Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk': Spirit Plate

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!