man of power), Cachora has remained a mystery figure for decades. But now he is coming forward from his homeland in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico into the public realm. It is time for this, he says. Chachora says says he is the real man who is portrayed as the enigmatic shaman don Juan in the series of books by Carlos Castaneda: Journey to Ixtlan; The Teachings of Don Juan; and so forth.

With a bright canopy of stars in the night sky, and just hours before the Capricorn New Moon, the Santa Fe teachings began with a Chief’s song offered by Golden Eagle (formerly Standing Elk). He is an Interpreter and Chief for the Yankton Lakota Sioux peoples of South Dakota. Golden Eagle drummed and sang to honor Cachora, and to honor all the Chiefs who serve the Sacred Hoop.

Cachora appeared dark and intense at first, his eyes shaded from the light by a black sombrero. The hat was formed with a humble downturned brim, and crowned with a single golden eagle feather set in the right side of the woven band. He stood straight and strong through the night. Except for when he was speaking, Cachora kept his hands joined together over his solar plexus, above his red tunic, but behind his deerhide vest edged with cowry shells.

Even the shade of a hat could not long conceal the elder. He showed himself to be radiant in health, lithe, open of heart, filled with deep sincerity and hearty humor, and welcoming to all the people. One observer said he seemed “as solid as a beam of mesquite,” a famously tough tree. A human being of attainment, he demonstrated throughout the evening his faith that this potential rests in every human.

Cachora said that he knows 4,000 plants, and how they can be used medicinally to help people heal. He said he spends his time in the mountains, to study and to gather plants, and to teach his apprentices. But recently, Cachora said, he had been guided by Sprit to come forth and teach more widely in the world.

After a few brief introductory remarks, spoken in Spanish and translated to English, Cachora invited any and all questions. “Come on,” he said over and over, “ask.’

Here is a synopsis of Cachora’s translated remarks through the evening, as paraphrased by this reporter:

He was asked his thoughts and feelings about the earth and humanity right now, with everything that is going on in the world? I believe the future of humanity is opaque, he said. We are not seeing much in the way of peace and harmony.
Earth changes will continue to come upon the Earth, and a comet, too.
Santa Fe is sacred. Remember this. There would be plenty of water here, no crisis, if the people take care of the land and perform their ceremonies and prayers — no matter which spiritual tradition — and respect the earth. “If you give offerings, there will be plenty of water.”
The plants and trees are sad. Dry. They are not respected by the people for the crucial contribution they make to our lives. Gather and use them with respect, always offering a prayer. Don’t mistreat them. “Plants are our life. We must care for them.”
Cachora mentioned that his father had long ago worked in the mines near Santa Fe, and so he knew the area well. I know the caves and the mines here, he said. They are sacred.
Through the evening he several times made dismissive remarks about the books of Carlos Castaneda and claims that they might in some way accurately represent him or his teachings. Of Castaneda, Cachora twice said that he was “un pinche loco.”
Cachora answered yes, when asked if there were traditional teachings in his culture about people of different faiths, colors, and nationalities coming together at the time of global crisis, and uniting in mutual respect to work for the health of the earth and all that lives upon it. He said this process — what many would call an unfolding of the legend of the rainbow warriors — is happening now.
There’s not too much we can do about government, and wars, and harmful corporations, but we can work on ourselves. Pray and purify yourself. Don’t be ashamed of yourself. Love and accept yourself. Follow your vision.
Thank Creator for the day, every day. Sunrise is the best time to do this.
Purify yourself. Do it with prayers at sunrise. And do it with Purification baths (Sweat Lodges) at the time of the Full Moon. Meditate and pray in the mountains. This is necessary in the world now.
It’s better to meditate outdoors, where you can be in direct contact with the forces of nature.
Keep your diet to natural foods, with no chemicals and no genetically engineered components. For health, food should natural and clean, as Creator designed it.

At the end of the teachings, Golden Eagle closed the circle with his drum and a spirit song that, he said, Lakota people sing to honor Pte San Wi (White Buffalo Calf Woman). We have had this song a long time, he said, it was given to the Lakota the first time White Buffalo Calf Woman came among the people: 16,000 years ago.

— 30 —

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Arising from Sacred Land, Aiming Upward

On an August evening in 2009, Doug George-Kanentiio offered a ten-minute oration while the Sun was setting. Choosing good words, he spoke about the power of great art, about our prophetic era, and about our relations with the land and each other. At the end, he gave voice to the emerging vision of establishing an Indigenous University in America.

Sacred Rain Arrow, by Alan Houser.

The microphone Kanentiio stood at that evening was set on land about twenty-five paces from “Sacred Rain Arrow,” one of the sculptural masterpieces created by the late Allan Houser. Kanentiio’s talk was part of a benefit event for Go Native Arts, hosted in the garden of the Houser Estate about 20 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

An hour after Kanentiio’s oration, his wife Joanne Shenandoah stood before the same microphone. By this time the stars had emerged, and Jupiter was strong in the sky to the East. Joanne faced south, centered herself, and gave voice to the enthralling Prophecy Song from her Orenda CD. She was supported with harmonies arising from daughter, Leah, and flanked in the West by the beseeching bronze presence of Sacred Rain Arrow.

We are now reminded
to be aware of our place upon this earth.
and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves,
our families, our nations,
the natural world, the Creator.

The words sing, we are to awaken.
Stand up, Be counted,
for you are being recognized in the Spirit world.

– Joanne Shenandoah – Copyright

Several days after the benefit event, I met Kanentiio again amid a crush of people by the Plaza bandstand at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. We found a quiet place to sit and talk.

