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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781608683918 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New World Library |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 184 |
| Sales rank: | 579,719 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Voices in the Stones
Life Lessons from the Native Way
By Kent Nerburn
New World Library
Copyright © 2016 Kent NerburnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60868-391-8
CHAPTER 1
WELCOME HOME
All People Must Find Their Own Spiritual Path
You should say nothing against our religion, for we say nothing against yours. ... We both pray to only one God who made us all.
— SITTING BULL
"Come in, Nerburn. Come in," he said.
His welcoming manner immediately put me at ease.
I was new on the reservation and had been given his name as an elder who knew a great deal about Ojibwe history. I had decided to visit him in person and ask if he would be willing to share his life stories with the students.
After a long drive through muskeg bogs and tamarack forests, I had arrived at his tidy clapboard home set far back in a wide field near the western boundary of the reservation.
He was a kind man in his mid-eighties who had been raised by grandparents who spoke no English. He moved slowly and deliberately and had a sanguine expression that never varied.
After greeting me with a soft handshake, he beckoned me to a table where he had laid out old photos of his family members and memorabilia from his grandfather's time fighting the Dakota.
"He was hit by an arrow and dragged all the way back here on a horse-drawn travois," he said. "He was a good man, my grandfather."
While he was speaking, he took out a piece of soft blanket and carefully unwrapped his ceremonial pipe. It was kept in two pieces — a red pipestone bowl and a long wooden stem.
He fit the bowl onto the stem, filled the bowl with a mixture of tobacco and dried willow bark, and very carefully lit it with a coal from his woodstove.
He drew long on it, puffing more than inhaling, until the air around his head was filled with a rich, aromatic scent.
He cupped his hand in the smoke and pulled it around his head, as if bathing himself in it. Then he rotated the pipe, stem out, in a clockwise direction, until it completed a full circle, and handed it across to me.
"Here. Now you," he said.
I was hesitant. I had only been on the reservation a short time and was not familiar with proper protocol. Even in the best of circumstances, I am not comfortable stepping into another's ceremonies, even when asked. Perhaps it comes from being raised in a Catholic tradition where you must earn the right to be part of the sacred rituals through long training. Facile participation in another's ceremonies — whether Christian, Native, or any other — feels to me like lack of respect for the deep spiritual realities of that tradition.
Still, my host had asked me to smoke, and, as the pipe had been extended to me, I had no choice but to accept. It was being offered to me as a gift, and in Native cultures, as in all traditional cultures, to refuse a gift is to refuse the offering of a person's heart. To refuse it would have been an insult.
With my eyes cast down, I took the pipe carefully, trying not to seem artificially pious.
I nodded slightly and cradled the long wooden stem in my hands.
The elder reached over and lit the bowl with another coal. I drew in the tobacco mixture and cupped the smoke around my head as I had seen him do.
I was not sure about the meaning of the ritual or whether I was performing it properly. But I did the best I could, rotating the pipe clockwise in a full circle and passing it back to my host.
The elder nodded to me and gave me a quiet smile.
I found myself swelling with pride, as if I had been allowed inside something private and sacred.
My response surprised me.
Even on those rare occasions when I had allowed myself to participate in the religious rituals and ceremonies of others, my overwhelming feeling had always been one of remaining comfortably outside, keeping my distance not only from the practices but from the heartbeat of the belief as well.
Their world was not mine, and I had no desire to make it mine. I was simply honoring their practices and feeling privileged to be witness to their spiritual ways.
But this time I had felt something different. I was like a child being granted entry to a place I dearly wanted to be.
Why, I wondered, did this feel so right, and why did it matter so much? The answer revealed itself slowly over my time among the Native people.
In the culture where I was raised, religion is generally understood as doctrine, not as a cast of mind.
Those who feel a strong sense of a spiritual presence in life, but do not adopt a recognized set of beliefs are somehow considered suspect. Their spirituality is seen as untethered, self-referential, and lacking rigor, and they are left homeless in a spiritual diaspora of their own creation.
There are many reasons why good, caring, spiritually inclined people find themselves in this situation.
Some are disaffected, alienated by a tradition that was forced upon them in childhood.
Others may feel that embracing a single doctrinal way negates all other paths, and they do not wish to be part of an exclusionary faith.
Still others may simply not have found a tradition that fits the shape of their spiritual hunger.
But whatever the reason, they find themselves outside of traditionally defined religious structures, yet feel a deep spiritual yearning in their hearts.
The Native way embraces this yearning — even honors it.
As Ohiyesa, the great Dakota teacher and thinker, said, "Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone."
There is no need to justify the purity or sufficiency of your spiritual convictions, no need to defend them through theology or philosophy or argumentation. All that is necessary is that you acknowledge the Great Mystery that is behind everything and present in everything.
The Seneca chief Red Jacket put it succinctly: "We never quarrel about religion," he said, "because it is a matter that concerns each man and the Great Spirit."
This is what the old man was telling me as he reached the pipe across to me with his calm and welcoming smile.
