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"Conciliation is the key to survival. Peace is the goal." -- Haida Gwaii, Traditional Circle of Elders
When we make decisions or experience conflict we need to look at the greater whole. The end result we want to accomplish is peace of mind.
If we keep this goal in mind, we will, overall, live a happy and fulfilling life. Everything in the world is constantly changing so we should not resist this change.
A good question to ask ourselves is, "would I rather be right or happy?". If we would rather be happy, then it is easier to let the little things go.
If we would rather be right, we tend to look for the WIN/LOSE.
Great Spirit, today, give me the tools to seek peace of mind.
In England today there are chocolate eggs and rabbits. In France the church bells are silent as the bells of St Peter’s fly to the children, tied with ribbons and flowers. Across the world images that combine the Christian and the older pagan festivals of spring and rebirth abound, hijacked by a consumerism that somehow forgets the sacredness of both. Yet today, for once, the shops are closed.
For those who follow a pagan path this season is one of the renewal of life after the darkness of winter, a time for the rebirth of the sun, the exuberance of spring. In the fields young lambs gambol and play; birds are busy with nest building... even the kites are flying over with their beaks full… A grey and cloudy day cannot dull the blaze of green and gold that is an English spring. For those who follow the path of Nature, confirmation of their belief is all around. You can feel it in the woods and on the hills, in field and valley… everything is bursting into life.
For those who follow the Christ, this is the holiest season, the time when Jesus, crucified and entombed, rose again. It is on this event that the Christian faith is based. That in purely literal and physical terms this is not possible makes it a miracle, something beyond the understanding of logic and science, and it is this that forms the foundation of faith; that knowing of the soul that goes beyond reason. There is no confirmation in the world around us, there is no objective proof… no comfortable reassurance. You simply accept the teachings of the Church or you do not… or you feel Truth in your heart and that is enough, regardless of logic, teaching or dogma.
Faith... not religion… is a very personal thing, an intimate thing, and none among us has the right to judge the faith of another, to discount or degrade it, to ridicule or dismiss. It sings to heart and soul. It is the personal relationship between the innermost being and the Highest, however we choose or need to perceive It. There is a purity in true faith that shines and radiates, no matter what religion, path or denomination shapes the outer form. Faith is always a thing of the Inner world, regardless of the way it manifests in the outer realm in which we live.
There are many who were raised within a nominally Christian society who accept without question in childhood when the impossible is perfectly feasible and it is no more challenging to believe in Resurrection than it is to believe in fairies or dragons. There is comfort in a faith that shows a way to live that is based on love and which has love at its ultimate blessing. There is comfort too in the knowledge that there is no loss of self after death… only believe and follow the tenets of that faith and you will be with the Father in Heaven.
There are those too who come to their faith through life, growing into it gently or with the lightning flash of personal revelation, finding within it the answers to the questions of the soul.
Yet there are many who do not find faith in that way, who look at the anomalies of the biblical stories and find them impossible to reconcile. They question and find no answers within the Church and yet feel that within the heart of the story there is something. Perhaps they begin to read the stories with a detached discernment that allows them to question the disparity between the political ramifications of a powerful Church that has constructed a body of teaching to suit its needs over the past two thousand years. Perhaps they see the stories as a symbolic journey of the soul… an initiatory experience echoing even older tales. Perhaps they look beyond the letter of the words to the spirit of them.
A blind acceptance seldom addresses the questions of the heart. Many are raised within a religion and yet pay only lip service to its outer form, feeling a gnawing void where the kernel of faith should reside. There are many too who, having questioned and found the literal tales wanting, have searched behind them and come by unorthodox routes to a deep faith. The exoteric Church may not suffice, but there is a Light behind it, behind all religions, that draws the seeker, often by strange pathways towards a single centre of Truth that is greater than the sum of the pathways we walk.