To answer my questions about the land, Kanentiio began telling of where he was born and raised, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory on the shores of Kaniatarowanenneh (St. Lawrence River) at the New York-Ontario frontier. The Mohawks are part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Keepers of the Eastern Door. Their confederacy is the oldest, active participatory democracy on Earth. With its Great Law of Peace, the Confederacy was a direct example and inspiration for the U.S. Constitution.

A former editor of Akwesasne Notes, Kanentiio is also a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, and the author of several books, including Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. In collaboration with his wife, Joanne, he is co-author of Skywoman: Tales of the Iroquois.

For many years Kanentiio served on the board of directors for the National Museum of the American Indian, and he is currently serving on the board for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest interfaith gathering on Earth. Steadily growing in scope and influence, the Parliament will reconvene this December in Melbourne, Australia.

As we talked in Santa Fe, Kanentiio reminded me that Mohawk Territory straddles the border between the USA and Canada. It’s territory that’s in both nations, and it’s in neither. “Akwesasne is a nexus,” he said. “It’s situated at a juncture of land and water that is of considerable strategic importance. We straddle the St. Lawrence River at what were once known as the 25-mile rapids.” These rapids serve as a key natural valve of flow in relationship between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.

“Historically at Akwesasne the lives of the people were interwoven with the land and the water. People were called there because the place had all the resources necessary for life, and those resources gave stability to the people and to the community. That provided the Mohawk people with a high degree of cultural continuity, and it gave us a certain power and purpose. We always had that.

“Then in April of 1959 there came a break with this pattern. The St. Lawrence Seaway came into being, and our whole way of life changed. The natural, free flow of the living waters at 25-mile rapids was choked with locks. That energetic change fractured our community. It messed up the fishing grounds, and it separated the people from the water and from the land. We began to metamorphose from a vigorous people to a sedentary people. We became wage earners for the first time, dependent on money, and we began to lose our language. That brought about a huge change in values, and a whole generation of our children began to change from that point onward.

“When traditional indigenous peoples are separated from the land, then there is a break in trust in relation to the land – a break that goes both ways. We don’t trust the land, and the land doesn’t trust us. But you must have that trust. When we don’t communicate with each other, and when we don’t communicate with the land, the relationships become abrasive.”

In this context, Kanentiio mentioned Handsome Lake (Ganyahdiyok), the legendary figure who brought Gaiwiio (Good Words) to the people over 200 years ago. Among his life experiences, Handsome Lake was given a vision of the future. He foresaw environmental disasters including air and water pollution, and he offered prophetic cautions.

“Handsome Lake and others warned us that the final assault on the Iroquois – the greatest danger – would come from within. That’s what’s happening now,” Kanentiio said. “In terms of ideals, the Iroquois Confederacy represents something very good. But things change. Metamorphosis has continued and is continuing today, but at a faster pace. In our tradition we have in our creation story an important part about the twins, one twin of the good mind and one twin of the bad mind. That’s something to remember. These twins are always present.”

“Smuggling of tobacco and narcotics, and gambling — whatever commands a profit — has created a narco-culture at Akwesasne,” he said. “Our good, traditional Iroquois values of humility, compassion, simplicity, generosity and communal service have been replaced by greed, intimidation, violence, and death.”

After hearing this, I told Kanentiio of a meeting that happened about 17 years ago in Montreal. I found myself sitting beside the widely known and respected Hopi messenger Thomas Banyacya in a hotel lobby after he had given a talk. As we conversed, Grandfather Banyacya told me that long ago, when the Earth had gone through another epic metamorphosis, gambling had been the precipitating factor. “That was the last straw,” Banyacya told me. “When the gambling and all its related problems built up to a certain level, that triggered the great flood that cleansed the land.”

After listening to my story, Kanentiio responded. “We Indian people are supposed to be the custodians of the land, but what we are doing now is running casinos. We are sidetracked. We have lost sight of what we are supposed to do. The bright, shiny thing along the path has enticed many of the people to become lost, to lose track. Handsome Lake warned of that a long time ago, and now it’s everywhere.

“The Earth is beginning to stir,” he said. “She’s beginning to express the dreams and visions of long ago. The Earth is showing us that she’s increasingly upset with us. The Earth is beginning to arouse. There will be huge changes in this time of reckoning, of healing, until the balance is restored. We are very close now. It won’t be subtle. Big winds will come. The Earth will shrug its shoulders.

“We are not able to change this movement toward purification,” Kanentiio said, “but we know some things will survive. The Confederacy will endure in spite of itself. That is a shared understanding among traditionals, that despite all the odds the Confederacy will survive and go on, as the larger world will also go on in a new way.

“People feel the urgency of the changes now, and many are motivated to do things. That’s good. Preserve what you can. You have to leave something good and tangible behind.

A particular thing that Kanentiio would like to help leave behind is an Indigenous University for North America.

“A few years ago, Vine Deloria, Jr. thought maybe we could take the system of formal education, which had been used to undermine traditional native societies, and reverse it’s impact by creating our own institution based on the university system,” Kanentiio said. “We would create a formal, accredited university where native knowledge keepers would have a place to teach.

“We have native colleges, but an Indigenous University could in time meet and exceed universal standards for learning, and provide formal instruction in all native arts and sciences, of which there are many. It would have a high emphasis on online study. That’s a dream of ours.”

The Indigenous University would be open to everybody on the planet, no restrictions of race or religion. ”That is typical Iroquois,” Kanentiio explained. “Our way is to make it possible that people come to a meeting of the good mind. To get there, you need to sit in respect with one another. You have to invite people from all walks of life and viewpoints to share information, and you have to listen to one another.

