The Gratitude Time of the Early Harvests

THE GRATITUDE TIME OF THE EARLY HARVESTS

Rabbit Brush' Golden Flowers Time
By the natural calendar, autumn arrives now, in the southwest, with chokecherry picking, making chicos (horno roasted sweet corn), roasting and drying of red and green chiles, mud plastering of adobe buildings and restoring trips into the mountains. The long pinion fires which will not go out until spring, have not yet been lit. The short fire cook and smoke but are not yet needed for heat.

My cousin Bud Jeffries receives his Indian name: 

Washedo, Bright Shining Face of Evening Light.

A true harvest Son name.

Staking or marking with string, the medicinal roots, barks and berries which will be gathered when the green plant tops die back with the first frosts and before the snow falls hiding where you thought the plant lived. Beginning to make the house, barn, fence, field and ditch repairs, taking care to think of us all; the songs, dances and prayers that life might go on 'in a good way'; the waters; the four-leggeds; those that swim, crawl, fly and move very slowly; the homes; the stored seeds of seven years; the Spirits of Place;  the ancestors and those yet to come, and of us, the two-leggeds.

These things and more take up their place in our new songs. We recount the days.

Crepe Myrtle's Bloom in the Great Heat
Regardless of climate, August bounty and harvests begin with remember once again, that picking and gathering 'in a good way' is made up of noticing and remembering SO many things. Traditional things like picking and storing, pickling and  freezing, drying and bundling abundant fragrant herbs, sweet fruits, uncountable vegetables, red and yellow fleshed melons; blue, white, yellow and red corn..some with white eagles in flight; greens and beans; bushels of tomatos...all things and beings that our ancestors and relatives brought forward...all kinds and sorts of bounty from the cultivated and wild garden coming forward to meet our song..and to participate in their/our interactive winter give-away ceremonies of meals, teas and medicines, songs and offerings..'good medicine', food and nourishment to us, the two-leggeds and all other living things.

These things and more take up their place in our new songs. We remember the ways.

From the Northern Alder Thickets
Walking the Wild Smoked Salmon of the Pacific Northwest back from the spring catch for the winter sustenance and enjoyment of us, the sacred two-leggeds from the sacred ones who swim..From harvesting  the cranberry bogs and wild rice fields, from braving the thorny wild Florida sour orange, picking tiny, dry astringent wild plums; to the myriad of undocumented plant, leaf, fruit; the rock bottom stream, the 'eye of the Mother Earth' spring and her issue, the thin mossy rivulet; the moist clay floored cave; the found hair and dry grass woven nest, the nut and mushroom littered forest floors; the natural places..raucous with sound and movement..stilling at our approach until we slow and allow our Indigeneous and unique song to to tell our  story and to restore confidence to the native dwellers.

These things and more take up their place in our new songs. By these things we live.

Autumn: The Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Division Takes Final Shape and Form

Autumn: The Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Division Takes Final Shape and Form

First there was Spirit.

Then Spirit organized into conceptual, linear and physical duality.

Duality found a home and expression upon and within another system.

Opening consciousness from one season into another.

The Medicine Wheel is an independent but evolutionarily related, secondary, four quarter, cellular division of linear duality, possessing a center and concentric circle-ringed divisions ... an eighth fold division exists. It is present in Spirit, silent, unseen and unspoken. Cellular division continues  until it must fold back into the linear, initiating the differentiation of species and subsequent specific development.

These interwoven lines, circles and dots are the stuff and substance of creative material, crackling and moving in the fires, waters, airs and ethers with variable lights, sounds and electricity. They are the present and available primal building blocks of intention, generating wormholes of vibrant and positive awareness and consciousness track, demonstrating seen and now, unseen evolutionary patterns and possibilities, without cease.

EARLY AUTUMN

The first 21 days of autumn can bear the mark of instability as have the initial (initiation) 21 days of each previous season. Harvests of medicine and introspection bring happiness, a sense of accomplishment and deep reflection upon that which been wrought in the previous three seasons, recognitions of that which is certainly coming forward and revealing the fullness' of itself. The past no longer is and the new is not yet.

