April 8, 2016 Daily Feast Of Wisdom (Tsugitsvnvda Danalisdayvhvsgv Agadohvsdi ) (ᏧᎩᏨᏅᏓ ᏓᎾᎵᏍᏓᏴᎲᏍᎬ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ)

2016

April
Kawani
ᎧᏩᏂ

Friday
Tsunagilosti
ᏧᎾᎩᎶᏍᏘ

April 8 - Daily Feast

Age magnifies who we have been all along. Our minds are planted with words that seed the very ground on which we stand. There should be regret for having planted seeds that will not allow change. Responsibility to what we have planted is our alone. It is a garden that we must weed - and it should not be a surprise to us that there are so many weeds and not many flowers. We have talked weeds and tangled our lives with brambles. But we have the same privilege of making sweeping changes - and we can.

~ Grandfather, Great Spirit, you are older that all need....you are older than all prayer.... You are the life of things. ~

BLACK ELK - OGLALA SIOUX

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

Elder's Meditation of the Day - April 8

"The very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to [my people's] footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch."

Chief Sealth, DUWAMISH

If you respect something, it will respect you back. If your ancestors respected something, the future generations will be respected back. The Indian ancestors always showed great respect for the Earth. That's why the Earth is so respectful to Indians today. Every Indian naturally feels connectedness to the Earth. We know the Earth holds our ancestors. If we continue to respect Mother Earth, our children will benefit and so will our grandchildren. Today, we should think about and pray for our Mother Earth.

Grandmother, let me have strong feelings for our Earth today.

'THINK on THESE THINGS'
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Henry David Thoreau, whose cry was "Simplify! Simplify!" went to great measures to prove himself, and perhaps to society, that life could be lived in the most simplest manner and at the least expense. With only a few dollars he managed to provide for himself the things of absolute necessity for quite a long period of time.

Not many of us would care to exist on the absolute necessities. We have become too much accustomed to easier living. Things that were once thought of as luxuries are now considered necessities. And yet, with all of this, life is anything but simple. We seem to have the ability to complicate the best laid plans and find ourselves shadow boxing.

Like many of the trite old adages, "Life is what we make it," is so true. By our own minds we accept or reject, by ignoring or by searching out the causes of shadows and removing the cause. It is whatever we elect to do about our individual lives that makes the difference. But we shall make great strides when we recognize the supreme excellence in all things of simplicity.

We don't need to worry about doing without the necessary things in life - if we have a grateful heart. A grateful heart is not just remembering to write a few words to someone who has done a kindness, or saying thank you graciously and at the right moment. A grateful heart is the feeling of great blessing which precedes that thank you note and that verbal expression.

A grateful heart is one that always knows the fullness of that rich feeling of first being grateful without cause. And then all other gratitude and its expression comes naturally.

Perhaps true gratitude is a grateful thought toward heaven that I should be chosen to fill this spot, do this work, and have been given the strength to do it.

It was Romaine, the English theologian, who said, "Gratitude to God makes even a temporal blessing a taste of heaven." We can have so much more heaven with a grateful heart.