ONE
This poster stops me from walking away from it. I don't have that sense of being found by God. It was a matter of where my focus was that earmarked the troubled times of my life, but it didn't render void the presence of the Creator. I always had the sense of that presence.
I walked a lot in my
dark times, and spent a great deal of time alone and deep in forests. I guess those two factors were or are states of being far removed from being in a city where it is easy to feel disconnected from the vital energies of life in a culture that is compelled to explain God. But, one's state of conscious awareness is his/her story, and many people have to invent a science to perceive the Creator. Perception is a source of fascination and a study of human nature if one is interested in how to understand others. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
9.28.13
TWO
"The way to feel good is to do good. The way to feel successful is to take the actions that bring about success. You cannot truly feel what you do not being truly alive. Be honest and authentic with yourself, with others, and with Life because anything less is just cheating yourself. Spend this day being a unique and enthusiastic expression of life’s goodness. See how much of a positive difference you can make, and experience what a genuine, positive feeling you get from doing so. Seek to add richness to the lives of others and be delighted at how much richness it brings into your own life. Do something good and useful just because it is the right thing to do, and discover how right it feels. Let go of the tiresome fight to gain advantage, and direct your energy toward appreciating and creating goodness. Move beyond the need to prove yourself and focus instead on improving all of life. Give more and more of your own unique goodness to those around you, to the world, and to Life. And feel the outstanding richness as it grows increasingly abundant for you." -
Adekola Kevin Odukoya 9.24.13
THREE
Rose Marie Samuels, I know and agree that "
True peace is not the absence of war; it is the presence of God."
I would venture further and add that the presence of God is cloak-like because that presence is a constant the way air is constant and breath is consistent with the vibrations of the living. Well, peace is the presence of an awareness within of how the outside presence of Creation and the Creator lives within and through the consistencies and the inconsistencies of our lives. It is a weave. It is the way the land, the Earth, our Mother vibrates within us. It is the way the words of our mouth mingle with vital energies of Creation. It is a creative process. It is a dance. It is Spider Woman. It is the weaving motion of a web connecting all parts of Creation within the soul of the body we live in. - Gregory E. Woods,
Keeper of Stories 9.28.13
FOUR
"
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."
Psalms 66:18
How true is that, or is it a misunderstanding of Hebrew? How could the Creator not hear his creation moaning under the weight of their wrong doings? If the ear of the Creator is dead to the 'bad heart' of someone there is no redemption. -
Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 9.28.13
FIVE
"
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ..."
1 Timothy 2:1-5
SIX
The direction found in Hebrews 13:17
"Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you..." has spoken to contradicted lives, and been the
bane of existence for countless souls over the centuries. To this day it has been a manipulative tool in the hands of craftspeople skilled in selling war to the nation.
Easy it is to manipulate people's thinking and loyalties. It is easier when a person is not prone to study, or inclined towards introspective spirituality that challenges the notion of dominance and spreads out the tenets of one's faith on a white sheet of conscious awareness to 'see' what they actually believe, and is believable. This is the point in the craft of developing one's spirituality that stops many people from moving from
belief to knowing.
During slavery times in the Americas this scripture subjugated millions of Africans forced into the Christian faith, and the millions of whites who benefited from slavery suffered as well. It did not work on people's indigenous to this land (Turtle Island) because Native peoples were connected to the land in all the ways the Euro-American was not connected within himself. Indians ran away and fought for the land where their ancestor's bones lay. Slavery and the legacy of the institution, and Western Christianity plays different roles in the mindset and the thinking of the grandchildren of ex-slaves and the generations of white Christians and non-Christians alike who benefit and suffer from slavery and its legacy.
Today's challenge is ethics and integrity. Many people in the work place wrestle with the implications of this scripture as it is applied to keeping their jobs, or doing things that will insure employment, but violates the tenets of their faith. Many a Christian in management has agonized around a company's tendencies to manipulate lives, and made decisions they justified by Hebrew 13:17 they knew to be wrong. In the judicial system and in the military industrial complex ethical conflicts many a Christian lay person wrestles with are between the crude nature of survival, and being a living testament of Jesus Christ. None of these challenges are easy, but leaving one's life to chance isn't either. - Gregory E. Woods,
9.28.13
SEVEN
There is an innocence about subjugating to authority that works for a child, and is cute. But, as adults we have spiritual responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to train and raise children. If subjugating their spirits, and limiting their freedom of spirit to teach them how to be powerless, and submissive to abusive leadership is a religious obligation that is foul. It is evil, and for a child terrifying transitioning from the magic they were born with into a victim, a subject of tyranny, if that is the government with authority over their lives.
Children come into the world with two things: innocence and the knowledge of who they are. This is their Sacred Dream. It is what many are taught to forget, or under value into extinction. That loss of self eventually can turn into soul loss and is the primary reason foreign nations are sending missionaries to work in the United States.
As Americans we live in enormous contradictions, and pulled away from our stances, and proclamations to the world as a global power it is clear what
ails us. On another hand the experiences of Europeans stomping upon the 'New World' and killing millions of its inhabitants over the last few centuries has destroyed the promise of new life their God said would come their way should they follow his law. On the other side is the matter of subjugation which in the American lexicon is slavery, or bondage.
It is said that to understand freedom one needs to understand its denials. I don't know who told me that in my younger years, but that becomes an unexplored subject if Hebrews 13:17 is taken literally, or ignorantly.
- Gregory E. Woods
9.28.13
EIGHT
My litmus test to authority is not in my submission to authority because it is over me. My obedience is not blind. I respect and listen closely to the power of my relationship with my own death, the power of my Medicine, what the Creator has imbued me with, and what I know about how power(s) move and shift. My tribal lineage does not have the energy of the lamb. My power animal (and we are all born with one) is not weak. The lamb was foreign to the concept of adulthood and manhood of my People, and deep within my nature I am incapable and unwilling to
shape shift my life force into the energy lines of the sheep. It is a fundamental condition, or state of being I was born with and into!
I wrestled against the notion of accepting the symbol of the lamb into me when I was a young man. With my parents as the backdrop of my intellectual and spiritual development it was a ludicrous notion and failed. The text of masculinity and femininity with a lamb's nature does not coincide with the wisdom of being a dominant force of Nature, a parent, a man in the deepest sense of the word, or a warrior. It is not how families are formed or held together. It is a survival skill under monarchies, and for a slave, but a free man? It most certainly was not part of the makeup of Jesus, or any of the patriarchs, or the judges of the ancient Hebrew people. Why, as a man, should I submit to the lamb as a model, teach it to my children, and blindly submit to a governing force that does not have the interests of the People in their heart?
We all saw how that worked out for us as a nation a few of days after 9/11 as our Congress forsook reasonable and intellectual discourse and submitted to the authority of a President, who a few days prior, was subjected to severe ridicule because of his lack of intellectual, and diplomatic sophistication, and his profound naivety, and his open disdain of the acquisition of knowledge for knowledge's sake. Many Christians justified it with the
submissive scripture of Hebrews 13:17 in mind. -
Gregory E. Woods
MJ Lindo's Art
"Profound simplicity within a simple story told and upon reflection revealed in a complex way easily understood is the essence of what is sacred."
- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Wheels
9.28.13
