Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

The Spirit plate makes out recognition and gratitude visible to the beings who are making a gift of their seed history, and when properly addressed they can become actively involved in an ongoing life path through other agents, namely ourselves. Their seed histories, with cultural family trees grounded in the natural world that make contributions of inestimable value and tensile strength to the DNA of any bonding entity, are at least as hugely long and venerable as ours.

Most of these connections and contributions are beyond our ken, but heartfelt gestures of gratitude and respect for these living things are ours to express through remembering our connections to the best of our abilities—where and when they lived and grew, who harvested them, how they were handled and for what purpose and by whom. The questions are always, what do we have to do that these things will live?

The Spirit plate is prepared by selecting very small and representative pieces of each feast food on the table ... mindfully collected with the left, offering hand, taken outside, and offered with a prayer of recognition and gratitude ... I like to raise the plate and turn it to the seven directions, lastly approaching the Mother Earth four times before lowering the plate to the earth ... Shewen dagzewin! A blessing is visited upon us this day! 

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

 
The animals often associated with [the West direction] are the bear and the deer. However many people find that personal affinities with each of the directions may reveal themselves differently in time … Personal colors and animals may be added alongside the universal [Medicine Wheel] motifs, as contacts, experience, familiarity, and intuition accrues with the seasons … [West] is a direction of deep return and recognition. The west receives us in our mysterious entirety … links the physical plane—west, with the mental plane—east … With the arrival of autumn we reach a culmination of medicines and seasons. Our harvests, the time of gathering and picking is among the most mysterious, gathering these secretive and familial beings, the beings of seed. We can join our essences with theirs—our dualities, singularities, multiplicities, and universalities, unique and connected upon all directions of the Medicine Wheel, but especially the direction of the west in the autumn, twilight of the year. 

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

The plant people go a long way toward offering and providing us, the two-leggeds and others, with the physical materials we need to live life ‘in a good way’. Plant fiber provides assorted fibers for the weaving of clothing, nets, mats, basketry, footwear, hammocks, housing … plant people share their bodies that our own might live, and their medicines by which we may maintain, heal, and restore health and balance. 

The green beings hold all wisdom and knowledge. Mother Earth and all beings that live upon and within her body have their own unique medicine ways and it is of these ways that we seek to learn the languages, uses, and songs. Our Mother is a sentient being with an evolutionary path of her own, and when sufficiently sensitized it is possible for us to feel her heartbeat through the soles of our feet and entire being.

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

The autumn harvests of the just completed growing season are the final preparations for this winter, and are often prized and stored against drought, famine, or lack, for many years to come. Prayers, intention, labor, and growth-supporting warmth and moisture have produced the fruit, nut, and vegetable … green that feeds all beings, beings such as ourselves, the four-legged, those that swim, fly, slither, and crawl that eat more than water, minerals, air, and light, as do the seed beings. Most of these plant beings also produce valuable medicine seeds, roots, leaves, sap, milk, and stems. The abundantly produced, gathered, and stored skebyak, the green beings, and their seeds will feed, clothe, and house many … The genetic imprint of each seed nourishes our bodies and contributes intelligence from the natural world, the elemental directions and colors, the physical cycles of other living things – composted materials of all kinds, electric solar emanations, the life carrying vibrations of the water beings, fire charges from the fire beings, manifold Spirit breaths carried by the ethers, winds, and air beings, and minerals released by the rock beings.