The Ceremony of Picking and Gathering ‘IN A GOOD WAY’

by Minisa Crumbo Halsey
Dawn Woman’s Blog,Thursday, October 6, 2016

Picking and gathering have long been among humankind’s primary tools for providing food. The basic nature of the sacred give-away and receive principle is the model for our approach to the plant people, the skebyak, and the natural world.

The plant people go a long way toward offering and providing us, the two-leggeds and others, with the physical materials we need to live life ‘in a good way’. Plant fiber provides assorted fiber for the weaving of clothing, nets, mats, basketry, footwear, hammocks, housing, cordage, snares and traps. The plant people share their bodies that our own might live and medicines by which to maintain, heal, and restore health and balance.

The green beings hold all wisdom and knowledge. The Mother Earth and all beings that live upon and within her body have their own unique medicine ways and it is of these ways that we seek to learn the languages, uses and songs. Our Mother is a sentient being with an evolutionary path of her own and when sufficiently sensitized it is possible for us to feel her heartbeat through the soles of our feet and entire being.

In order for us to make orderly and honorable approaches to each living thing we must first understand ourselves for this is what we bring forward in dialogue and intent by way of introduction. The text of Spirit Talk is designed to offer and provide sensitization models, histories, identifying, arriving at and holding appropriate thought focus, charting some designs of personal ritual and time management, suggest structures of meaningful ceremony in the context of individual biology and life style, observing and creatively participating in the cyclical dynamics of the seasons, to encourage song, dance, music..these are some of the ways by which we may begin to accurately and healthily track our minds, authentically and honorably present ourselves to ourselves, actually, and then to all other beings. Seriously consider these suggestions and the practices set forward in the earlier Seasonal writings. Experiment with them for personal veracity, test them out, through your own Spirit Talk. Make requests and prayers for inspired and illuminated pathways. Continued on Dawn Woman’s Blog

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Summer Ceremonies: The Doctorings

minisa-gardening From “Spirit Talk – a Book of Days” by Minisa Crumbo Halsey

Since many, or most, of us do not live in close proximity to adepts and holy people that can and do facilitate community ceremonies, that appropriate action is, in the end, essentially personal. So what matters is bringing the fullness of our minds, hearts, bodies, and spirits forward to say yes once more to life. Herein and from this point on, we are offered the opportunity for which we were born, that of recognizing ourselves as our own holy people. Aho!

Take up the staff of authority and don the mantle of leadership, and if you will, emerge and embark upon finding, forging, and designing a Way that is unique to your personal attributes and needs. These are the new Ways coming forward for the new days . . . and we are the ones. Since each of us initially think principally upon ourselves, as it should be, let us now think even more and deeply upon ourselves and the personal links to what we can identify as the proven and worthy gifts of life, the Sacred and all of its auspices. This is a deeply personal and sacred moment to be held close, in silence and privately, for some time to mature and seat in the deepest, innermost recesses of your sacredness. Take time for the building of this precious personal medicine, our personal medicine treasure—that of which we know and that of which we are—together and in a spirit of oneness with the mind of the Creator, in concert with these first, most beautiful and enduring gifts to and for us from the Creator: our Mother the Earth, our Father the Sky-Sun, our Grandmother the Moon, our relations: the Star People, the Directions, the Elementals, the Spirit Helpers, the colors, the Wind Beings, the Fire Beings, the Green Beings, the Water Beings, the Stone People, and all of the other named and unnamed sacred related beings that live upon and within this beautiful Creation.

The old people say, “That which you recognize, you own.”

They also say, “It’s not so much, will you do it, but whether you will remember to do it.”

Dawnwoman

FEATURED AUTHOR:

Minisa Crumbo Halsey, is a member of the Citizen Band Potawatomi of the Shawnee, OK agency and Muscogee Creek of the Okmulgee, OK agency. “In the way I was taught, or, ‘helped out’ by my teacher, Marcellus “Bear Heart” Williams, Muscogee Creek, in Indian talk… everything of life, is ceremony. Therefore, it is always about remembering… for the old ones say, “It is not whether you will do ‘it’ but whether you will remember it”, and, at the core of our remembering lives our sacred nature and the sacredness of all creation.” ~Minisa

Minisa is an artist, teacher, photo-journalist, video producer and author of “Spirit Talk – a Book of Days” that shares traditional teaching on the Medicine Wheel page.

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