Early Autumn, a time to pause, reflect, to BE in rest ... before the foot turns onto acquaintance with the West-East hard road of life.

The Autumn Harvest and the Fall Equinox

The Apricot Tree of Life

The Autumn Harvest and the Fall Equinox

The autumn harvest has a similar signature to all other completion and fulfillment moments but is also uniquely different owing to its deep roots in the fundament of Creation. For this reason it will always be counted as one of the original templates by which to gauge and measure natural progress of any kind. It mounts and takes it's place as a real and conceptual template alongside the other seasons of winter, spring and summer as a massive barometer and register that exceeds full comprehension. Autumn is a 'crack between the worlds' of summer and winter and as such, is similar to the 'crack between the worlds' of spring, between winter and summer...the dusks and dawns of the year. The sun stands still at the time of the autumn sol-stice, it's light balanced by time and becomes the physically visible balance beam, fourth quarter, of the Medicine Wheel.

The Path of Light

The western balance beam of the 'hard road of life' that completes, closes and connects the Western direction of medicine, introspection and the physical with the Eastern direction of Inspiration, illumination and the mental. The Balanced Path of Light we walk between body and mind, the Path of the Sun as it traverses the sky and circulates in ceaseless mutual partnership and rhythm with the Earth. The path of light, the sunrises and sunsets, may be viewed as one half of our lateral earth walk, balance.

The other half of our earth walk, the noons and midnights, may then be viewed as the cross beam of harmony that connects the Southern direction of emotion, love and the heart with the Northern direction of purity, wisdom and Spirit breath.

The connection center, where the Sacred Tree Flowers is a well known and well traveled crossroad upon the paths of balance and harmony connects with the outer points on the Circle, a lunar, stellar and solar system, replication of our cosmos!

This diagram and seat of mind, heart, body and Spirit energetics is encoded in everything. To understand this is to incorporate a comprehensive tool that can unlock the unknown by shining the intelligent light beams of balance and harmony, center and unified circle in an identifying and imprinting way upon all things. This is a metaphor for the intelligent mind, loving heart, creative and all-seeing eye and adaptive body, stepping up to and inheriting a position as co-creator in active evolution...most fully 'alive in a loving world'.

The words balance and harmony have oft been heard, repeated, spoken, written, sensed, hoped and longed for. They have been thought unattainable, at a distance and then, as suddenly, the words can live and merge seamlessly with every fiber and quality of our being, blessing, encompassing and affirming the the inner framework of the Medicine Wheel and all that resides upon, within or around it. The natural world personifies and exemplifies the merge of a center unified balance and harmony, taking these qualities beyond emotional and mental  concepts, making these them visible, known, comprehensible and available.

The natural world; the first, most beautiful and enduring of the Creator's gifts to us will ever and always be our schoolhouse, lover, art gallery, Mother, Father and Grandmother, friend, font of scientific discovery, teat, bloodier of knee and elbow, emergence point and final resting place ... home.

This year's paths have been walked. We sit in a center of our universe and call it good. The harvest is being picked, gathered, cleaned, sorted, evaluated and counted, for would we remember, 'every harvest is a new beginning' ... 'every seed counted is a new tomorrow'.

Now is a good time to invite and call a Circle Gathering, go deep within the year, mark and celebrate the first harvests and first ceremonies and begin to speak of tilling new soils and casting new seed. Call a new circle together or sit within a trusted and established one and count the coups, publish the failures and shortcoming, lament the losses and own the gains of the year. This can be a time to name the names of those who were born to us and those who made the long canoe journey to the western medicine mystery. A time to stand up, step out, come out and shine as farmers of our lives in the Divine Garden of the Natural World. Our endeavors have served us well or not so well, but we accept, forgive, refocus, renew, raise a voice in prayer and gratitude and keep 'being breathed'.

The feasting and fasting occasions and the year that made them give us the new stories to tell, new songs to sing and the new dances to dance in the long winter nights to come. This is the time to gather close around a fire and tell the stories until the children lay in slumber on floor or lap and the fire burns low casting long shadows on wall, forest, beach, wigwam or teepee.