In the Christian story of Easter it is the Son of Man who is crucified, sacrificing himself for our redemption. Yet it is the Christ who rises, different, unknown to those closest to Him, a Mystery. For those who find faith that Mystery may take many forms and names, or none, remaining Nameless and formless as the One. I wonder if anyone can redeem another, or simply show the way for the sacrifice of Self to something greater and deeper than we now know. Perhaps in walking that path we can come to understanding, to a knowing of the heart that surpasses knowledge and transcends doubt; to a place that knows neither fact nor fiction… to the awakening touch of the inner Christ that is the Light within.
"My grandfather is the fire My grandmother is the wind The Earth is my mother The Great Spirit is my father The World stopped at my birth and laid itself at my feet And I shall swallow the Earth whole when I die and the Earth and I will be one Hail The Great Spirit, my father without him no one could exist because there would be no will to live Hail The Earth, my mother without which no food could be grown and so cause the will to live to starve. Hail the wind, my grandmother for she brings loving, life giving rain nourishing us as she nourishes our crops. Hail the fire, my grandfather for the light, the warmth, the comfort he brings without which we be animals, not men.
On This Day (4/19/1884): In 1884 an amendment to the Indian Act in Canada was passed making the potlatch illegal. Largely passed at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized" values.
Section 3 of the Act read, "Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or the Indian dance known as the "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not more than six nor less than two months in any goal or other place of confinement; and, any Indian or other person who encourages, either directly or indirectly, an Indian or Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same, or who shall assist in the celebration of same is guilty of a like offence, and shall be liable to the same punishment."
Manitoba's First Nations Chiefs are renewing calls for a national inquiry into the disappearance and murders of an estimated 3000 aboriginal women.
On Wednesday, some three-hundred people participating in a rally leading from The Forks to Portage & Main in support of the issue.
“We need an inquiry," said AMC Grand Chief Derek Nepinak.
"We need to talk about the issues. We need to raise the profile provincially, nationally, and internationally and what's happening here."
Some were marching for family while others just see a problem.
"I am walking for all of the murdered and missing women in Canada," said one female marcher.
It was brought to light last month after Shawn Lamb, 52, was arrested and charged in connection with the deaths of three missing aboriginal women, including Tanya Nepinak, 31. Vernon Mann was Tanya Nepinak's partner for nine years and marched alongside her family members.
"It's really brought everything out to light. It's really important to keep going with it so maybe other families don't have to deal with this type of tragedy," said Mann.
Lamb's arrest sparked initial calls for an inquiry, but officials have since rejected the call.
"I don't want to base a national inquiry on any particular case," said Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety.
Supporters believe an inquiry should at least be attempted in light of the fact a public inquiry is being launched into the shopping mall collapse in Elliot Lake, Ontario on June 23 where two people died versus the suspected 600 missing and murdered women country-wide.
"It's always about money," said Francine Meeches, Swan Lake First Nation Chief.
"Everything that we deal with is always about money. Why does money have to be such an issue when there's lives at stake here?"
APTN National News OTTAWA–The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld a Federal Court decision that found the Metis have the same rights as Status Indians under the Canadian Constitution.
The appeal court, however, did not include non-status Indians in the decision, arguing it was a separate issue that needed to be dealt with on a case by case basis.
The appeal court’s decision in the Daniels case, if it stands, means Ottawa now has a fiduciary responsibility to the Metis who can now access programs and services previously exclusively offered to status First Nations people and Inuit. At the core, the case hinged on whether Ottawa or the provinces had jurisdiction over the Metis and non-status Indians.
“The Court declares that the Metis are included as ‘Indians’ within the meaning of section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867,” said the decision written by Justice Eleanor Dawson and concurred with by Justice Marc Noel and Justice Johanne Trudel.
Clement Chartier, president of the Metis National Council, said he was “very pleased” with the ruling.
“It is a significant victory and it is going to make it easier for us as we continue dealing with the federal government and continue our relationship building with the federal government,” said Chartier.
There are about 350,000 Metis in Canada.
