April 28, 2016 Daily Feast Of Wisdom (Tsugitsvnvda Danalisdayvhvsgv Agadohvsdi ) (ᏧᎩᏨᏅᏓ ᏓᎾᎵᏍᏓᏴᎲᏍᎬ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ)

2016

April
Kawani
ᎧᏩᏂ

Thursday
Ugineiga
ᎤᎩᏁᎢᎦ

April 28 - Daily Feast

Our faith is shaken and disappointment sets in when the pain we thought we were rid of comes back. Our bodies and souls have good memories where pain is concerned - and no matter how hopeful we were, our first response is to think we must have been mistaken. We were not wrong, and we would never let a thief come back in to rob again. Fear is the thief and it steals. So we need to claim freedom from fear with the same intensity we claim other things that are rightfully ours.

~ My heart tells me I had just as well talk to the clouds and wind, but I want to say life is sweet, live is strong, man fights to save his life. ~

CAPTAIN JACK - MODOC, Circa 1873

"A Cherokee Feast of Days, Volume II" by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Elder's Meditation of the Day - April 28

"Indians living close to nature and nature's ruler are not living in darkness."

Walking Buffalo, STONEY

There are many Indian people who are living according to nature and according to ceremony and culture. They may not have a lot of material things, but that doesn't mean they are not successful. What is success anyway? Can success be measured by material things? What is it we are really chasing anyway? The Elders say that what everyone really wants is to be happy and have a peaceful mind. Material things by themselves do not bring happiness and peace of mind. Only spiritual things bring happiness. When we live a spiritual life we will not have darkness. Instead, we will be happy.

Great Spirit, today, let me walk the Red Road.

'THINK on THESE THINGS'
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler

True forgiveness could be described as a divine amnesty where we receive a pardon from the unworthy things we've done, and have another chance to prove our worth. Forgiveness is something we must give in order to receive. And we have a tendency to linger over old grudges, using them to bolster our reasons for not forgiving. But we cannot return to the past, nor can we change one whit of anything that happened then. We cannot make up for resentments we've caused in others, no more than they can make up for ours.

To forgive is divine. God is above punishment, but we are not. It is we, not God, who punish by taking things into our own hands and making them work for our own selfish reasons. We demand punishment by hanging on to painful past experiences that produce self-pity. We are the ones who blame God's will for our illnesses, our poverty, our lack of friends. But we are wrong, for there is a moment of truth when we face ourselves and know that we are the guilty.

And there is a time such as William Wordsworth wrote about, "That blessed mood, in which the burden of the mystery, in which the heavy and weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened".....because we've been forgiven.