I was not being asked to accept a particular belief or espouse a particular doctrine. I was being called to spiritual mindfulness, to recognize the spiritual in all creation, and to acknowledge that we were sitting together in the shared presence of the Great Mystery.
How I understood that Great Mystery and how I chose to worship it, if I chose to worship it at all, was between me and the Creator.
As I handed the pipe back to my host, I was overwhelmed by a profound sense of peace and well-being.
What more affirming experience, I thought, could there be than to be invited to enter a place where spirit, like the smoke, is everywhere, but ideology is nowhere?
It was more than an invitation to participate in a ritual not my own; it was a spiritual embrace.
And far from making me feel like a spiritual stranger, it made me feel, in a very deep way, that I was being welcomed home.
CHAPTER 2THE FEAST
Honor the Young and the Old, for They Are Closest to the Creator
The grandparents are old and wise. They have lived and achieved. They are dedicated to the service of the young as their teachers and advisers, and the young in turn regard them with love and reverence. In them the Indian recognizes the natural and truest teacher of the child.
— OHIYESA
The grandfathers and grandmothers are in the children. Teach them well.
— OJIBWE SONG
Early in my time on the reservation, I was asked to attend a feast at the school where I was working.
I had no idea what a feast was. It sounded regal and baronial, conjuring up images of Henry VIII at a great plank table, or primitive and dangerous, with people dancing ecstatically around a fire while eating the half-cooked shanks of wild animals.
It proved to be neither. It was a simple, festive potluck gathering held in the school cafeteria in honor of a young boy who had received an award for a poem he had written. He was being raised up before the community and praised for his accomplishments.
It was much like any gathering in any community, but with one subtle but important difference.
In Indian country, the sharing of food carries spiritual significance because it is an act of generosity, and generosity is among the most sacred Native values. It harks back to the time in the Native past when a successful harvest or hunt was a cause for sharing and celebration.
When food was scarce, all went hungry.
When food was abundant, all ate their fill.
Those who had food to give considered it their sacred duty to see that others, especially the children and the elders, were properly fed. This practice of the sharing of food as a spiritual act has carried down through the generations and become the center of any celebration or gathering anywhere in Indian country.
I was standing at the rear of the room with Joe, a man about my age. He had returned to the reservation after years of living in a big city because he wanted to be immersed in his traditional culture and to raise his children in a more traditional way. He wore his hair in braids and had the soft-spoken, gentle manner I was coming to recognize as a characteristic of many traditional Native men. He and I were quickly becoming friends.
"See those girls?" he said, gesturing to a small group of girls about eight or nine years of age. "The one in the purple, she's my daughter."
The girls were gathered together in a far corner of the room. They stood quietly as an honoring song was played and the community spiritual leader said a long prayer in Ojibwe.
When the prayer was finished, the women who were overseeing the serving of the food peeled back the tinfoil covers on the large pans of venison stew and trays of wild rice and fry bread, and beckoned people to come forward.
Potato chips, brownies, casseroles, plates of sliced meat, and all manner of store-bought cookies and sweets were spread out on folding tables that stretched along the back wall of the room.
As at all gatherings in Native country, people of every age were present, from infants in their parents' arms to the elderly in wheelchairs.
At the signal that the meal was to begin, the children in attendance, ever anxious to eat, rushed to be first to the tables and stacked their paper plates and bowls high with the bounty laid out before them. The women who were serving the food smiled at them and guided them, sometimes reminding them not to take too much or to do less jostling and to be more patient.
The group of girls with my friend's daughter, however, held back. They were quiet, even reserved.
After the other children had jostled their way through the line and the adults were getting up to move toward the food, the girls approached the tables. Each picked up a paper plate and some plastic utensils.
They moved slowly down the food line, holding the plates up to the serving women who carefully ladled stew and potatoes and green beans and pieces of venison onto each of them.
The girls then carried the plates over to a group of elderly men and women who were sitting in the back of the room in wheelchairs and metal folding chairs.
Each of the girls handed a plate to an elder, who smiled warmly and took it with unsteady hands. The girls smiled in return and shyly averted their eyes.
Short conversations took place. Then each girl went back and filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee or water or Kool Aid or whatever the elder had requested.
They brought the drinks to the elders, then quietly went to the end of the line to wait for the chance to get food for themselves. No one paid them any mind or gave them any particular acknowledgment; they had merely been doing what was expected of them.
"That's the way it should be," my friend said. "The elders eat first, and the young people serve. This was the way we were taught, but we're forgetting the old ways."
There was a wistful yearning in his voice.
"The elders are sacred," he continued. "They have lived long lives, and their days have been hard. They've earned the right to be served because they've lived their lives serving others. Now the others should be serving them."
Across the room I could see the elders happily eating their food and laughing among themselves. The girls were watching closely to see if there was anything else they needed.
"It's good for the kids, too," Joe said. "It teaches them about patience and kindness and putting others before themselves. And it brings them close to the elders, who only want to give them love. If the kids aren't brought close to the elders, they end up being afraid of them. The elders seem so old. The kids see the ghost of something frightening in them.