Ottawa can still try to challenge the decision with the Supreme Court of Canada.
“We are reviewing all elements of (Thursday’s) decision to determine next steps,” said Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt’s office in a statement.
Valcourt’s office said it was “pleased” non-status Indian issue severed from the ruling on the Metis.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which represents Metis, non-status and off-reserve status people, said it was studying whether to appeal ruling to seek clarity on the non-status component.
“It’s a new ear of collaboration,” said CAP National Chief Betty Ann Lavallee.
Labrador’s NunatuKavut Community Council said it was “thrilled” with the decision.
“This is a major step towards the recognition and equality that we deserve,” said NCC President Todd Russell. “The Daniels decision should help change that, Government needs to bite the bullet and move forward to negotiations with us, rather than continue to ignore our rights and their obligations.”
The NCC, formerly the Labrador Metis Nation, has been trying to negotiate a land claim with Ottawa for 23 years.
The Daniels case was started in 1999 by Harry Daniels, a Metis leader who was president of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, and Leah Gardner, a non-status Indian woman from northwestern Ontario. After Daniels died in 2004, his son Gabriel Daniels was added to the case along with Terry Joudrey, a non-status Mi’kmaq from Nova Scotia.
Ottawa has long held the position that it was only responsible for status Indians registered under the Indian Act and the Inuit. The Inuit had to to also fight for that recognition in court and won it in 1939.
The appeal court, however, excluded non-status Indians from its ruling.
“The reasons for excluding people from Indian status are complex, far-ranging and often unrelated to one another,” the appeal court said. “To determine the limits of the word ‘Indian’ as it pertains to non-status Indians under the division of powers it is necessary to analyze the reason each class of individual was excluded from the Indian Act on a case-by-case basis.”
“If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” –William Blake
Most of us are familiar with the prototypical clowns: red-nosed clowns, court jesters, and Tarot fools. But sacred clowns take clowning to a whole other level. The Ne’wekwe “mud-eaters” were the Zuni equivalent of a sacred clown. The Cherokee had sacred clowns known as Boogers who performed “Booger dances” around a community fire.
Stanley Good Voice Elk, Lakota Heyoka
In Tibetan Buddhism it’s referred to as Crazy Wisdom, which the Guru adopts in order to shock their students out of fixed cultural and psychological patterns. But perhaps the most popular type of sacred clown is the Lakota equivalent of Heyoka, a contrary thunder shaman who taught through backwards humor.
Usurping the Sacred with the Power of Humor
Almost all types of sacred clowns combinetrickster spirit with shamanic wisdom to create a kind of sacred tomfoolery that keeps the zeitgeist in check. Their methods are unconventional and typically antithetical to the status quo, but extremely effective. They indirectly re-enforce societal customs by directly enforcing their own powerful sense of humor into the social dynamic. They show by bad example how not to behave.
The main function of a sacred clown is to deflate the ego of power by reminding those in power of their own fallibility, while also reminding those who are not in power that power has the potential to corrupt if not balanced with other forces, namely with humor. But sacred clowns don’t out-rightly derive things. They’re not comedians, per se, though they can be. They are more like tricksters, poking holes in things that people take too seriously.
Through acts of satire and showy displays of blasphemy, sacred clowns create a cultural dissonance born from their Crazy Wisdom, from which anxiety is free to collapse on itself into laughter. Sacred seriousness becomes sacred anxiety which then becomes sacred laughter. But without the courageous satire of the sacred clown, there would only ever be the overly-serious, prescribed state of cultural conditioning.
Lest we write our lives off to such stagnated states, we must become something that has the power to perpetually overcome itself. The sacred clown has this power. Christ was a sacred clown, mocking the orthodoxy. Buddha was a sacred clown, mocking ego attachment. Even Gandhi was a sacred clown, mocking money and power.