“We have the ideas to create an Indigenous University,” he said. “What we need now are the physical and financial means to bring it about.”

: Joanne Shenandoah and Doug George-Kanentiio

In a related effort to weave indigenous viewpoints into the world’s larger framework, Kanentiio and Joanne — as well as other native peoples from North America and around the world — have become involved with the Parliament of World Religions. “We have in part managed to get the Parliament to adopt a native perspective on the Earth: to regard the Earth not as a commodity, but as a being.”

Kanentiio serves on the board of directors for the Parliament. He noted that the theme of their December, meeting will be ‘Reconciling with Mother Earth.’ “My hope for this Parliament,” he said, “is that teachers from world’s various disciplines, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholics, and many more — can get together again in Melbourne and finally acknowledge that Earth is a living planet and should have standing. If spiritual leaders accept that, and take these spiritual understandings to their nations and congregations to make it a guiding principle, then that’s a good thing.

“We feel the real revolution in human society will come about through these spiritual changes,” Kanentiio said. “It has to happen there first, on the spiritual level. Once we change the spiritual, then the politics will follow.

“For me,” he said, “the roots of this understanding go back to our Iroquois value that all human beings have equal worth, if not necessarily equal abilities. Everyone’s life has meaning. Some are singers and healers, and some are cooks or builders, but each one of us has the blessings of existence. To cultivate this, to acknowledge, to have gratitude for being alive. You can always do that. Our lives are not casual, not by chance. We have been directed here to this time and place, and we are meant to take all of our life experiences with us, all the joys, suffering, and pain, and to take it with us with good mind when we return to the place of living light. That makes the light stronger for the generations to come.”

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Tools for Becoming a Sage: Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

©- 1993 by Steven McFadden

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” – Psalms 90:12

Even among the avant-garde who are exploring the spiritual dimensions of aging, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has been a trailblazer and a catalyst. Eventually many others will follow, he suggests, and the kinds of ideas he has been advocating — which are now seen as provocative — will become part of an established way.

Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

“I’m just helping to get the conversation started,” he says with intimations of both hope and certainty. “It’s just a matter of time.”

A survivor of the Holocaust, Zalman has maintained a foundational confidence in Spirit and progress. “I do believe there is more good in the world than evil,” he says, “but not by much. The task of each person is to help tip the scale. Every life matters immensely, and every well-lived and completed life helps with tikkun olam (healing the world).

Zaida (grandfather) Zalman was 65 years old when he started the Spiritual Eldering Project in 1989 to meet the needs of the current generation of elders. He was well trained for this pioneering task, not just by virtue of his studies, but also via the course of his life.

Born in Poland two days after a lunar eclipse, on August 19, 1924, his family soon moved to Vienna where he spent his childhood. When World War II broke out he was imprisoned for a time by the Vichy-French government. He fled Europe in 1941 to the United States, where he entered the Lubavitch Yeshiva in New York, and was ordained as a Rabbi in 1947. Later he earned a Master of Arts in Psychology of Religion from Boston University, and a Doctor of Letters from Hebrew Union College (1969).

In his long and varied career, Zaida Zalman has been a congregational Rabbi, a Hebrew school principal, a Hillel Foundation director, a resource consultant, and a spiritual guide. For 20 years he worked as professor of religion and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the University of Manitoba. Later he served as Professor of Jewish Mysticism and the Psychology of Religion at Temple University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. An iconoclast and somewhat of a rebel, he is the founder of P’Nai Or Fellowship, an international Jewish renewal movement.

Every institutionalized religion could benefit from periodic review and renewal, he says; otherwise they become rigid, calcified, unable to respond to the demands of the present. The same need for review and revitalization, he argues, is also true for individuals — especially as one becomes older.

The Purpose of a Long Life

“What is the purpose of a long life, or an extended life span?” Zaida Zalman has wrestled with this question for a long time. Before founding the Spiritual Eldering Project he invited several distinguished elders, including Betty Friedan, author of The Fountain of Age to join him on retreat so they could concentrate on this and related questions. As a consequence, he has a ready answer. “Creator must have had a purpose in mind. After all, the human animal has two legs: a physical leg and a spiritual leg. We have been walking around on one leg, the physical leg, for a long time, so now we are looking to walk on the spiritual leg.

“A very important attribute of growing older is the wisdom a person gathers. Sharing that wisdom can help elders enjoy their remaining years, and much of that sharing can be done on an intergenerational level. What I’m trying to do with my work is bring back the vitamin of grandparents. By creating intergenerational possibilities, both people gain. The old ones gain vitality from the contact; the young ones gain wisdom and perspective on life.

“We must all pass through a gate of transformation to move from aging to sage-ing. This enables us to use our life experience to enrich our elders years, face mortality, repair relationships, develop a regenerative spirit and transmit wisdom to future generations.

“People need a time to harvest their life,” he says. “If you have plowed, sown the seed, and worked a lifetime, you’d be well advised to bring in the harvest. In some way every elder is looking for completion, being pulled toward it, but we rarely talk about it in spiritual terms.

“Most models of elders today are either of people who are in decrepitude, or people who died in the saddle — people who worked until their dying day without harvesting the experience of a lifetime, without taking the enjoyment of solitude — an opportunity to talk with the self — without harvesting the work and experience of their lifetime. You do not need to die in the saddle. You can harvest your life, spend some time on completion. Then, if you’ve done that work, you’ll be in a position to upload the wisdom of your life to the global brain.

“What blocks the path to the future is often an internal thing. People are often freaked out about death, because they can see, if they choose to look, that the Angel of Death always lies ahead at the end of the tunnel. So many people avert their eyes. They don’t wish to confront the reality, the inevitability of death. Who can you talk to about these things? We need to let the conversation about death out of the closet.

