Sacred Women !! Women Pray the Water

As Mother's day twenty Thirteen moves behind us, a small group of Ojibwe American Indian women are settling in back at their homes. They walked around 1,700 miles...from the headwaters to the mouth of the Mississippi River. An extension of a continuing, ancient ceremonial relationship that tribal American Indian women have been having for thousands of generations.

It was just the few of them, a handful. They were joined along the way with other handfuls of people who wanted to participate. Small numbers, yet they walked their way along the road going South. It was an impressive prayer. It was nearly invisible to the attention of the modern world, of the media, of the internet, of strangers passing by.

Several elders, Tribal Grandmothers made this journey. At the end Grandmother offered water from the headwaters to the broken, poisoned, raped, trashed and dying Gulf of Mexico. They carried that water offering in a little bucket, all those miles. Happy Mothers Day, Sacred River.

This same weekend, women Christians in Jerusalem were arrested for their desire to pray at the so-called wailing wall. This was the first I knew that women were not allowed pray at this sacred Christian artifact. Just a handful of women were there, trying to do that. In Ohio, three young women were rescued from ten years of slavery and abuse. In Bangladesh, a young woman was pulled from the ruins of a collapsed factory, where more than one thousand people dies, after 17 days, alive and recovering.

Women all over the world look for power, look for the internal tools they need to persevere and grow in a world society that is largely hostile to all of its women. Every day the path to that sacred power is in plain sight. I was surprised that the River Walker women were not joined and supported by more women. It looks like a long lonely walk. they passed by sleeping women every day, dreaming they could find some way to change things, to be heard, to be safe.

The old Indians always told me that, my friend, whatever you need is not far away. Many of the old Indians and their children are on the move these days. They are trying to be heard. They are nearby. They know some things, they know some very powerful and interesting things. Patient in a world starving for what they would say, these Grandmothers, yet unable to find them, unable to hear them. So many people, it seems, walk right past what they are looking for, because they never look around. We all expect our salvation is somewhere distant...more often than not, it is nearby, if we could only pay more attention to what is "nearby".

Women like these have enormous healing power. They have the power to make corrections. Another woman at work is Hilary Clinton. The old white men of the GOP are terrified of her. They have already started their campaign of poison and rage against her, four years away from her possible election as the first woman United Staes President. The men who are afraid of her are the same men who measure their cash by the volume of poison pumped in and out of the Mississippi River. She is just One Woman. And the Moral Right is Terrified.

The natural laws of the Mystery Life tell us that if something is done, something will happen. So those tribal Grandmothers walking the river with their old medicines and spirits have done their part. They did something...so something will happen, if only someone is paying attention when it arrives.

Sacred Woman || Tanit and the Great Mississippi River Walk

As I write this, a small group of American Indian women from the tribal nations at the headwaters of the Mississippi River have filled a little bucket of that clean, sweet, unpolluted American Indian Water and they are walking it down to the Gulf of Mexico. A water ceremony. A really brave and interesting one. The MSM in general seems to be paying little attention to this news. I live on a Mediterranean Island and it lighted me up.

In Ojibwe culture, formal responsibility, spiritual ownership of the water, of all the water, was the offices and responsibilities of the women. For many generations, a large number of profoundly beautiful ceremonies were and are used to live in balance with the great gift of water. These ceremonies have the same spiritual, moral, legal and societal authority, logic and form as any ceremony made by the Catholic Pope, or any other high ceremony of a deep religious faith. Yes, quite equal to, in every regard.

The Mississippi River Walk. Ojibwe like to carry water around. When we travel we often bring water from our homes wit us. Where we may visit, share or have reason to be near the water of our friends, of foreign countries, of distant neighbors: the women will make a song, a little ceremony, and put some of this water down, where they are at that time. They will add a little of the water there before them. These are water prayers. It is an old, old practice and alive and well. Yet this is the first Many Big Miles, across borders, long water ceremony. The longest and best water ceremony in many generations.

