August 18 Daily Feast, Elder's Meditation, THINK on THESE THING

August 18 - Daily Feast

It takes enthusiasm to do anything. We go through so many of the same things day after day that we tend to lose our eagerness for some of it. But if we stir ourselves up, enthusiasm, like a primed pump, will flow more easily. When people lose their taste for life, it is not that there is no longer anything interesting - but they are no longer interested. They need to stir themselves up and get out of the doubting rut they have dug themselves into. The Cherokee associates the lack of enthusiasm with being sad, which he calls u hi so di. Enthusiasm has wonderful effects on the mind and body - giving them a chance to heal, to recover from unhappy experiences. When we lack enthusiasm, let us say we have it - enough to do anything we have to do.

~ The Great Spirit smiled upon us and made us glad....but we had to agree.... ~

KEOKUK

'A Cherokee Feast of Days', by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Elder's Meditation of the Day August 18

"You have to have confidence in your own ability to be able to go it alone, to go against what the rest of the culture is doing."

Eunice Baumann-Nelson, Ph.D., PENOBSCOT

God, this is hard. Today, allow me to be a Warrior. Let me be strong. Let Your voice be clear to me. Let me hear Your guidance. My goal today is to serve You, to develop myself to be the kind of Indian person that You would have me be. To Walk the Red Road must sometimes be walked alone.

Great Spirit, let me walk the Red Road today with the confidence that You are with me. If I fall, I will quickly ask You to help me know what I should do next.

'THINK on THESE THINGS'
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler

The greatest tragedy of life is not that we quarrel with our fellows, but that we do not take time to know them.

In his great understanding of man and nature, Thoreau wrote, "Let a man take time enough for he most trivial deed." Take time.

How often what seems to be an unfriendly atmosphere is only a lack of time. Some of our dearest friends are hidden behind the mask of hurry. And we need so desperately to know each other.

Understanding comes when people are allowed to talk to one another. They discover the ways and needs, the love and hopes, and the despairs and fears when they take enough time to speak of them. All these things that make for understanding and compassion come from personal contact and the knowledge and practice of good will.

People become more civilized, more peaceful, more as God intended them to be when they take time to make friends out of acquaintances.

To be a good listener endears many a friendship. Everyone needs someone with whom to talk at length on all subjects without later regret. It has been written, "What a great blessing is a friend with breast so trusty that you may bury all your secrets in it."

And how often we need to be that friend and be the listener, and to make sure we are worthy of that trust.

Listening comes in many ways. We listen with all our senses, knowing many times without having to be told what someone's needs are. Charles Dickens said that no one is useless in the world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else. And it just may be by listening that we lighten another's load.

Sometimes we listen with our hearts and understand in silence. Sometimes we simply have to put ourselves into a situation to understand all sides of it. And we best do so be listening.

All our lives we carry secrets with us that we long to reveal to someone who understands.

These are relationships in our lives better and closer than the ordinary. Closer yet than brothers or sisters are those with whom we can share all our secrets, we think.

What a sad state of affairs when life imparts that others cannot always be trusted. What a shock to realize we have given all our hearts and bared our souls to people whose curiosity was the only motive that compelled them to listen.

Phillip Massinger, sixteenth century poet, wrote, "I have played the fool, the gross fool to believe the bosom of a friend would hold a secret mine own could not contain."

Not one of us can testify that we have nothing within our lives and thoughts that we cannot reveal. And many of us have not expressed our innermost thoughts because we have found no one in whom we can confide.

As Shakespeare said, "Many a man's tongue shakes out its master's undoing." Sometimes the loquacious tell their secrets not out of a need to tell them, but our of a love of talking.

One of the greatest feelings in the world is to discover we haven't told something we cherish very much to someone we once thought we could trust.

Donadagahv’I

Tawodi Unega
( White Hawk )

"Be good, be kind, help each other."
"Respect the ground, respect the drum, respect each other."

Abe Conklin - Ponca/Osage, (1926-1995)

May The Creator walk with you.

A-na-s-gv-ti U-ne-la-nv-hi Ni-go-hi-lv-i
Wa-tsi Ga-wo-hi-lv-do-di Ni-hi
( May God Always Watch Over You )