The seeds of our endeavors and harvests stand in balance and harmony, prepared to enter Quiet Time, that we might all mindfully enter upon and within the personal and collective High Winter ceremonies of THE QUIET TIME and THE TIME OF FIRING THE SEEDS OF INSPIRATION for a new year!

This cycle and walk around the beautiful Mother Earth and Father Sky-Sun is complete. Thus concludes this sweat lodge ceremony of life. Thank you for your words, prayers, attention, your blood, sweat and tears....You are released. You are released to Make New Steps, balanced and harmonious steps into this New Year and all coming New Year's.

Blessings, now and forever more.....
SHEWENDOGZEWIN ODO PI......    A BLESSING HAS BEEN VISITED UPON US HERE.....
Dawn Woman

Street Renaming Ceremony

Bozho jayek,

Gathering of Potawatomi Bands, July 20-30, Shawnee, OK.

Principal Chief John 'Rocky' Barrett: Renaming the avenue leading to the Cultural Center, Neaseno: 'Soft Summer Wind' in honor of Donald Perrot, language and Spiritual Leader of the Citizen Potawatomi Band.

Mr. Perrot was not able to attend but his ongoing and dedicated work in language and heritage is truly marking an important cultural  Bodewadwimwin 'trail' for 'all our relations' to follow, now, and into the future, for the children ...

Kchemigwech, Neaseno, wewene kchemigwech.

Dawn Woman

SUMMER -- the 21 Days before Autumn Begins

July, 14, 2014
THE AUTUMNAL TWILIGHTS BEGIN & THE 13 BLUE CORN MOONS MEASURE TIME

The night after the Capricorn Full Moon is velvety black and silent. The moon casts the weakest of shadows and illuminates nothing beneath the trees and the following morning is still and quiet.

The Summer Suns begins to move us into the edges of all twilight. The Summer Sun leads us forward into the Autumn by softening the fiery mental resolves and physical intentions, by sponsoring the moist marriage hearts urge to seed and all the while, the Sun Spirit slowly continues winding the cyclical fibers of being upon the spool of spiral time, drawing us forward, binding the drying stalks and fruits into sheaves of harvest.

Already seed imprints know themselves. Knowledge of ourselves stumbles and looks about for clue and information. Most seeds remain encased in tender and tough sheaths until the final days of 'making' are complete. The twilight presages the deep rest, sleep and quiet time but for now, calm and caution, softening and waiting are the appropriate stances. These things, all things, ourselves, require this time, time to draw and color what has been 'made'. It is our time to 'make' the imaginary Spirit drawings and color in the first sketches out of the water filled ollas of summer. The winter stories, songs and dances continue to form and flesh out, gaining momentum in contrast to the outward looking stillnesses. It remains too soon to speak of the stories, to sing the song which is still but a hum, and to dance what is still a walk but we are coming to know some-things, and also know there is much more to come.

The late summer rains are fewer. The mulching, irrigation and sprinkling the rows of tasseling corn which is gaining its majority is required, so too are directed water streams flowing down the thirsty rows and gullets of growth. Clouds of pollen drift down upon the fair hairy heads of slim corn bodies. The final 'making' is done in the dry heat.

The passages upon the 13 Moon Calendar continues in beauty......

Trecena of Earth/CABAN

For July 10, 2016
by Minisa Crumbo Halsey, for the Trecena of Earth/CABAN
1 CABAN

Arising out of KAN, the final trecena of this year, we are the new seed…WE ARE THE NEW CORN PEOPLE.

Observing the 4 Days Preceding the Mayan New Year

Observing the 4 Days Preceding the Mayan New Year

THE FIRST OF FOUR DAYS PROCEEDING THE MAYAN NEW YEAR OBSERVANCES
A Message from Minisa Crumbo Halsey on preparations and Sacred Ceremony in observance of the New Year on 8 Monkey/CHUEN (July 4, 2016)

5 Lamat

I visited the Longhouse this morning after last night’s FIVE PERSON grief release and celebration of life ceremony that life might go on ‘in a good way’.

