December 30, 2016 Daily Feast Of Wisdom (Tsugitsvnvda Danalisdayvhvsgv Agadohvsdi ) (ᏧᎩᏨᏅᏓ ᏓᎾᎵᏍᏓᏴᎲᏍᎬ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ)

2016

December

Vsgiga

ᎥᏍᎩᎦ

Friday

Tsunagilosti

ᏧᎾᎩᎶᏍᏘ

December 30 - Daily Feast

We move now toward a new year. It gives reason to think who we are and what we are about. Do we reach eagerly toward the future or does it frighten us with its weapons and voices and anger? Think long and hard about this, for it reveals your state of existence. A person cannot go on thinking "someday" and change anything. But to say that this day is the day to make changes and to bring one's own personal spirit into alignment, that is an accomplishment. Some feel they are not good enough to be any different. But what they don't realize is that making the effort to change makes them good enough. A person can't get there until he takes an action. ~ Some of our people have gone from here in order that they may have a change.

~ SPOTTED TAIL - SIOUX '

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

Elder's Meditation of the Day - December 30

"Always remember that the Great Mystery is good; evil can come only from ourselves!"

Grandmother of Charles Eastman. SANTEE SIOUX

The Great Mystery is love, good and principle. He is a guiding Father. He doesn't play games. He knows only how to love. Sometimes, when things go wrong, we blame Him or others. Usually, if we are honest, we can see how decisions or things done in the past put us in a position to be hurt. It comes back to us. When this happens, it is not something the Creator caused, but something we, ourselves caused. Most of our problems are of our own making. When this happens, we should correct what we've done, ask the Great Spirit for forgiveness and pray for guidance in the future.

My Creator, bless me with Your good.

'THINK on THESE THINGS'

By Joyce Sequichie Hifler Henry

David Thoreau, whose cry was "Simplify! Simplify!" went to great measures to prove to himself, and perhaps to society, that life could be lived in the most simple 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 blessings 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 though 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.