Sunday, May 27, 2012

Quotes from Martin Prechtel

All quotes are from The Unlikely Peace of Cuchumaquic. An elder asked me recently: Leny what do you love to do most? and I said: I cook and feed people. So I have been meditating on this since the question was asked and it leads me to remembering the life of seeds....and next thing I know someone hands me Prechtel's new book which is about the parallel lives of people as plants and keeping the seeds alive. It is both literal and metaphorical. The list below will keep growing....
**
Find the seeds of your people.
Find their stories and their scientific origins.
Find their mythological origins.
Ask the seeds if they are willing to die, planted in the ground to feed humans.
Seeds as funeral whose generosity feeds us.
**
Learn to cook beautifully and feed your neighbors.
**
Unstoried, unfed, modern mechanical inventions....
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Debt of insult to the past beyond dismal spiritual back taxes we already owe on account of our disrespectful and invasive times...
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Now that you're one of us, you will always feel lonely and betrayed by what humans value, but loved by the echoing Holies. Get used to it!
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The need for slow development and gradual initiation causing deeper remembrance of our non-human origins, where we could keep conscious and alive the learning humans need, to know how to ritually feed the world in a time-articulated existence ...
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Be beautiful and spiritually useful to the universe.
**
Time divination - to remember the Beauty and privilege of being allowed to live...
Time shamans/diviners - those who kept the seeds of Time as existence alive. Diagnose the unseen and unaddressed aspects of spiritual conditions of the present in order to find out was was needed to heal as individuals, as families, as entire villages...to heal the tattered holes we left in the Holy Net of Time.
**
Divination - to understand the hidden life of the present. Segments of Deferred Time. Body as Earth.
Ritual - feeding the Divine through creations of beauty made by our hands and language. World eats the Beauty we make.
**
Everyday Beauty as an obligation of remembering that even in just how we walk, we feed God.
**
Takes a lot of time, know-how, and non-returning gift giving -- late payment for the grace of living...

Friday, May 18, 2012

dear paysbuk,
i wish i know how to quit you.
it was better when i was blogging and connecting to folks based on mutual interests.
now hardly anyone visits this blog anymore because i don't take time to create the links and tags to other people's sites like i used to.
it was better when i didn't have to spend so much time scrolling thru people's updates, events, news items, announcements, birthdays.
i had more time reading and reflecting and then writing more than 140characters. i got quite a bit of writing done then that eventually led to longer pieces that ended up in books, anthologies, ezines, and  listserves where there were meaningful discussions going on.
i think someday soon, your bubble will burst, too, paysbuk.
just like everything else in this simulated reality that has kept us numbed and distracted.
one at a time, we will say
i miss my face-time with my best friend
i miss the phone contact with family
i miss the touch and hug of a loved one
i miss being present to my own life
i miss gardening and touching the warm soil
i miss pulling weeds in the garden
i miss sitting in the backyard without my laptop
i miss walking around the neighborhood

oh yes, time to make time for these things again
summer is here

orphaned koans are waiting

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

wise counsel from an indigenous elder that i have been meditating on:
-- academic to cultural practitioner
-- standing your ground to move the work forward
-- when doing spiritual work, relying on rules/policies/norms don't work well
-- concentrate on relationships and process
-- servant, not leader
-- forms will change as energies shift
-- what brings you joy? find the root myth
-- humility
-- kapwa as a cultural and social concept is inclusive
-- kapwa as spiritual concept has boundaries

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Partial List of Books by the bed:
The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic
The New Imperial Order: Indigenous Responses to Globalization
Shrouds of White Earth
Liberation and the Cosmos
Verbal Arts in Philippine Indigenous Communities
A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness
Indigenizing the Academy
Blackfoot Physics
The Wayfinders
The Turquiose Ledge
Tending the Wild
Shadows in the Sun
Postindian Conversations

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

resource

Lullaby for Rising by Oscar Penaranda


Lullaby For Rising*

Anak,
the well of memory runs deep
malalim
a bottomless spring
you must dive into and explore
like a healing hilot's hand
or perish
You have to steel yourself, prepare
growing into it
struggle without losing the spirit of gratitude
always saying po and salamat
for that is a healing too
paghihilom din yan
like giving 
and getting comfort from the friendship of
self, family, community
and ancestors
birthing and baptizing
yourself anew
Find the tanglad that will flavor whatever nourishes you
for we are all of mixed heritage
many colors  in our diversity
and we are all of one heritage
one color in our humanity
once you find our indigenous connections
learning the wonderful force of bayanihan
from our manongs and manangs
and kaibigans

Mabuhay ka, my child.


Oscar PeƱaranda
April 28, 2012
Santa Rosa
Sonoma County,
California

*(poem composed from the one-word contributions of participants at the Asian Community Forum, at SSU, on 4/30, organized by Karen P/FANHS, CFBS, FACSCI, FAASSU).


sonoma county  salamat   comfort  connections kaibigan, mixed heritage, family, friendship, diversity, bayanihan tanglad  growing  wonderful  learning, paghilom, malalim, manong