“The internal program we are born with says ‘save life and avoid death at all costs.’ Nine times out of ten this program is absolutely correct. The harvest of life cannot come to people unless they set time aside for it. Most people are afraid to look to the future because they see the Angel of Death lurking there. So, instead, they back into the future. When this happens there really is no past, no future. Only a shriveled present. We need to get out of the box, to reclaim the past and the present, and confront the unlived life — by this I mean the great pains, the failures, the disappointments, the betrayals. Most of the time we don’t want to hear the inner voices that say ‘when are you going to…?’ But it’s important to hear those voices. And it’s important to answer those questions.

“When that instinct is frustrated, you become depressed. It’s kind of an involutionary melancholy — the pain of the unlived life. Examining your failures can lead you to real successes. Look at the old files of your life, the failures, and re-examine them. This can give you energy for the present. I believe that part of the reason that we are given the time of eldering is to open the file drawers and go into the past to correct, to heal, and to harvest.

“A lot of the spiritual work people do is just putting whipped cream on top of a bowl of garbage. You’ve got to clean up the garbage first before you add the whipped cream.

“When you begin to think about how you want to harvest your life, you can at first be paralyzed by the choices. Which is the least troublesome path to take? But as an elder the horizon of choices opens up even wider. When are you going to do something for yourself?”

How to Become a Sage

Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi is a man of abundant talent: linguist, storyteller, computer wizard, singer, and penetrating social analyst. As Director of the Spiritual Eldering Project, he has been a pioneer in developing dynamic models to explore the processes of aging and wisdom cultivation. He has studied his own Jewish heritage thoroughly, and also explored spiritual teachings with Sufi-Masters, Buddhist teachers, Native American elders, Catholic monks, Tibet’s Dalai Lama, and humanistic and transpersonal psychologists.

The Rabbi travels nationally and internationally, to work with elders, and with people who work with elders. He has earned wide respect as an advocate for new ways of understanding what it means to grow old, and for synthesizing a body of teachings that is both ancient and modern. As a consequence of his broad experience and studies, in his public classes and seminars, he ranges far and wide, quoting from scholars and mystics the world over.

“What happens when you grow old and no longer wish to compete with younger people? Who do you look toward for models? Someone who is old, or someone who is an elder? And what is the difference? How do you become a sage? It’s not necessarily the result of book learning.

“Elders right now are often seen as a drain. They are a problem. They are going to use up scarce resources, like Social Security and Medicare. But there are other possibilities. When Social Security was first designed they thought people had a life span of 67 or 69 years. But now the reality is an expanded life span. We need also to expand our consciousness and awareness too, or it will lead to depression.

“When the mind is kept open, then the older you get the more settled and clarified you become. With the extended life span it is also possible to extend awareness. But we have to work on it. We don’t have a great number of models. The term we have for ourselves is ‘Homo Sapiens,’ the wise people? But how does Homo Sapiens behave? We have no models and no code for this. The model does not exist. We need to create models, a new template — to reformat the disk of life.”

“No one else can ‘elder’ you. It’s an intransitive verb. You must do it yourself. So what are the tools for becoming a sage? Contemplative practices: recollection, reflection, meditation, and envisioning — see your life as a landscape, a panorama. Have conversations with your own soul. Get to a witness place, and witness your own life. And as you witness, learn to forgive, yourself and others, otherwise you are robbed of energy. You are handcuffed to the person you have not forgiven and you drag them everywhere with you.

“We have to blaze a trail for eldering. There is a small window of opportunity right now. Are elders just ready for the junk heap? Or do they have something to contribute?”

Some Tools of Eldering

From time to time through his life Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi has found himself sitting in the bathtub gazing into a hand-held mirror to see who he is and who he is becoming. In theological circles such a practice might well be called ‘discursive meditation,’ but he says he is just talking things over with himself.

“You have to meet yourself at some point. That’s really important. I’ve learned that. It’s different from the kind of meditation where you still the mind, which is also important. It’s taking the time to have a deliberate inner dialogue, to ruminate, to ‘chew the cud’ of your life.

“The soul teaches us throughout life, but the lessons are fleeting, ephemeral. That’s why it’s important to take time and look at the panorama of your life, to see the extension and the scope of it — the development of your life’s course. What have you distilled from life? What will become of your experience. When you record them in a journal, you have a way to reconnect.”

“You can become a mentor, and pass on your knowledge to a younger person. I don’t mean passing on information, but something else. Mentoring is sharing wisdom, healthy interchange. When this happens it rouses vitality in an older person, and brings a great joy. When you decide that you want to do this, you will attract people. When the flower is ready, the bee appears. You can also make a tape recording, tell your life story and what you have learned. Make copies and give them to your relatives. Pass on your heritage.

“Or, anther way to do it is to write an ethical will: a written, or recorded testament of your values and the learnings of your life. Mine your memories. Describe what you have learned from life, the epitome of your experience and wisdom. Write it first for yourself, but you can also give it to your children. Don’t just reap the harvest of a long life, but also share the harvest. At holidays, thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever, reconstruct the past to make it accessible to the present. People need the affect, the emotion, the impressions. If you are not an elder, then ask the elders to tell their stories.”

A Lifetime is Not Infinite

“People want to deny their mortality, they don’t want to come to terms with their mortality. There is a great delusion that ‘I will live forever.’ Most people deny their mortality. They don’t want to look down to the end of the road. In this, though, there are consequences for a person’s life and for the society.