It will change something. Having American Indian women being willing to take this one gives me immense pride and inspiration. I am an old Ojibwe man, I am trying to carry a very sacred bundle of ceremonial pipes around the earth, in a circle. It is slow work. It is just me and my wife doing this work, but we have had more than 100 ceremonies with a number of Italian people. We would like to raise the support and expenses to take this four directions unity bundle to Japan this year. If you are reading this, perhaps you can help. 

Yes, even a few people can change things, doing something ancient, cultivating peace and accepting responsibility. Not blowing anything up, not putting anyone down.

I came home from Vietnam in 1969 on a stretcher on a C-149 (It think it was), it was really fast. My injury was not terrible, I was fortunate…but it was enough to take me out of the war. Thank you. I was knocked down again when a bomb exploded in Boston last week. Even though I am far away, I could feel it happen. Even while so much of my attention, even some poetry, and a new painting being started, about the women walking the Mississippi. The contrast between what those American Indian women are doing and what two young “white men” in Boston were doing could not have been more strange.

And there were all the other killings, and the Texas explosion, and the certified crown jewel of the re-invented Southern Strategy of the GOP in the US Congress and Senate. And the children of Sandy Hook.

On Pantelleria Island the Italian austerity has taken away the natal services at the only little hospital. Babies cannot be born here now, to the women who have lived here for generations. They have to go weeks in advance to Sicily, far away. Their families have to loose the work and spend a lot of money. When a Pantelleria woman has a baby on Pantelleria, the whole family, dozens, sometimes scores, of people all gather at the hospital bed. This is heart breaking and budget-busting, a crises for the little culture of six thousand Pantesche Islanders. Them and their old Indian. Our women are denied the sacred right of birth on their own lands. Pantesche are not Sicilians. Trust me. They are not.

Pantelleria has an ancient woman. Her name is Tanit. One of the oldest female deity temples in the world is one this little island, for Tanit. We know where it is but the Mafia keeps stealing the money given for proper archaeological work. I ca feel her power sometimes. The power of nature is very strong here. Pantelleria is a special place of personal power and beauty for women. Strong women from all over the world come to Pantelleria.They don’t come to be seen. They come to be alone with the island, to be alone with Tanit.

My mind is going to stay with the ladies walking the water to the Gulf of Mexico. I will keep it there until they finish. Today they have passed through Memphis. I can see the pale blue and silver of the Mediterranean from my laptop. It is still, quiet. From here it looks like it is climbing into the sky.

I know the sacred women want s to take responsibility. For the words that come out from our mouths. For the choices we make. For the peace. For the water. That water is in every home, it is even inside our bones. We are people of the water.

We are following the water

We have wept this river

our heart was torn and divided

it was eaten by the wind

the sacred wind that carried us all

We have recovered our hearts

We have gone inside our dreams

We are following the water

We have healed our selves

We have made the whole earth wet

We remember who we are

Where we are going

Sacred Water

tears of the sky and tears of the stones

tears of our mothers and our grandfathers

all gone, carried into the river

We are following the river

Pantelleria. ©2013 Turtle Heart

Equinox Twenty Thirteen (Spring ) || Drum Song

©2013 Turtle Heart. Pantelleria sweat lodge in progress.

equinox drum song

eight eagles circle above my head

how did this happen

i hear someone say

only silence is the answer

this old drum

threads my heart into the earth

the mother earth

as I sing and boom, boom, boom

my soul moves 

finds the rain

feeding me, finding me

yet another root of the sacred tree

(I pass from here to there)

To the old American Indians, an equinox or solstice is considered a gateway, an opening. Alignment to nature, to its forces and quantum's, was a high art of conscious awareness. Being aware of the precise nature of the cycles of creation allowed many of them to attain an elevated consciousness which they expressed as productive, interesting and prosperous life styles. They were saying that one consequence of conscious awareness of nature is a better life.