Like Thomas Merton wrote, “In a world of tension and breakdown, it is necessary for there to be those who seek to integrate their inner lives not by avoiding anguish and running away from problems, but by facing them in their naked reality and in their ordinariness.” Sacred clowns are the epitome of such integration.
Modern-day Sacred Clown
Heyokas, for example, remind their people thatWakan tanka, the great mystery, is beyond good and evil; that its primordial nature doesn’t correspond to human platitudes of right and wrong. Heyokas act as mirrors, reflecting the mysterious dualities of the cosmos back onto their people. They walk the Red Road, following in the bloody footprints left behind by their Heyoka fore-brothers.
They go forward, to that place where emptiness is full, and fullness empty. “As a representative of Thunderbird and Trickster,” writes Steve Mizrach, “the heyoka reminds his people that the primordial energy of nature is beyond good and evil. It doesn’t correspond to human categories of right and wrong. It doesn’t always follow our preconceptions of what is expected and proper. It doesn’t really care about our human woes and concerns. Like electricity, it can be deadly dangerous, or harnessed for great uses. If we’re too narrow or parochial in trying to understand it, it will zap us in the middle of the night.”
Sacred clowns are adept at uniting joy with pain, acting on the higher and more inscrutable imperatives of the Great Mystery. They tend to govern transition, introduce paradox, blur boundaries, and mix the sacred with the profane. They are called upon to reestablish the bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. They dare to ask the questions that nobody wants answers to.
They are the uncontrollable avatars of the Trickster archetype, constant reminders of the contingency and arbitrariness of the social order, poking holes in anything taken too seriously, especially anything assuming the guise of power. They are a conduit to forces that defy comprehension, and by their absurd, backwards behavior, they are merely showing the ironic, mysterious dualities that exist within the universe itself.
Thunder Shaman
Sacred clowns understand that humans fail, and failing means that sometimes we need to change. They remind us that the goal is not to stick to the same old path, but to embrace the vicissitudes of life and to discover new paths and the courage it takes to adapt and overcome. Taking the universe into deep consideration, letting it be, and then letting it go, is far superior to clinging to a “belief” and becoming stuck in a particular view. Sacred clowns realize that the highest wisdom lies in this type of counter-intuitive detachment, in accepting that nothing remains the same, and then being proactive about what it means to change.
Most importantly, they teach us that there is no such thing as an enlightened master. We’re all spiritually dumb. The closest we can ever get to being “enlightened” is simply to understand that we are naïve to it, and then to laugh about it together as a community. Sacred clowns have the ability to plant this seed of sacred humor. They are constantly in the throes of metanoia, disturbing the undisturbed, comforting the uncomfortable and freeing the unfree. They remind us, as Rumi did, that “the ego is merely a veil between humans and God.”
Historic Breaking News from The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) – Monday, March 31, 2014
Massive Deaths of Aboriginal Children in Canada is officially admitted, as Genocide Verdict and Kevin Annett’s work are finally vindicated – “Canada, the Crown and the Vatican stand guilty as charged as disestablished criminal bodies” – International Common Law Court of Justice, Brussels
Vancouver, Canada: Seventeen years after Rev. Kevin Annett publicly disclosed evidence that over 50,000 children died in Canada’s church-run “Indian residential schools”, Canadian governments have finally confirmed this genocidal mortality rate after releasing hitherto-concealed death records from the schools.
But previously “segregated” statistics of the deaths of residential school children made public last Friday by different provinces indicate that “tens of thousands” of these children died in the facilities, which were operated primarily by the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada.
In British Columbia alone, government records indicate that nearly 5,000 children between the ages of four and nineteen died in the residential schools until 1956, although the schools continued in operation until 1996, putting the total death figure even higher.
Rev. Annett’s research established that the high death rate of over 40% of the students was the result of deliberately infecting them with tuberculosis and denying the sick treatment.
“This news officially confirms what our Court established in its lawful verdict of February 25, 2013” stated George Dufort of the International Common Law Court of Justice in Brussels today.