The tea lights were STILL glimmering. I removed the directional lava and rose quartz stone beings from the fire ring to the side. Any charred wood ends were removed. Small, long-handled, old broom swept ash from the center, up and over the sides of previous ash ring rakings.

A WHITE center and bottom of the fire pit revealed itself..the other side revealed it’s face and UNIFIED WITH THE OUR CONSCIOUS WORLD… THE FIRE RING CENTER.

The directional stone beings and rose quartz beings were returned to the fire ring perimeter. The small, old broom then swept out, completely, ALL, of our previous track … in the entire Longhouse ... to the door … creating a RE-NEWED field whereby the new tracks and paths will be laid down on a clear, purified and unified ground…in a sacred manner we walk.

We will walk there four days in ceremony ... this 5 Lamat, being the first of the four days of the Mayan New Year observances.

Fires are being built and prayers offered wherever DayKeepers and sweetgrass swingers live, sing, breath and dance.

Dream and make personal and collective ceremonies of Unified Intent according to dream and vision drawn from your life and offer it to Life.

In the Spirit of Art, Beauty and Love … forever.
Dawn Woman

Day 3 of personal Mayan New Year observances 
by Minisa Crumbo Halsey

Honoring and releasing grief ... Honoring and fusing with love and life

Continuing to be inspired by: THE SMELL OF RAIN ON DUST, by Martin Prechtel

Stories, histories, myths and tales from the great hearts of all the world villages 

Day 3 of 4 days of personal ceremony:

A day in which to honor the still and silent momentary voids that balance can bring, as we make a mid-summer pause, poised in the center balance of Being, just prior making the new footprints in the sand.

May I remind all readers and sweet grass swingers to prepare for these prayer vigils, and that is what they are, by ‘fanning off’ oneself with dry sage and sweetgrass both prior to and following time spent in consciously setting positive intentions to recognize, heal and  enjoy the renewed and strengthened connection to you Creator, Master of All Breath. We ‘have the right’ to make these prayers and to journey into the Center of Our Sacred Flowering Tree of Life. AHO!

One might begin by endeavoring to trust the Creative void: begin by quieting the mind, slowing the ceaseless tides of blood surge and soothing the solar powered nervous system by ‘being breathed’. Talk to these ‘systems’ as you go, introducing and explaining as to any friend or passerby meanwhile, working on gathering courage for making a mysterious and sacred journey into this body-sacred tree temple void we call home, as a visitor. One might prepare by stating ones name, assembling a gratitude bundle and only then, requesting permission to tour the grounds, as it were, with the intent of looking, seeing and knowing everything the body has to say or offer, acknowledging, asking forgiveness where necessary and apologizing where it seems appropriate for abuses, excesses, total lack of awarenesses, howling medicine cries that will doctor and release the ancient and new outrageous grief occasions and any general lacks and unnamed lapses of conscious nourishment and attention.

Now is a good time to rest a bit, drink some water, ‘fan off’ again, remember the ‘be breathed’ medicine teaching. Relax and do something else for a while if you do not feel ready or ‘up to’ continuing at this time. Consider yourself to be in sacred ceremony of the coming new year, never forget: this is personal sacred ceremony that you are designing for yourself and that ‘you are the sacred”. At this time we may begin to feel ready to request of ourselves that a measure of our potentially endless reserves of strength, bravery and endurance levels formulate, rise and come forward once again, enabling us to continue the inner temple Medicine Journey of celebrating life, anchored and encouraged with the confidence found in conscious and whole connection that all things originate with the Master of All Breath.

As we are visiting our inner temple of wisdom let us next prepare to meet the altar of body-sacred tree knowledge by divining a spirit bundle of gratitude gifts to distribute as we go.