For decades now, I have created and or participated in focused ceremonies with drums, sacred pipes, eagle feathers, ceremonial fires, and other spiritual instruments of my Ojibwe culture at these moments. After so many of them, it seems as if they have become the stepping stones that line the path of my life. I can measure my adventures, milestones, sorrows and victories by these quarterly spiritual pauses, where I seek alignment to the most fundamental shifts in the cycles of nature. It is a good thing.

I take these ceremonial moments in real time. I do not do them the day before, or the weekend after them. If I am working, I take time off from my work. If a boss was against it, I quit the boss. 

I do these ceremonies at the precise moments. These precise moments are easy, in modern times, to calculate. There are many newspapers, almanacs, science, and other sources that will tell you in advance the precise moments of a solstice or equinox. 

The spring equinox in twenty thirteen, on Pantelleria Island is pretty much at high noon. There we gather around a small fire, called a morning tobacco fire, and do the simple and ancient ceremony of placing tobacco into the fire. Tobacco was first used by North America Indians as an offering to the sacred forces of nature, in this way. It is a simple and powerful ceremony, the cornerstone of my yearly travel through this life.

I always write a poem just before each solstice or equinox ceremony. This has become my personal tradition.

As a gateway moment, there are no shortcuts. The precise moment of the equinox or solstice is an actual event, measurable and quantifiable. Doing the ceremony at any other moment is a waste of time, a pointless exercise. Yet most of the people in the world, if they honor these moments in any form at all, they do not use the precise moment. They use the paymaster clock on the wall. They do it before or after work.

As an entirely free moment provided by the creation’s natural cycles, it is interesting to me how many millions of people get it wrong and fail to pay attention at all to the point of the exercise.

Alignment is not abstract. It is a physical act, (art) in real time, on the real earth. We are spiritual beings who live in physical forms on the material earth.

The little tobacco fire at the solstice and equinox is open to every person, of every religion, lifestyle, political party, race, or social standing. To the Ojibwe, it was called “the first ceremony”. It is a moment of absolute equality that is not in conflict with any government, religion, state or office. It is compatible with all beliefs. This precious opportunity of purity and reason, this sacred idea, is the product of ancient American Indian culture. It is a very good thing. It is one of the few spiritual ceremonies in the world that is traditionally open to every person.

So, tonight (19 March), we go into the Sweat Lodge, Ohnijewin, and say goodbye to the long winter, goodbye to what might have been or could have been or should have been. We will take responsibility for our lives, for both our right and our obligation to move forward in balance. Tomorrow at the high noon and in a visible manner, we will be ready when the gateway opens and pass from here to there.

Spring Equinox Twenty Thirteen

20 March: 12:01 PM, CET, Pantelleria Island, Italy

Tiny Ghosts || Chris Wallace and the Afterlife of the Republican Party

Americans love a crash…they love crazy people doing crazy things. This is why Fox news is so popular, and this fact is often overlooked. 

The truth and being reasonable can be so boring to so many Americans, themselves leading rather boring lives. I remember when I was in high school all the “really cool” kids were jocks or rebels or trouble makers…they were not the good kids doing good work and working for the truth. Nothing has changed when we transfer American TV viewing habits over to the so-called adult world of broadcast news. Fox wins because it is filled with trouble makers, clowns, liars, and bad kids who like throwing trash around more than they like the boring truth. So, the nightly train wreck of the truth, the nightly murder of reason, is very popular. Fox News has never been “fair and balanced”, it has always been about the phony outrage and the misdirection of the truth…always. They know what really sells.

Enter tiny Little Chris Wallace…a man who daily disgraces the memory of his father while pandering to those who believe whining, whimpering and groveling are good entertainment. No one whines and cries better than little Chris Wallace. Representing America’s fascination with losers, more than in its interest in actual talent, Wallace continues to be put forward as the tiny little voice which whimpers on behalf of legendary losers like Mitt Romney,  and other heroes of the fear and loathing social set which daily insults and damages the search for reason in the United States….for no better reason than its entertainment value.