“Life has to be harvested in some way, to be completed. People who deny their mortality get caught by it nevertheless, but they live unaware of it the last part of their lives. The Hindus called it Avidya, not wanting to know, closing down of consciousness.

“If someone in the October, November, or December of their life span closes down their consciousness, that means that towards the end of their life they have been sleeping through it. So all the opportunities that are there, to harvest your lifetime, to reconstellate one’s past or be able to see it now with a different perspective, to upload the wisdom the of a lifetime, to reconcile with the people whom one needs to be reconciled with, to clean up karmic pollution — all these things do not get done when a person denies their mortality.

“People pretend a great deal that mortality isn’t there. It’s all hidden away; its all made pretty. The mortician will do cosmetics on people and they don’t look like they looked when they died. They make it all like it’s not the way that it’s happening, so the impact isn’t there. The impact of knowing that one is coming to the end of the course of one’s life, that’s what gives a sense of the preciousness of time. I think that when people get older and they are aware of their mortality, then time is very precious. Many wish to continue to deny death, or to play in their later years. They do not want to develop wisdom. Sometimes it’s just not possible to wake someone up.

“Coming to terms with your mortality means to make peace that physical death will happen. I don’t want at this point to hold out for people the carrot of the afterlife as a way of having a life-jacket against the anxiety that comes from having to come to terms with mortality. I don’t want to talk about afterlife and all the things that I believe that psychic research and near-death experiences and all these other things are beginning to verify. I want to leave that for after people have come to grips with the terror about dying. Otherwise they won’t encounter what they need to encounter. That’s the reason why I want to hold off on putting it in. When I use the word death, I mean just physical death.

“People who don’t want to look ahead as they grow older back into the future, rather than walking into it face forward. Only by making peace with the inevitability of mortality can we make peace with ourselves.”

What is Wisdom?

Zaida Zalman is a compelling speaker: focused, coherent, aware of the shifting mood of the audience, and also observant of the passage of time. Warm and expansive, he supports the spoken word with gentle gestures of arm and hand, often coaxing differences of opinion and debate.

A vigorous singer, he can be prompted to launch his rumbling but melodious voice at the turn of a phrase that puts him in mind of a favorite tune.

Since it’s rarely a topic of social conversation, most people are brought up short when they are asked about wisdom. This is treacherous territory, and without care a respondent runs the risk of revealing puzzlement or ignorance rather than insight. It needs to be approached carefully. Zaida Zalman has been hanging out with the question for a lifetime, but still he eases into the subject with an anecdote.

“I heard this story from an old-timer in California. It was so good that I keep repeating it. I wish I could remember his name and give him credit for it.

So the story is: a person comes to the wise man and says, ‘how do you get wisdom.’ He says, ‘wisdom comes from good judgment.’ And how do you have good judgment? So the wise one says, ‘from experience.’ And where do you get experience? ‘From bad judgment.’

“So, I like that progression: from bad judgment to experience to good judgment to wisdom. So what you see is, wisdom is a generalization of everything one has learned from life, it’s a distillate of that. If you say, ‘hey, Zalman, make with some wisdom, you know.’ Then I’m supposed to do applied wisdom, wisdom in order to get me XYZ, whatever the thing is that I want to get; then that which may pretend to be wisdom becomes very manipulative, street wise. It’s clever, but not wise.

“There is a whole tradition of wisdom that sees wisdom as a woman. That comes from the Greek Sophia. The Hebrew word for wisdom is also a feminine word. These words have a sense of, like Pallas Athena jumping out of Zeus’ head. Wisdom comes with God, prior to the world. So, if I were to say, ‘wisdom is that which jumps out of the head of the Ancient of Days,’ that would be a way of expressing it.

“I think a lot now about feminism. I have a feeling that in the next 50 years there is going to be a switch, where more and more of the people who have life experience, who have learned something, are going to be true spiritual elders, and that’s going to have its impact on people. Women after menopause will be in positions of being counselors, and that will bring social equality to wisdom.

“At this point, we don’t see it yet. If somebody were to go to Washington and say, “in the cabinet, could we have a wisdom seeker? Could we have some wise elder just be there and speak of wisdom whenever something comes up that needs that kind of consideration? That’s what the Senate was supposed to be able to do in the first place, to be able to take life’s wisdom and apply it to government, to advise and consent.

The Real World

Stories are stock-in-trade for Zaida Zalman. He has hundreds at the ready. As with many spiritual teachers throughout the ages, he has come to realize that insight is often conveyed — and retained — far more effectively through a parable. His deep olive-colored eyes twinkle when he sees an opportunity to launch into one, and he has the capacity to tell them at majestic length and with effusive detail, or to compress them to an essential outline to fit a small window of opportunity — when the attention span of listeners appears to be strained.

“There was a man by the name of Rabbi Ramour Yenischlayzal and his son Rabitizikel,” he begins.

“Rabitizikel is a teenager, and the father is the venerable head of a Hassidic group. Suddenly there appears before them a person who says, ‘Rabbi, I need some help, I’m about to get married and I need some money badly.’ The Rabbi looks at him and says, ‘don’t you know you’re dead, you’ve died already.’ The man says, ‘what are you talking about? They are waiting for me. I need the money, please help me.’ The Rabbi lifts up the man’s coat and shows him that underneath his coat he has shrouds, the shrouds with which he was buried. Suddenly, it dawns on the man what has really happened and he disappears.

“The Rabbi’s son is upset by this and says, ‘Poppa, what was that?’ And the father says to him, ‘there are some souls that live in the world of confusion. This one couldn’t reconcile himself yet with being dead so he’s inventing a whole life story so that he can continue to deny that he is dead. By showing him these things I brought him up short, and he had to pay attention. He disappeared because he no longer had to be in the world of confusion where he appears as if he were living on this plane.’