Here we may name and acknowledge all of the positive and loving attentions that have actually been lavished with a disciplined heart and mind, upon the body temple. Pause or sit in different places upon and within this core body, exchanging smiles, accord and recognition of unified and vibrant good heath, a vision of balance and harmony in all things and a deep love of life..with ourselves and all beings, now and forever more.

These visits to our inner altars can be done anytime or revisited. Conversations may be resumed…counsel may be offered and received at any time. Do not be frightened when strange and new ‘medicine’ comes forward but ‘hear it out’ and examine these truths which are in actuality ‘medicine’ teachings about the world and how it has worked, is working and will work. These teachings will serve to put an end to all that is not real.

One of the greatest anguishes arising out of the mystery of perceived separation is living in diverse positions of diminished abilities of awareness. Within this, and any season, there are specific ‘medicines’ whereby seasonal avenues are opened to those willing to journey into the center voids and look truth in the face, thereby setting oneself free from the isolating islands of stoney grief and moisture parched earth.

So, Float now, in weightless balance, preparing, celebrating, knowing and being..renewed in Unity..

Preparing to nourish the butterfly wings of duality as it emerges for flight into the new year…alive in a living world….while honoring the world villages of our body temples.

Sent with summer smiles from the Spirit Horse Ranch.

Dawn Woman

The Eve of the Mayan New Year

Greetings Kin, Many thanks to my dear Medicine Circle Sisters in Oklahoma who are observing 4 days of sacred ceremony. I am honored to walk this way in your company. Minisa shares her waking message on the 4th Day, as we look to that High Holy place that we enter upon sundown.

In lak’ech, Debra/Jaguar Woman  

MAYAN NEW YEAR: 8 Chuen

 COMING INTO THE WORLD COMMUNITY, ONCE AGAIN 

The 260 day corn cycle is completed once again and the rains are falling, up on the beautiful Lago Atitlan in the Guatemalan Highlands. Medicine story tells that the 260 day Mayan Year and Calendar arose from the Lago Atitlan- regarded as the Navel of the World and was demonstrated by the 260 days life cycle of the corn plant, from planting to harvest, by the Highland seasonal planting imperatives…in the autumn when the cold and heavy rains have gifted moisture, then lifted their cloud skirts from the volcanos and departed …

We have been tending the inner temples of wisdom and knowledge, strengthening and renewing our selves as the Sacred Flowering Tree. We have revisited the good old medicine partnership of grief and love, set intentions of Unity and with arms loaded with gifts journeyed into the innermost and sacred precincts of our minds, hearts, bodies and Spirits, feeding, making and renewing talks with the inner, life bringing, fires, ethers, minerals, winds and waters. We are reborn into yet another cycle.

As the wisdom and knowledge altars of the body have been tended let us now turn our vision outward-and celebrate the wisdom and knowledge altars of the natural world, Our Beautiful Mother Earth and the Resplendent Father Sky Sun. Let us come forward calling not only our names but also all names of the beloved. Let us come forward bearing our flowering and fruiting gifts of the inner temple.. To breath, laugh, cry, dance and feast as one with this beautiful world we call home. Let us prepare, bring forward and offer those flowering and fruiting gifts and breathe our prayers to the seen and unseen, known and unknown powers and spirits of origin and place that live alongside of and within us, every moment.

Let us prepare, bringing forward and offering talking prayers, singing, dancing, libation, lighting candles, cooking feast food (remembering to make a Spirit plate … Spirit eats first) ... let us build, tend, think, feel, speak and feed delicious things to the fires, waters, winds, the stone beings, the thunder beings, the star people, all those who have gone before us and those yet to come….and all beings that fly, swim, crawl or stand rooted as the skebyak, the green beings.  Do something special, especially if in solitude and  silence ... thought..intention is everything. Celebration and Ceremony is good.  Let us now make celebration, walking out into the world and joining our inner altars of wisdom, knowledge and love with those of the our outer world…Remembering to life again, the myriad unities and possibilities a duality world… In spirit dance with harmony and balance…now and forever more.

AHO.
A heavy summer rain has begun.
WE THANK YOU CREATOR, WE THANK YOU.
Dawnwoman 1 IK