The great book, Hubris, which I highly recommend, shows us, at its conclusions, that the liars who brought us to war in Iraq were all rewarded with board positions, book publishing deals and other platinum perks which used to be reserved for our best. Wallace is a living, sterling example of how incompetence and cowardice in the face of the quest for truth is rewarded, praised and promoted. Proof that there are no consequences for being inept, for telling lies, for being hysterically and historically wrong on a daily basis. Most American understand that O’Reilly is a bully, an intimidating punk of a journalist, while Hannity is the greasy, slick heckler who never listens to what anyone is actually saying, and uses his so-called “guests” as props in his rantings for the sake of entertainment. Only Wallace, it seems, is disguised as a so-called serious journalist. He is so tiny and timid in real life, that Fox goes out of its way to showcase his timid and whimpering interviews of suspected losers of the political right. Wallace is  an engineered counterpoint to the more gangsterism styles of O’Reilly and Hannity so they can continue to hide the truth and manipulate the floundering political right. The camera angles are carefully chosen so we cannot see how diminutive Wallace really is. Of course it is not his miniature size that sets him apart, in my view, but the tiny, miniature stature of his journalistic cowardice.

It was no accident that loser Romney “chose” Wallace for his first “serious” post election interview. O’Reilly would have bullied and pointed his big finger at him, Hannity, as usual would not have listened to a single word he and his strange wife had to say, so that really only left Wallace. The Big Blonde, whatever her name is, on Fox is just a news reader, I have never seen her actually interview anyone.

I don’t actually ever watch Fox News…but there is no need to watch it, all the other news organizations quote Fox and refer to it all day and all night. A practice I find rather strange. They do this with the drug addict R. Limbaugh as well, reporting on his pain-killing-drugs induced rants on a daily basis. This all seems to underline the tragic nature of Fox News, their pronouncements and general behavior are so tragic, the regular news has to be interrupted as if to say, “OMG, this is what happened over there today”…

I put Wallace forward for this rant because, in his body language, and sometimes even in his eyes, you can see that he knows better. He occasionally lets the truth slip out, like an unexpected fart. 

His father, the late Mike Wallace was a really honest journalist, a real reporter, a man who would never have worked for Fox News. Mike Wallace was not perfect, but he was clearly a journalist of the old school who tried hard to do his job without stretching the truth or being a shill for the clear agenda of hate and fear which drives Fox News at its core. He was not a manipulator, and you never heard him whine and cry and whimper the way his disappointing son does on a daily basis. Mike Wallace believed in an honest day’s work. His son has never, it seems, even done a days work. Fox News loons read from scripts and teleprompters, they rarely, except by accident, express original thoughts. It is all an orchestrated act. 

I also put the little Chris Wallace up because maybe one day he might grow up and search for the legacy left him by his father and walk away from the catastrophic disaster to the truth represented by Fox News. But, I’m not holding my breath.

Abdication of a Pope || A Unique Historical Moment

©2013 Little Chapel on Pantelleria Island

The first American Indian presented to a Roman Catholic Pope was in chains and presented as a curiosity, like a spotted leopard or an unusual potted plant. The Borgia Pope was this man. He signed a Papal Bull that established as a historical fact that Indigenous People (worldwide) were animals, without souls. He did this under pressure from slave merchants. The Pope had previously established that “Christians with souls” could not be sold as slaves. So the church defined their non-white human relations as animals. The Borgia Pope was in fact a shareholder in the slave merchandising business, at the wholesale level.

John Ratzinger never would meet with any American Indian. The fact that he established, or canonized, a so-called “American Indian Saint”, this magician’s trick is an old favored techniques of oppressors to disguise and mask over their real and actual treatment of the relatives of the canonized.

I was relieved when John Ratzinger abdicated the so-called Throne of Saint Peter. On reflection, however, it seems an act of questionable honor. Issues of personal honor and truthfulness have been a question with John Ratzinger from day one.

Now that he is soon to be a private citizen, some would ask if he will now be arrested, or at least questioned, before the bar of justice, about his well known participation in the protection of child abusing priests who populate, in considerable, protected number, the Catholic Church.

