Sunday, August 26, 2007

Today we will begin a two-week exploration of Native American Spirituality influenced by the Episcopal Diocese's "Peace Village" kit.

CALL TO SILENCE AND OPENING PRAYER
from Johnny Mike, Dine and Verdell Primeaux, Oglala/Yankton Sioux/Ponca

trans: "Hear Our Prayer because you gave us these prayers and songs
in a holy manner, Great Spirit, hear our humble prayers."

INVOCATION OF THE SPIRIT (read together)

Oh, our Mother the Earth; oh, our Father the Sky,
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you the gifts that you love
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
Oh, our Mother the Earth, oh, our Father the Sky!

from Herbert Joseph Spinden, trans., Songs of the Tewa, 1933.

MUSIC: "Katsitsy Tha": trans.: "Tribute to Mother Earth and Women's Contributions", performed by Joanne Shenandoah, Hadenosaunee/Iroquis

Opening Comments by Elders Gourd Woman, Hidatsa/Dakotah (Mary Louise Defender Wilson) and Eagle Heart, Ojibwe (Francis Cree)

American Indian religions are highly differentiated; therefore, they cannot be described in generalities.

Contact with European and Euro-American cultures led to change often drastically even to the point of extinction.

The surviving groups are remarkable for their ability to cope with change and cultural deprivation by adapting and borrowing from the non-Indian world making it possible for their survival. That in itself is testimony to their extraordinary character.

The Primal Foundations - Universal and Fundamental to virtually all North American Indian religious traditions past and present include these traits:

What is referred to as "religion" is not a separate aspect of what it means to be American Indian. There is no world for "religion" in any American Indian language. It is clearer or more accurate to use the term "traditions".

Language is more than a means of communication. Words carry special potency. What is spoken to named is really present - not as symbol or in duality. "Words in their sounds are born in the breath of the being from whom they proceed.". Breath is a life principal - words are sacred and must be used with care and responsibility. They are enhanced by the understanding that breath is within our Spiritual Center. Even an unspoken thought has potency and potential. Especially in ritual and ceremony. The recitation of a creation myth is actual not symbolic. It is not bound by time - referred to as "the immediacy of now" - it is a continuation of creation.

The perception of arts and crafts by American Indians are sacred. The natural materials used manifest sacred powers in accord with their particular nature and place of origin and the completed form becomes "what it is" - not in duality or separate from but an "embodiment" of its sacred nature.

Time and process is circular, cyclical, reciprocal not linear and are re-expressed in most aspects such as architectural styles and ritual and ceremony reflecting the cosmos.

There is a special quality and intensity of "Interrelationship" with their natural environment - not separate from but born of and with - A sense of place.

READINGS

A Reading from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (Marvin Meyer)

The Savior replied, "All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with each other..."

From "The Rain Song", Tohono O'Odham/Papago tradition translated from The Sacred.

"At the edge of the mountain, a cloud hangs.
And there my heart, my heart, my heart hangs with it.
At the edge of the mountain, a cloud trembles.
And there my heart, my heart, my heart trembles with it."

From Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk), Lakota/Oglala Sioux

Peace...comes within the Souls of [humankind] when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that his center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."

Music: "Wilma Mankillers Song", performed by The Mankillers, Choctaw/Towa/Paiute

Commentary on Native American Spirituality

CALL TO CONVERSATION

CLOSING MEDITATION (GOURD WOMAN AND EAGLE HEART)

CLOSING PRAYER ( read together)

Navajo Night Chant (Kenneth Lincoln, trans.)

May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.
In Beauty it is finished.

Music: "Mystic Nature" Jay Begaye and Everitt White, Dine/Navajo



Resources for today's gathering:

Beck, Peggy V., anna Lee Walters, Nia Francisco, ed., The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life (Tsaile, Arizona: The Navajo Community College Press, 1977).

Begaye, Jay and Everitt White. The Long Walk-Hweeldi. Canyon Records. 1999.

Eagle Heart and Gourd Woman. The Elders Speak. Makche Word. 1995.

Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk). Words of Power: Voices from Indian America, Ed. Norbert S. Hill, Jr. (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994).

Lincoln, Kenneth. ed. & trans. Native American Renaissance (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), 47.

Mankillers. "All Woman Northern Drum." Weaving the Strands. Red Feather Music. 1998.

Meyer, Marvin. ed. & trans. The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperCollin, 2005), 37.

Mike, Johnny and Verdell Primeaux. Walk In Beauty. Canyon Records. 1995.

Shenandoah, Joanne. "Matriarch" Weaving The Strands. Red Feather Music, 1998.

Spinden, Herbert Joseph, trans., "Songs of the Tewa, 1933". The Multi-Cultural Southwest: A Reader, Ed.A. Gabriel Melendez, M. Jane Young, Patricia Moore, Patrick Pynes (Tuscon: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2001), 23

Other sources of interest:

www.nativeres.org/index.html; www.ifapray.org/audio/NativeRes15.ram Joint Resolution to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the US Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.

October is National American Indian Heritage Month.

We ask for your thoughts/comments to continue our conversation. Thank you.