StoriesandPoems

These two wonderful gems, ‘Song of the Trees’ and ‘Who Has Seen the Wind?,’ are such a delight for me to share. These two poems about the wind are insightful for everyone but particularly for the 8-9 year old child. These children are exploring whether they should act and trust in their higher impulses. They face on a daily basis the difficult choice of whether they should tell the truth even when it hurts? These ‘wind’ poems help the child be aware that not all things in this world are visible and that it’s the higher ideals that unite us and give us peace. It would be absurd for us to credit the movement of the leaf to itself when it’s clearly the wind. To those who believe in the spiritual world find it as equally absurd to believe that the material world and ourselves act alone. Like the leaf is moved by the wind, civil advances, whether in political orders, technology, or in the arts are due primarily from impulses streaming from a spiritual world. Depending on which spiritual forces we listen to, they will either unite or divide us. Lark in the Morning. The Atholl Highlanders by Sláinte | https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Slinte Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

These two wonderful gems, ‘Song of the Trees’ and ‘Who Has Seen the Wind?,’ are such a delight for me to share. These two poems about the wind are insightful for everyone but particularly for the 8-9 year old child. These children are exploring whether they should act and trust in their higher impulses. They face on a daily basis the difficult choice of whether they should tell the truth even when it hurts? These ‘wind’ poems help the child be aware that not all things in this world are visible and that it’s the higher ideals that unite us and give us peace. It would be absurd for us to credit the movement of the leaf to itself when it’s clearly the wind. To those who believe in the spiritual world find it as equally absurd to believe that the material world and ourselves act alone. Like the leaf is moved by the wind, civil advances, whether in political orders, technology, or in the arts are due primarily from impulses streaming from a spiritual world. Depending on which spiritual forces we listen to, they will either unite or divide us. Lark in the Morning. The Atholl Highlanders by Sláinte | https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Slinte Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This traditional Navajo song is dripping with meaning in every word. Immediately we sing of the earth and nature as our material home, but more significantly it also invokes images of the love of ancestral lines in our family homes and our individual physical body. Our physical bodies are framed with bones like logs of a home, and our skin and flesh woven around us are similar to the bark and earth that form its walls. How does such materialism, traditionally made of log, bark, and mud radiate such beauty? How does the author see his humble body worthy of such descriptions as being 'sacred' and ‘holy?’ Isn't the nature of mortals evil? Such descriptions can only be used to describe God, right? Yet, to this poem, our earthly homes and physical body is described as holy! They're places where angelic figures visit every morning. Near the end of the poem it states that the words of our fathers speak to us ‘through the echos of the wind.’ These 'winds' are spiritual communications with angelic beings at dawn, the threshold between sleep and wakefulness or the threshold between winter and summer-–spring. The Native Americans understood the importance of keeping spiritual connections with our dead ancestors in order to find the signs of spring for the future. Hence, wherever ‘my house’ stands I also ‘walk in peace.’ Spend some time pondering the four cardinal directions described in this song and you will see in them colours and images that symbolise the whole human being.

This movie talks about the nature of story telling and why its value exceeds other productive, utilitarian, or recreational activities.

This story can help us deal with fears, hardships, and difficulties in our life. It might help people see the relationship between the spiritual world and the material world how each influences the other. Whether in a pandemic, inventing something new, or facing difficult times, the spiritual world is intimately connected with all we do. Understanding that can help us have the courage to carry on.

Along many of the red canyon walls of the Southwest, there is a humpbacked figure of a cicada engraved. The Hopi called him Kokopelli. For many Native American tribes, the seasons, cardinal directions, colours, and animals have spiritual meanings. There are many stories about Kokopelli, great serpents, horned toads, eagles, and ants and more. There are also many gods and goddesses, like Salt Man and Salt Woman, who are supplicated for different divine gifts. This story is a Navajo emergence story that beautifully narrates human development in its entirety. In this story, little ants pass through four critical stages before they actually transform into humans. The ants go from the womb (black world), to the first seven years of shaping and hardening of their physical bones (red world), to the development of the etheric soul with imaginative thought (yellow world), and to the development of astral spirit with the intellect (blue world). The ants finally unfold into their true self as human beings (green world). Their success depends on whether they overcome the afflictions and trials that each stage presents. Four human personalities–red, yellow, blue, and green–are combined to form the whole human being. These directional colours also coordinate with seasonal colours. They are described in the Navajo song called "My Sacred Home" linked at the end of the video. Ponder over this Navajo story and song and you will begin to see the truth of who you are and where you came from. You will begin to see you’re composed of body, soul, and spirit.