At least he is to be commended for getting out of the way. Once again the people of this waiting world can cast forward their hearts and minds and hope for a new leader who will make a difference. It is possible, even though unlikely. If the Cardinals had any courage and imagination they would put forward an unknown, lowly priest. What would have happened to Human History had the Church elected San Francisco as the Pope of Rome?

Old Pope John Paul included some American Indian religious leaders in a few and historic inter-faith formalities at the Vatican. I participated, with a number of Catholic Priests, in New York City an inter-faith ceremony about atomic weapons. I carried out in that ceremony a very Sacred Pipe, one that was held and blessed by many elders, over many generations. The Catholic Priests did not like it one bit.

Over the hours of news video I have been watching on the abdication of John Ratzinger, and when people are asked if Ratzinger was a “good” Pope, everyone starts out by talking about John Paul. Ratzinger is being “praised” only in the most neutral and passive phrases. As a long time student of body language; I found John Ratzinger’s eyes, hands and general way of speaking to be insincere. His hands looked to like tiny claws. There was not the warm friendly nature of a wave in his use of his hands. It looked artificial. Form over content. He was also a little obsessed with the rare and valuable vestments in the Vatican closet. He pulled out the most rare and valuable of the vestments for his appearances. I thought this was an odd fetish.

The College of Cardinals in Rome has a unique opportunity, unprecedented in fact, in human history. They have the power to put forward a formidable, powerful voice for change and reform, and peace….or just appoint another mediocrity. When one looks at the character and history of millionaire Cardinals: makers of favors, and empowerment agents for dictators, merchants and criminals, the outcome is predictable. For several generations now, the world is having a great deal of difficulty in establishing effective leaders anywhere.

As a Keeper of American Indian religious ceremonies, I will offer my prayers and meditations that the Church will find us someone who will make a difference. I invite all people of every religion and faith to do the same. There has not been a better moment in a thousand years for men in power to do the world a great service.

The Hidden Obama || The Forgotten American Indian

Obama is the first United States President, in modern times, to be both a part of and embraced by the American Indian community.

He is the first United States President, in modern times, who has the power to change the world as we know it. He has the power, and a mandate, to change our relationship with Russia, China, and even the Middle East.

Yet he is damaged, limited and deeply infected with a strange timidity. Like many truly enlightened people, he suffers from an inability to take a full and conscious responsibility for his position, for his following, for the justified hopes of a waiting world

Obama has shown a disturbing preference for the corrupt and greedy financial barons, the one per cent of industrialists and corporate, financial executives that have so pillaged and endangered our world. He likes these people. He even seems to trust them….more than he trusts the old Indians who adopted him or the ordinary human beings who love him and carried him to his exalted position in human history. His strange desire to be loved by the elite militarists and corporate gangsters that have guided the war machine of the United States since World War Two is such a strange artifact. Obama has the power to cast them off, but embraces them instead.

Thousands of years ago, the wise scholars of ancient Chinese society warned the powerful and the mighty about the toxic nature of false modesty. False modesty is a condition that enables changers and leaders to prefer to insist they are just like everyone else, that they are not special. 

Over the next four years this part American Indian man could change the entire world into a truly safer and more beautiful place. Yet, the chances that he will actually pay attention and do this is very low, perhaps even impossible. Not because of his opposition. His opposition are essentially a collection of people so crazy, so stupid, and so lost inside their own bubbles and fantasies as to be powerless. Yet, like false modesty, the so-called forces of opposition are taken seriously rather than being laughed off the stage entirely. The leaders of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives are  a group of nearly unprecedented incompetence, yet they continue to define the agenda for the United States and serve as fools who continue to endanger the world itself.

We know Obama has a close relationship with the white men who are voices of the toxic United States war regime and its policies. It is sad that he has not taken one or two of the Old American Indians into his advisory circle. By surrounding himself with these consistent slaves of the military-industrial empire, to the exclusion of all other voices, practically guarantees that his potential will not be realized.

