January 20 Daily Feast, Elder's Meditation, THINK on THESE THING

January 20 - Daily Feast

When we rely on other people for what we need to know, we are vulnerable to their mistakes. What others give us may be sincere and it may be genuine, but all information is a matter of how we read it. What one person says with one meaning may reach the ear of another with a different understanding. Wisdom comes from the same source regardless of where we hear it, but it is better to take words of wisdom and work them through our own minds for direction and understanding. When someone else has answers that seem to apply to our questions, we can be open and teachable, but not gullible. It stands to reason if we tune our ears to answers within ourselves, we won't have to lean on outer sources for information.

~ The British father.....promised aid and assistance.... He is at peace with the Great Father in Washington.....and neither knows nor cares for your grievances... ~

KEOKUK

'A Cherokee Feast of Days', 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.