June 4 Daily Feast, Elder's Meditation, THINK on THESE THING

June 4 - Daily Feast

What is so strange about using our words to build? Doesn't it make more sense to build something than to tear down? Who is closer to us than ourselves - other than Above-the-Sky, Galun-lati? We spend most of our time listening to our own words - words that go into our ears to build or tear us down. Sometimes they whisper in our silent talk, sometimes we say them and they affect us deep in our hearts. Confidence may come because of what someone else told us, but it is maintained by what we tell ourselves. We boot it every time we say we can do what we once thought impossible. We lose it by confirming what fear told us is true. Talking can change our circumstances when we change the words.

~ Tecumseh said to Big Warrior, "I will stamp my foot on the ground and shake down all your lodges." (An earthquake struck and tumbled the village.) ~

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

Elder's Meditation of the Day June 4

"Wakan Tanka never stops creating."

Archie Fire Lame Deer, LAKOTA

The Medicine Wheel teaches about change. It says that which is created will fall apart; that which is loose, will be used to create new. In other words, everything on Earth is participating in a constant change that is being directed by an order of laws and principles which were originated by the Great Spirit. We humans are equipped with natural change abilities. We have the ability to vision; we can use imagination and imagery; we can change belief, attitude, habits and expectations. We need to know ourselves and we need to know how we work inside to enable us to change naturally.

Great Spirit, teach me to change in harmony.

'THINK on THESE THINGS'
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Irritation, they say, is something gentle folk should never know. Always passive, they go along the way smiling, no matter what the cost to feelings. But have you ever tried to smile when all the street lights are red and someone honked loudly when you failed to move quickly enough.

Have you heard a politician slur the name of your candidate....and had a promise broken without so much as a faint explanation. Or perhaps the long explanation on how to do something you've done for years....and suddenly you want to make two lists of people you like and people you don't like!

And maybe you've answered the telephone and heard them hang up simply because your voice was not the right voice....Or had them stand back empty handed while you with your packages opened the door for them?

Well, it's no easy matter to be gentle folk and the mildest can get angry all over again by just thinking of an injustice. Perhaps it is trifling to let such little things irritate. But the best of us feel the small things that we never quite get over. We forgive and forget except to think about it occasionally, and then we must consider the words of Seneca, "Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us then the injury that provokes it."

We live in a continual round of adjustments. It is usually an admirable thing to be able to make adjustments easily. Not many can. And, yet, it makes us wonder at times if those who can so freely change and moved without emotions have ever felt very deeply.

We tend to cling to familiar things and familiar customs. There is a great security in traveling a way we know by heart. The roughest road can usually be traveled without incident when we know every turn and bump.

It had been said by those who do scientific research that it takes at least three weeks to adjust to changes. But three months would do it more justice. And it must be done by abandonment, by setting aside for a period of time all things like the old way. Many times it is done not for ourselves alone, for it is foolish to believe a change involves only ourselves.

In our very complex way of life there is no situation to affect only one person. And often the most wonderful thing we can do for someone else is to find our own balance by making adjustments quickly, even in the middle of chaos.

Donadagahv’I

Tawodi Unega
( White Hawk )

I will be going by my new Cherokee Name From the Bird Clan
By my Udo ( Brother ) Mashu: Tawodi Unega ( White Hawk )

This is going to be My true and traditional name. It will not be official, however, until I can have the ceremony for it.

May The Creator walk with you.