"But if they're brought to the elders, they see that the elders' hearts are open wide to them. They're the farthest apart in years, but closest in their nearness to the Creator."
"You're a good teacher," I said. "Thanks."
"I'm just trying to school you a bit," he smiled.
Joe took his leave from me and walked over to talk with a man in a worn satin logging-company jacket. The two of them stood, laughing and joking together, sharing the easy camaraderie of old friends.
The feeling of common community was everywhere in the room. I kept thinking of the way Joe had spoken the word "elders" with such ease and grace. It was a word filled with gravity and respect; an elder was a status to be revered, not a simple condition of age.
Joe's daughter and her friends had gotten their food and were sitting together at a table on the far side of the room.
Joe made his way back to my side and gestured in their direction. "This is why I came back to the rez," he said. "In the city, among the white folks, the elders weren't even noticed. The kids only went to see them because they had to or because it was part of some school project. The elders weren't seen as teachers. They weren't seen as a chance to learn about life."
One of the girls had gotten up to help a woman in a long print dress refill her coffee cup.
"I remember when I was just a little guy my dad used to tell me that I needed to listen to my grandma and grandpa when they talked. He said they had walked the road I was going to walk and that their words could guide my footsteps."
"Did it work?" I asked, half joking.
"Pretty much," he said. "When Grandma gave me the hard eye, I knew I'd better get back in line. You didn't mess with the grandmas."
He laughed self-consciously and put his hand on my shoulder.
"Come on," he said, pointing to the almost empty food line. "That's enough philosophy. It's time to eat. You know, if these were war times, we would have eaten first, because we would have needed to be strong to defend the camp and go out on hunts. But I don't see any wars on the horizon, at least not any we need to fight today. So we eat last. We'd better get up there now before the little rug rats rush up and take everything that's left."
We took our place behind the man in the logging jacket and a woman in a faded sweatshirt.
We patiently waited our turn — two men, neither young impressionable youths nor honored elders, but men in the middle, at the greatest point of our physical strength, but still only partly formed on our spiritual journey.
Across the room we could see the elders, smiling and laughing with each other and enjoying the activity and company of the community around them.
The young girls had finished eating and were taking the plates and cups from the elders. It was almost a visceral experience to see the fresh soft hands of the girls, so delicate and unformed, touching the twisted, shaking hands of the elders, whose long lives were written in every bent finger and scarred knuckle.
Joe's daughter said her good-bye to the elder she had served, then came over and pressed herself against her father, as if looking for his approval. He smiled and ran his hand gently through her hair.
"You did right, my girl," he said.
There was nothing else he needed to say.
* * *
In the world where I was raised, life has only a brief moment of flowering — the time of physical strength for men, the season of youthful beauty and childbearing for women. All else is a time of becoming or a time of decline.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Voices in the Stones by Kent Nerburn. Copyright © 2016 Kent Nerburn. Excerpted by permission of New World Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Prologue The Unseen Journey,
I. The Native Way of Living,
Welcome Home All People Must Find Their Own Spiritual Path,
The Feast Honor the Young and the Old, for They Are Closest to the Creator,
Stones for the Sweat All People Should Be Made to Feel Needed,
The Elder's Smile Keep the Sacred Always on Your Lips, for What Is on the Lips Will Make Its Way to the Heart,
II. The Native Way of Believing,
The Old Man in the Café Spirit Is Present in All of Creation,
Stopping the Blood We Are a Part of Nature, Not Apart from Her,
III. The Native Way of Dying,
Grief's Embrace Family Is All Those We Hold in Our Heart,
The Legacy of the Father Our Past Is a Responsibility, Not a Burden,
Donna's Gift Giving Is the Greatest Human Act,
IV. The Native Way of Knowing,
The Hip Bone We Are Children of the Earth; We Walk in the Footsteps of Those Who Came Before,
Voices in the Stones Everything We Turn Toward the Creator Is a Prayer,
Wind at the Bear's Paw Nature Is a Voice to Be Heard, Not a Force to Be Controlled,
Epilogue The Shadow and the Vision,
Author's Note,
About the Author,
What People are Saying About This
“Kent Nerburn speaks reverently of the bridge between our Judeo-Christian tradition and the spiritual gifts of the Native Americans. There is much healing to be had in our lives and for the land by crossing this bridge.”— Richard Rohr, bestselling author of Falling Upwards and The Divine Dance“Kent Nerburn reminds us that in the timeless Native American ways of seeing and being, the truth of life is not found in knowledge but in something closer to prayer. Even today, amidst coffee shops, graveyards, old cars, and cafeterias, the wisdom keepers Nerburn follows in his sensitively told narratives still follow the voices of stones, streams, and dreams, listening to the wind with open ears and open hearts, not knowing where it will lead, or what they will learn.”— Evan Pritchard, director of the Center for Algonquin Culture and author of No Word for Time and Bird Medicine