“The son thinks for a moment, and then asks, ‘Poppa, for him he was pretty real for himself. How do we know that we aren’t in the world of confusion? We appear pretty real to ourselves?’ And the father says, ‘my dear child, the world in which you ask the question is the real world.’

” That story that is similar to the old Chinese story from the sage Lao Tzu about the emperor who dreams that he is a butterfly, and then asks himself, ‘am I a butterfly dreaming that I am an emperor, or am I an emperor dreaming that I am a butterfly?’

“The question is not resolved for the emperor, which one is who. But for the Rabbi and his son the question becomes resolved by saying, the place where you question, where you are asking ‘is this for real?’ that’s the real world. Because in the world of your illusions you don’t ask the question. You don’t question your illusions.”

The Pearl Beyond Price

Zaida Zalman’s is fond of hats, and wears them indoors and out — berets, fur caps, yarmulkes, whatever. His head is usually covered, whether cooking, taking his daily two-mile walk, or praying. When he considers a question, his eyes roll heavenward for an instant only.

If he had just one opportunity, a single thing he could say to a group of young people, what story would he tell? “That’s a good one,” he says. “I’d like to think about that one a little while,” he adds, but then he pauses not at all.

“The story that comes to mind now, first, is about the Pearl Beyond Price.” His eyes brighten. He fixes his gaze upon the listeners and begins.

“There was a king and a queen and they had a son who was very bright and good, and they wanted him to be king when his time came to be king, but he needed to do something really heroic first.

“There was a pearl beyond any price and he had to go find that pearl. The pearl was in Egypt. It was guarded by a dragon, a very fierce dragon. The king called his son and told him that he must do this, and don’t you want to some day assume the role of being a person of majesty? The son said ‘yes, I want to do it.’ The whole dream, the whole notion excited him a great deal — yes, he wants to do the heroic thing.

“The father says, ‘go and get the pearl but you’ve got to be very careful. You are going to come to that place and you’ll start eating their food and wearing their clothes and before long you will forget what your mission is and that is not going to be so good.’ The son says, ‘no, I won’t forget, I won’t forget.’

“So he went down to Egypt and went around with his royal robes and pretty soon people snatched them all away from him, and he got involved and in order not to attract attention and get into trouble, he started to wear what everybody else was wearing, and eat what everybody else was eating, and pretty soon he forgot that he was on a mission from his father, the king, to bring the pearl beyond any price.

“Some time went by, and there was a friend of the king who had compassion for the son. So he said, ‘I’m going to go down. I’ll bring some food from the palace and I’ll bring him a change of clothes, which on the outside are going to look like the clothes that everybody else is wearing, but on the inside are going to be the real royal robes.’ He comes and at first the son doesn’t want to hear of it, but then after a while he begins to share with him.

“They walk together, and the friend gives him some of the food and the son begins to remember. After a while, he just breaks down and feels ‘I’ve lost it, I’ve muffed it.’ And the friend says, ‘no you haven’t, there still is time — this is why I came to help.’ Together the two of them went, and they outwitted the dragon and took the pearl beyond any price. When he came home the father rejoiced over him and that was how he made him finally king.

“Now, I would tell kids, ‘imagine for a moment that this is your story: how would you interpret that story for yourself?’ And then I’d just leave it at that.

“That story is like a worm that keeps on agitating and agitating until the person will finally get what’s its all about — that we come from another place, from a place beyond. We are here. We have to do a job. Then we forget that we have to do a job. Then comes a good friend who still remembers what it’s all about, and tells you and feeds you the decent food. After a while you get back on the job ask the big question ‘where’s the pearl and how do I deal with the dragon?’ And then it happens.

“This story is a very rich story because it talks about the descent of the soul and its purpose in life, and I think that’s a good story to tell. There may be some others, too, but that is the one that comes first.

“I would tell elders the same story, only I would talk to them more about the pearl. How did the pearl get formed? From the irritation that the oyster had — all the pains that you went through in life and all the troubles you’ve had. When you say, ‘nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen,’ those troubles made that pearl happen. What a pity it would be if you only had the troubles and you didn’t find the pearl.”

What Have You Learned?

The father of nine children, and a grandfather 21 times over, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is prolific in other ways as well. He is the author of Fragments of a Future Scroll; The First Step; and Sparks of Light. He has also written books on Jewish renewal, and most recently a book entitled The Spiritual Elder: How to Enjoy the Harvest of a Lifetime. In this book, as in his public talks, he is firm on the opportunities and responsibilities of older citizens. He says elders must learn to use their life experience to enrich their later years, to face their mortality, and to serve as models for younger people.

“Every so often we need to change the pickle juice of the mind. If you hang onto disappointments and resentments, and stew in them, then every thought and feeling you have is going to have some of that flavor. It’s nobody else’s responsibility to do anything about that, though you can certainly ask for help. But, ultimately, you’ve got to change your own pickle juice.

“One thing I’ve learned is that learning is inevitable. If you are open to life you always keep on learning, and good learning is like white-water rafting. Most people think that events happen to them beyond their control, like they’re drifting down the river and they’ll bump against a rock, and they will be flooded and be overturned, and all the calamities that happen. That is also learning but that is not participating in the process of learning.

“If you participate in the process of learning, you get a chance to look a little bit ahead to read the water. Then you paddle very strongly in the direction where it is going to be better for you to be. So if you feel a hunger for a particular kind of learning, you can really satisfy that hunger. Usually, we don’t know why we have that hunger until later on when we get there we see that this hunger was a perfect preparation.