He has not looked for even a second outside of the bubble for voices to advise him. Every person around him is a slave to the status quo. There is not a single outsider close to this US President. His choices for the people he surrounds himself with are a product of his timidity, of his inability to really understand the unique position the world has put him in to bring the human race forward. His so-called patience and good manners are the consequences of being a person of color in a white-dominated society. Instead of overcoming and transcending the racists forces which cultivated these personality traits, he has strangely embraced them and accepted them as something good….instead of recognizing that these qualities were imposed upon him from the outside. Thereby he refuses to listen to the voice within and has made it all but impossible for a voice from the outside to be heard inside the bubble he has embraced by his well-intentioned timidity.

The old Indians would like to see Obama in a sacred Pipe ceremony, inside the Sweat Lodge or perhaps at a Sun Dance. These ancient ceremonies are called “Correction Ceremonies” by the old Indians. They serve humanity and community by requiring the participants to put, up front, their personal responsibility and awareness of their choices, of their personal lives. To the American Indians, these ceremonies are required of anyone in a leadership position. These ceremonies are powerful. Through these ceremonies the American Indian has survived generations of murder, genocide and destruction aimed at them from modern society. Those who embrace these ceremonies grow in service to humanity and gain personal power to keep faith with their inner vision amidst the noise and self serving interests of those who believe they are in power. They repair timidity and false humility and demand personal accountability to our responsibility to the seven generations.

These services are available to this United States President. Yet, the American Indian, even the part that is inside this US President, remain at the end of every line, at the bottom of every list and forgotten in every appointment.

If the American Indian inside this president would actually wake up and do something, the whole world would change. Obama should have waited for his chance. Really. Mrs. Clinton should be and have been our US President. Obama proves every day his promise, but also proves he was not yet ready to be the man the Mystery Life was building to help our world. But it is never to late to wake up. Perhaps the internal rot and explosion taking place in the GOP will help him, and us, yet realize his potential.

Zero Dark Thirty || No Apologies

1000 BCE Islamic Sculpture

George Bush and Dick Cheney established a dedicated program of torture of suspected 9-11 terrorists. The torture part of the film Zero Dark 30 calls out this policy and practice. It was very active as the first phase of the hunt for the Bin Laden leadership, and in that respect it seems inaccurate…..(they DID use torture to find bin laden, even though the final piece of information came from elsewhere, seems the point, and they used a lot of it. They were showing that torture was used to look for him, to find him). The characters introduced in the torture scene opening included a principle character who was there every day until he job was finished. Pay attention. 

The film was about a process, the process: It was the process of finding OSL that is described.  I did not see the film say any one point was emphasized over another….including conflicts, dead ends, mistakes and the endurance of the central team in their efforts day after day to find OSL.

That it was a woman in particular, and several women otherwise who were present on the first and last day of of the hunt for OBL, is noteworthy. It is impressive.

Bush and Cheney missed OBL several times through just being stupid and incompetent…and just plain not ready.

Afghanistan is the looming shadow where all these sins come and go, arise and depart. No one in thousands of years have been able to become the friends of the old men who rule Afghanistan, the rapid and putrid old Islamist chiefs of that country. Their religion is their rage and rejection of reason, progress, change or equality for their women.

In particular their disrespect for their women, for all women.

There may be a woman’s story embedded in this war event Hollywood movie. I liked it, recommend it.

As a Vietnam veteran, I was impressed with the soldier gear. Their nice vests and other equipment. When I was a soldier in the bamboo forests of Vietnam, I just had a rifle and the cotton clothes on my back, and a metal helmet. They gave us clothes and a gun and that was it. 

The whole affair brings up so many issues. As citizens were are so poorly informed. The political right knows how to keep up fevered conversations on meaningless partisan tax and spend issues while the real deeds of our soldiers and their managers is largely invisible these days…and often executed by machines from desks in the American desert.

I recently read “The Generals”. You should read this book. There is even an ebook version. And “Drift” by Rachael Maddow.

Zero Dark 30 was also the artistic work of a woman director…a woman very interested in what the United States is doing in the Middle East. I hope she keeps it up.