InTheTemazcal

The book, Black Elk Speaks, as seen on Amazon.com This year, as the winter solstice graces us, we're initiating the celebration of the new solar year by reviewing Black Elk and John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1932).Winter solstice marks the longest evening of the solar year and occurs during the final quarter of  Wanícokan Wi * ,  or   the Moon When the Deer Shed their Antlers. On the Gregorian calendar, that's on or near the 22 nd of December. Remembering with Nebraska Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Lakota, saw his vision in the Black Hills region west of Nebraska. During the  Waníyetu Wi , or the Moon of the Rutting deer, the Nebraskan reading program, One Book One Nebraska (OBON), announced its 2017 selection: John G. Neihardt's  Black Elk Speaks . OBON aims to demonstrate ... "... how books and reading connect people across time and place. Each year, Nebraska communities come together through literature in community-wide reading...

The route of the 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter Dakota Access Pipeline that the Standing Rock Sioux and others protest. Image Source: Wikimedia This morning the howling wind woke me. For many years I did not like windy days, but, in the temazcal , I learned to love the wind. “El aliento de los abuelitos,” the Osos called it. Translated from Spanish, it means "the breath of the grandparents." They told us that in the wind were the secrets of the elders who had gone by the way. If we paid attention, they said, we would hear their secrets. If we paid attention we would hear the answers to our questions. They are always whispering to us, but we do not pay attention, and we miss the answers to our questions. We miss the solutions to our problems. The answer always lies in the here and the now, but we do not pay attention to it, and we do not hear it. We constantly look for it somewhere else … somewhere we are not. We constantly look for it in some moment, in the fut...