“Canada and its churches, the British Crown and the Vatican stand guilty as charged as disestablished criminal bodies and can no longer have any lawful or legitimate constitutional authority if the rule of law is to be followed”.
This week’s official admission of massive deaths in the Indian residential schools comes on the heels of shocking new evidence showing that a Vatican and Church of England child sacrifice cult known as the Ninth Circle operated at the same schools for over a century, including at the Mohawk residential school in Brantford, Ontario.
Kevin Annett was reached at his home in Nanaimo, British Columbia today and provided the enclosed you tube commentary on the remarkable news.
“I always knew their lies would fall apart, and persistence would pay off” remarked Kevin. “But I’m thinking now of all my friends who died after struggling to see this day come about, like Bingo Dawson, Billie Combes, Ricky Lavallee and Harry Wilson – some of the eyewitnesses to the Canadian Holocaust who went public at great personal risk.
This is their victory, as it belongs to all the missing children. But it will only mean something if Canadians act on this final proof of Genocide by church and state to enforce the verdict and arrest warrants of the Common Law court.
Native American Indian Traditional Code of Ethics
Each morning upon rising, and each evening before sleeping, give thanks for the life within you and for all life, for the good things the Creator has given you and for the opportunity to grow a little more each day. Consider your thoughts and actions of the past day and seek for the courage and strength to be a better person. Seek for the things that will benefit others (everyone). Respect. Respect means “To feel or show honor or esteem for someone or something; to consider the well being of, or to treat someone or something with deference or courtesy”. Showing respect is a basic law of life. Treat every person from the tiniest child to the oldest elder with respect at all times. Special respect should be given to Elders, Parents, Teachers, and Community Leaders. No person should be made to feel “put down” by you; avoid hurting other hearts as you would avoid a deadly poison. Touch nothing that belongs to someone else (especially Sacred Objects) without permission, or an understanding between you. Respect the privacy of every person, never intrude on a person’s quiet moment or personal space. Never walk between people that are conversing. Never interrupt people who are conversing. Speak in a soft voice, especially when you are in the presence of Elders, strangers or others to whom special respect is due. Do not speak unless invited to do so at gatherings where Elders are present (except to ask what is expected of you, should you be in doubt). Never speak about others in a negative way, whether they are present or not. Treat the earth and all of her aspects as your mother. Show deep respect for the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world. Do nothing to pollute our Mother, rise up with wisdom to defend her. Show deep respect for the beliefs and religion of others. Listen with courtesy to what others say, even if you feel that what they are saying is worthless. Listen with your heart. Respect the wisdom of the people in council. Once you give an idea to a council meeting it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the people. Respect demands that you listen intently to the ideas of others in council and that you do not insist that your idea prevail. Indeed you should freely support the ideas of others if they are true and good, even if those ideas ideas are quite different from the ones you have contributed. The clash of ideas brings forth the Spark of Truth. Once a council has decided something in unity, respect demands that no one speak secretly against what has been decided. If the council has made an error, that error will become apparent to everyone in its own time. Be truthful at all times, and under all conditions. Always treat your guests with honor and consideration. Give of your best food, your best blankets, the best part of your house, and your best service to your guests. The hurt of one is the hurt of all, the honor of one is the honor of all. Receive strangers and outsiders with a loving heart and as members of the human family. All the races and tribes in the world are like the different colored flowers of one meadow. All are beautiful. As children of the Creator they must all be respected. To serve others, to be of some use to family, community, nation, and the world is one of the main purposes for which human beings have been created. Do not fill yourself with your own affairs and forget your most important talks. True happiness comes only to those who dedicate their lives to the service of others. Observe moderation and balance in all things. Know those things that lead to your well-being, and those things that lead to your destruction. Listen to and follow the guidance given to your heart. Expect guidance to come in many forms; in prayer, in dreams, in times of quiet solitude, and in the words and deeds of wise Elders and friends.
