Initiating the Circle of Song and Singing the Stories Alive

  GISHGET

As the needle teeth of cold arrives, growth-inducing and supportive fires of the previous seasons of harvest, summer and spring are concentrated, condensed and drawn deeper into the seed-making union places. The Mother Earth cools her richness and invites all that live upon and within her body to burrow inward, toward our own inner fires and closer to her inner fires, stoking them with different fuels, fuels that woo the Grandfather Sky-Sun and Grandmother Fire Spirits with resonant hymns and melodious chants, speaking of our peaceful and balanced intention that we might be viewed favorably and continue to warrant their life-giving ways.

Breath is the first, most enduring and then the final gift that greets us when we elect to emerge out of Spirit and to take physical form as a two-legged human being in the beautiful and challenging world of duality. It is by the ways of breath that we are breathed alive, receive information and fuse into a UNIFIED person of mind, heart, body and Spirit...a sacred being. This sacred being we recognize ourselves to be is also the sacred that we recognize or fail to recognize in all living beings as a direct function of personal degrees of balance and harmony. The multifaceted and mutable faces of the natural world can be difficult to interpret, as difficult to accurately and positively interpret at times, as our own or others faces or truths. The Medicine Wheel has come down through time as a Way by which we might view these faces or truths within the flexible and all accepting Circle of Life ... another Web of Life.

A Circle gathering is good anytime, whether it is only by ourselves or with others, because a circle is always strength and balance, and all living things have a place on it. It is now the White Winter Medicine Circle Time, and we are prepared, whether we feel so or not, to recognize that by these teachings we have arrived at the place where we are 'of one mind'. Does this not feel good?!?

Migwech, wewene kiche migwech
Thank you, thank you very much

Let us now enter into the talking and listening Circle-Council. Let us take up the talking stick to show our original faces and speak our truths of how we would dream, find, and anchor the good seeds of life by which to live. Let us take up the talking stick and speak with the Creator and all who would witness the praise and gratitude that lives in our minds, hearts, bodies and Spirits, all ways, all days, from this time forward and forever more. Aho!

Let us now move into this Ceremony, this Ceremony which we shall call:

FIRING THE SEEDS OF INSPIRATION FOR THE NEW YEAR CEREMONY

And so we begin by pausing to remember once again, that we are being breathed alive. We prepare our purified and renewed truths and intentions to recognize and honor those seeds which we would ask to come forward into the new year with us and by our intention 'know and breathe life' into those chosen seeds.

These seeds may be named and their names spoken, some will not ... and some, perhaps most, will be unknown to us at the present time. Some will sprout, some will not. It is largely out of our hands now as we pass our precious, blessed and breathed seeds over to their own destinies and watch them manifest upon and within the Sacred Medicine Wheel of Life.

Circle of Life
The Circle of Life, as the water flows, the grass grows, and the winds blow: there is beauty above, beauty below, beauty all around.

Deer stands at the East, direction of illumination and mental clarity -- Spring.

Mouse stands at the South, direction of innocence and new life -- Summer.

Bear stands at the West, direction of introspection and heart-felt gratitude -- Fall.

Buffalo stands at the North, direction of wisdom and purity -- Winter.

-- Minisa Crumbo, from 'Spirit Talk'