Maria Arpa
This week
Sitting In The Presence Of Elders
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
Sharing wisdom
Last Friday I attended a gathering on the topic of Ceremony and Justice hosted by an organisation called Life comes from it.
The event was focussed on people of colour. The food we ate was made from natural, native ingredients prepared from indigenous recipes. Though, ironically, the event was held in a University in NYC, it was not polished or ‘professional’. There was no agenda, no keynote speakers, no breakout workshops or ‘experts’ yet I experienced and learned more in an afternoon, about what matters than I ever did taking a Master’s degree.
I had the privilege of being invited to sit in the elder circle. I was humbled as I listened to people who had been placed in government boarding schools and who had experienced great adversity as their culture and land were, and continue to be, violated. I listened as people were trying to relearn their languages after the last born native speakers have passed away. I listened to grief and hardship. And then I listened to wisdom. I did not hear any bitterness, resentment, anger or hatred, just a strong desire to heal the land and all people. I learned that the essence of native ceremony and their natural medicine is considered illegal. How much more can the powers of domination culture take away from the people whose very being is rooted in love of the planet? In this culture every decision must take into consideration the effect on the next seven generations. Imagine the world we would be inhabiting if we adopted this simple but powerful strategy before we
I heard a wise man say that the role of an elder is to create a space of order from which the younger ones can learn. And at the end of every day we must ask, ‘what did I learn today?’ because the night is a reflection of the day. What a far cry from the distorted places of ‘education’ in which we use threat and punishment to ‘teach’.
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
The DRM invites us to honour and defer to the indigenous cultures from which true healing, restorative justice and harmony and resonance were alive, long before people manufactured and twisted these ideas to fit the mainstream domination culture in which we live, and called them religion and government.
The Wednesday Whisper
Who are your elders? How do you honour them? What did you learn from them?
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