“I’d like to go back to a story in The Bible. Moses comes to Pharaoh and Pharaoh says to him, ‘I’m not going to let you guys go.’ But then they get to dickering back and forth about what they can take along if he goes into the desert and Moses says, we have to take everything. Pharaoh says, why? Moses says, because we do not know how we are to serve the Lord our God until we get there.

“That has been a very important part of my learning: to recognize that the goals I set for myself are the carrots I hold out for myself, but they are not necessarily what I am going to achieve. Often the things that I set out to myself as goals that I want to have are bound to fail. From the fallout of my failures I am going to have my successes. So if life serves you lemons, made lemonade of that. That is the notion of being able to say of the difficulties of a lifetime, ‘I can learn from them, to extract from them the things that are the successes, but I don’t know what the successes are, only in retrospect.’ That is what is so amazing about that, because, how do I know what I have to prepare myself for when I haven’t seen the future yet?

“Nobody can see around the corner of time. We understand trends, but trends are not around the corner of time. If I see someone tacking with a sailboat, they seem to be going in a direction that never looks like the direction where they really want to go, but you have to go that way because that is how the wind and the current is, you can’t move otherwise. I have a feeling that we know the trend to which we are going, but we don’t know beyond the trend. Because every once in a while something comes up and we have to steer in one direction, then the other direction. We always see a different goal in front of us than the real goal which is in the other direction to which we are being moved. So, the sense that there is a destiny which I don’t know yet but with which I can cooperate is something that I have found out.”

Coming to Peace

“If you ask me how I’ve come to this point, come to peace in my life, and I claim I that know, then I am a liar. I really don’t know… I can’t…if what I said before makes real sense, then I couldn’t have steered in this direction by myself. I find this out afterwards.

“So the peace that comes from saying that my destiny in the hand of G*d, that’s one form of saying it. Another way of saying it is like it is as it is put in the Desiderata: ‘No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should…’ In either case, it talks about the same process of a certain kind of rightness. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t tragedy. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t pain. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t real upset and breakdown, and shattering, and all that kind of stuff. Yet, at the same time there is a serenity that comes from saying something, like the prayer that they talk about in the 12-step programs, ‘G*d give me the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I can’t change, and accept what I cannot change.’

“I cook soups very well, but if you ask me, ‘what are the ingredients,’ I give up. Because I see what’s in the refrigerator, and I start putting it together. And somehow a little of this and a little of that and it comes all together. I don’t feel that it is planned that way. Now I know that when I have to talk to some people, I have to talk to them about planning, about preparing, about nose-to-the-grindstone, shoulder-to-the-wheel, all this kind of attitude. But in reflection, it doesn’t look to me like that is really the way that it goes.”

What the Rabbi Sees Ahead

For many people age has the effect of freeing them from heavy demands and petty ambitions. This can liberate time and energy for considering the long view, and for taking steps to ensure that the future has the potential to be better for the generations coming behind them.

“I start looking ahead,” Zaida Zalman says, “and suddenly I find I am looking through the rearview mirror. When you ask, ‘what would the future look like,’ I then go into a nostalgic past, a romanticized past, and then go into a tribal thing, and think for a moment, it would look like that. But it’s not going to look like that.

“We are on the verge of breakthroughs that are so immense that we can hardly imagine them. But it pays to imagine them, and it pays to spend time to figure that one out. There is going to be a communication super-highway. We’re going to all go with fiber optics.

“The speed with which calculations are being made and things are being sent, and communications are happening is increasing. Money has become less and less something that has to do with paper or with coins and there’s more and more blips, electronic blips. So the whole thing, when the planet is trying to organize itself again so that it’s one world, one planet. We can’t go back to a pre-planetary understanding, because once the creatures of Earth have been seen from outer space, there’s such a shift that has happened that it can’t be reversed. So, with that we have to be thinking globally.

“If you start thinking globally then you start saying, of course complexities are going to increase, and what’s going to happen when complexities increase? There’s bound to be breakdown of the current structures. And, unless there is a breakdown of the current structures — which is like the good-judgment, bad-judgment, good-judgment experience, you know, that chain — we can’t put in new structures that will be able to handle all the complexity.

“The rate of change is accelerating at a more than geometric scale. What do you call that? Logarithmic? It’s going to change according to a logarithmic scale, so that the amount of change that’s going to occur between now, let’s say, and the year 2025, I can’t even imagine what that’s going to be like. But, I can also say that from where I am in my understanding of life right now, I know that an essential ingredient of that is going to be elder power, or elder mind — not elder power, that’s not the right word — elder mind is going to be very important.

“We are learning the heavy ecological lessons that result from thinking in short segments of time. The quarterly report has to be replaced by ‘Seventh Generation’ thinking (from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace: “In our every deliberation and action, we will consider the welfare of the seventh generation of children to come.”)

For that to happen, we have to deploy people with longer life span, with greater consciousness, and also to enter into the world, not to leave it behind — not to become anachronisms and say, ‘well, you know, I went to graduate school in the 1950s and so I’m arrested there [in my development].’ But rather to able to say, ‘No. I’m right now on the edge of my learning, and I have a notion of the direction, the trend, of where it’s going to go, and so what do I have to put into place so that the world will be ready to be more in balance?’ That’s the kind of preparation that you can do in order to make an elder mind.”

Elders Have to Hold the Field

“At this point we are in a very primitive place where peace is concerned, peace and justice. We are, in destruction, very sophisticated. So we can now have a Star Wars, and you can just imagine the billions of money and the kind of minds that go in to doing that. It’s amazing. At the same time, when you start figuring that we don’t know how to deal with a David Koresh without violence, that shows how primitive we are, how psychologically primitive, sociologically primitive, we are.

