January 20, 2016 Daily Feast Of Wisdom (Tsugitsvnvda Danalisdayvhvsgv Agadohvsdi ) (ᏧᎩᏨᏅᏓ ᏓᎾᎵᏍᏓᏴᎲᏍᎬ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ)

2016

January
Dunolvatni
ᏚᏃᎸᎠtᏂ

Wednesday
Tsoineiga
ᏦᎢᏁᎢᎦ

January 20 - Daily Feast
Volume II

The wounded frequently want to hurt others. Meanness is not always involved but an unconscious bitterness that wants to control. The worst wounds are not always physical. Some who have suffered psychological wounds are bent on full payment whether or not it is due. The pity of it is, the wounded is the only one that cannot escape. Pain and unforgiveness are replayed day after day - as though sadness is an honorable reason never to heal. Whole lifetimes are given to demanding respect and veneration - for no other reason than life has dealt them a wound, a wound that would heal if there were a little love.

~ A man ought to desire that which is genuine instead of that which is artificial. ~

OKUTE - TETON SIOUX, 1911

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

Elder's Meditation of the Day - January 20

"The most important thing now is to reveal the inner temple of the soul with right thinking and right activity."

Willaru Huayta, QUECHUA NATION, PERU

The key to growing a strong tree is to have a good system of roots and to feed the roots with good medicine. If we put poison in the root system, it will affect the tree, and it will become obvious to the rest of the forest what is being fed to the roots. This is also true of the human being. We need to feed our roots with right thinking. If our thinking is right, it will become obvious to the rest of the people. We don't need to tell people about ourselves with our mouth because our actions always tell them.

Great Spirit, direct my thinking today. Feed my roots

'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 illness, 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 they heavy and weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened"....because we've been forgiven.