“It will take elders to sit with the younger generation, the people who are just opening up, and to talk with each other. I see that the complexity of things is going to increase. I see that the current matrix cannot hold the complexity, the current matrix will have to shatter, and when it shatters there will be a great panic.

“In order not to have the panic, elders will have to hold the field. At that point, it is going to be really important to have those kinds of intergenerational conversations that will bring the same amount of sophistication that we have now in war, and in terrorism, and in violence, into peace and goodness, healthy social interaction. So, that’s what I see as a task.”

– End –

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, author of The Spiritual Elder: How to Enjoy the Harvest of a Lifetime, holds the World Wisdom Chair at the Naropa Institute, an accredited, nonsectarian private institution of higher education that offers contemplative education combining Eastern and Western educational traditions, in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information: The Sage-ing Guild

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Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth

Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak about the Earth

Taking inspiration from John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles in Courage, Steven McFadden presents the stories and thinking of 17 Native American spiritual elders in this widely acclaimed book.

As our existing culture shifts, what to the ancient ones who have been trained in the sacred Traditions of Turtle Island (North America) have to say to us? With this question and others, journalist McFadden begins his quest to speak with contemporary Native American elders. The elders offer penetrating and poetic insight on a host of crucial matters.

This bestselling book has recently been updated, to tell the stories and share the observations of the elders 10 years after the original date of publication.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Profiles in Wisdom:

In 1983, after three days and nights of praying and fasting on a mountaintop, I snapped a twig with my fingers and had a revelation. I saw that my simple action had changed the world, and that it would never be the same again. I could never put that twig back together the way it had been. This was a small change, but an important change nonetheless.

As the sound of the snap reverberated within my mind, I understood how everything I said and did changed the world. What came with the snapping twig was not an abstract idea or a philosophical insight, but a living experience of how all my actions influence creation. Since then, the lesson of this experience has guided my life in a world where, until recently, it seemed as if most people were oblivious to the way their lives inflict deep wounds upon the Earth, the air, and the water…

Praise for Profiles in Wisdom:

“Profiles in Wisdom does a fine job not only of presenting the dignity, complexity, and wit of important Indian philosophers and religious leaders, but also of issuing cautions agains easy uplift and wisdom injections…There are some stirring and unexpected powers unleashed in this book.” – New York Times Book Review

“This wise and provocative collection is highly recommended.” – Library Journal

“Our leaders should sit and listen to the counsel Steven McFadden has gathered in this book.” – John Elvin, The Washington Times

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About Steven McFadden & Chiron Communications

Welcome to Chiron Communications, a conceptual umbrella to unify my diverse work as writer, storyteller, and healer. My passion is casting light upon keys that may serve the health of human beings and the earth we share.

As a journalist, I’m the author of a range of non-fiction books. Most of them are on display at the bottom of the page if you wish to learn more.

I’m honored to have had the opportunity to author an epic, nonfiction saga of North America: Odyssey of the 8th Fire. The 8th Fire tells a true story arising from the deepest roots of our land, but taking place in the present and the future. In it, circles upon circles, elders make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry.

In the early 1980s I initiated Chiron Communications, but then rested the concept in the 1990s. That’s when I took time to serve as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day USA celebration, in partnership with the Seventh Generation Fund (1993).

Through the 1990s I served as director of The Wisdom Conservancy at Merriam Hill Education Center in Greenville, New Hampshire, as a participant in The Balaton Group, and as one of the pilgrims on a great universal prayer walk from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean across Turtle Island (North America) toward the Western Gate at the Pacific. I put Chiron Communications back into gear around the turn of the millennium.

For some readers it may look as if Chiron Communications is a sprawling, sporadic, multidimensional, multinational corporation. But no. It’s just me and my laptop, with a little help from my friends.

A Reiki Master of long standing, I’ve had the opportunity to transmit the Reiki healing techniques to hundreds of students across North and Central America. It was my privilege to help John Harvey Gray and Lourdes Gray, Ph.D. write Hand to Hand: The Longest Practicing Reiki Master Tells His Story. I’ve also had the privilege to travel with and to learn from many gifted healers from all over the Americas, as well as healers from Australia, Africa, and Ireland. At the turn of the millennium I was honored to earn certification as a yoga instructor.

As the land calls out ever more powerfully, I maintain an active interest in farming and gardening in general, Food Co-ops and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in particular. I’ve reported on the growth and development of CSA in America since its inception in 1986, striving to articulate The Call of the Land.

My most recent agrarian book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future, won the National Indie Excellence Award in the environmental category. I invite you to visit my dedicated blog: DeepAgroecology.net

At home once again in New Mexico, I’m a member of SouthWest Writers, NM Writers, and the New Mexico Book Association,

Thanks for reading. May your steps carry you along the beauty way. Respectfully, Steven McFadden

Thanks to Tim J. Hill of DraftHorse Studio for web design,
to Angela Werneke of River Light Media for the Chiron Communications logo,
and to my darling Elizabeth Wolf for the author photos.

eep agroecology, #deepagroecology

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Review of my Soul*Sparks book, Classical Considerations

Now in print: Classical Considerations

How We Must Be to Influence the Future

Let us now Praise a Worthy Man: Grandfather Commanda at age 90.

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

Cachora Comes to the Holy City: Don Juan in Santa Fe

Arising from Sacred Land, Aiming Upward

Tools for Becoming a Sage: Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth

About Steven McFadden & Chiron Communications

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