Walter Littlemoon

Walter Littlemoon passed through my life briefly during a time of personal healing and searching. I carry him in my heart and mind because he looked into my soul and knew me. He honored my journey when I didn’t understand it myself. I remember him as a tall, quiet, gentle man of great intelligence and profound compassion. He spoke softly, humbly and taught much with very few words.

Walter Littlemoon was born at Wounded Knee in 1942. Taken from his family at the age of 5, he was forced into a federal government boarding school. His family, language and traditions denied him. I met him in the early 1990’s when he visited  friends in Florida. He graciously conducted sweat lodges without asking for payment of any kind. Money offered in gratitude for his presence and teaching was given to the destitute community of Wounded Knee. His entire life has been dedicated to restoring his people and his land. I sat in stunned silence when he told us he was not supposed to leave the reservation without official permission. How could that be in a free country?!  Fortunately for all of us, Walter answered to a power higher than any government and traveled where Great Spirit led him.

I will not presume to tell his story for I cannot do him or the Lakota people justice. I hope you will search him out on the internet. You will be blessed.

When I told him I was nervous about doing my first sweat lodge (in summer, in Florida), he very lightly touched my shoulder and quietly said, “Trust the Creator. You are meant to be here.” At his touch, a calm peacefulness spread through me and I entered the lodge. Those words have carried me through many challenging life experiences. I could easily feel the sacredness of Walter Littlemoon’s path; he helped me understand the sacredness of my own.

Even as I struggle to share something of my experience with him, I hear his sweet voice, “Trust the Creator. You are meant to be here.”

“Here” is wherever I am in the moment, whatever I am experiencing in the moment. “Here” is all that I have been in the past, all that I am in this moment, and all that I will be in the future. “Here” transcends geography, ethnicity, gender, religion, politics. Let this be your meditation today:

TRUST  THE  CREATOR.    YOU  ARE  MEANT  TO  BE  HERE.

In Silence

In Silence I meet and I am immersed in the peace  of my soul.

In the peace of my soul I abide.

I live from my abiding place.

Aum Shanti Aum           Eternal Peace

 

Today Is A Gift

Today is a gift. Please unwrap it gently and open your mind and heart to its many aspects and layers. May you experience this gift with grace, peace,  understanding, and joy. May you be a blessing to each person you encounter for you are sharing that moment with a brother or a sister.  May you  openly and lovingly receive the blessing each person brings to you.  And me these mutual blessings radiate out to our world.

Namaste.

Kindness

May you be as kind to yourself as you are to others.

May your day unfold in peace.

May you know you are Divinely loved and cared for in ways you never dreamed.

May you abide in the Peace of your Soul, in the Oneness of All That Is.

Namaste

No Need For Fear

What is there to be Afraid of?

Pure light is what we are made of.

 

I sit listening to a cd written, performed and recorded by my Soul-brother, Gary Lynn Floyd. It is from a song titled “Pure Light,” from his cd titled “my 88 keys, Vol. 1, unplugged.”

I have nothing to add that would enhance those two lines.

Thank you for reading this. I love you for doing so! Blessings.

True Happiness

True Happiness is found in the ability to give and receive love.

The ability to give and receive love is a Divine gift. It transcends our humanity and defies definition.

It is cultivated in the recesses of the Soul, requiring silence, awareness, and mindful presence.

When experienced, it changes everything and life becomes a divinely human journey.

May you be so blessed today, dear hearts.

As A Child

I grew up raised by color blind parents. One of my best friends in third and fourth grade lived on the other side of the circle when we were stationed at Westover AFB in Massachusetts. I remember going to her home and watching her mother braid her thick, curly black hair. It was beautiful. I asked her if I could touch her hair and it felt like silky cotton. The pomade her mother used smelled wonderful. Once braided, she put her shoes on and off we went to school together. I never once asked about the color of her skin.

In junior high we lived in Montgomery, Alabama and I attended a school in town. Everyone pretty much looked the same, no diversity there. I remember going to a concert with girlfriends downtown. We rode the bus. The entire experience was confusing to me. People of color had to sit in the back of the bus. “They” also used a separate entrance into the theater, a separate water fountain, and there were three bathrooms: Men, Women, Colored. “We” sat on the main floor; “they” sat in the balcony.

High School was spent in Washington D.C. My parents attended many official functions there. Often the event was a dinner dance. One Sunday morning I listened to stories of how much fun they had at the Watergate Hotel. How good the food was and about a lovely couple they met who loved to dance as much as they did. They told me how they would switch partners and others would stop to watch the four of them dance – they were that good! I was excited to hear they had invited this couple to dinner.

I did not give it a second thought when I opened the front door two weeks later to greet our guests. I welcomed this amazing couple in and shook their hands as I introduced myself. My parents joined us in the living room. I had some time alone with our new friends as dinner grew near. It was then that I asked what the gentleman did for a living.  He smiled and said he was the Director of the NAACP in the D.C. Area. I had to ask him what that was. Bless his heart! He had no idea the door he had opened! I had so many questions. Television news was filled with children trying to go to school in the south and being denied entrance. Violence was brewing.

I won’t go into all of the details because you all have things to do. I will say that he and his wife were loving, compassionate people without an ounce of anger or resentment in their minds or hearts. They taught me to live lovingly in the face of hatred and violence. They showed me the heart of God. I knew many people in my private Catholic school and church that talked of a loving God. We prayed regularly in our home. None of us had suffered to the degree of the two people I sat with that night. He held a doctorate and she a master’s degree – in the ’60’s! There was no anger or hatred in them. Months later, when my school bus was stoned and the bus driver told us to get on the floor under the seats, I thought of them and I cried for us and for the kids outside who were so tired of being less than. They didn’t know my Catholic school was integrated. They only knew that most white people hated them for existing.

When I read an article this morning of a KKK parade in N. Carolina, I thought of them and my sweet childhood friend and all of my friends since. We cannot go back there. Love heals and restores and moves us forward. Love goes forward. Love will not lead us back but it may well reveal what is hidden so that illusion and delusion are revealed.

Love will lead us. Love reminds us that to harm another is to harm ourselves.

Today

Each morning I set an intention for my day. Today my intention is:

To live from the Love, Compassion, and Peace of my Soul

I Am Love, Compassion, and Peace in Form

May you be blessed today, knowing that you are loved.

Everything Is One Thing

Some of my earliest memories are of feeling the Divine Presence in nature. My parents grew up on sheep ranches in northern Nevada and animals were always a part of life for them. My dad joined the Army Air Corp just months before Pearl Harbor so I grew up as the daughter of an Air Force pilot. No sheep though once we had a pig for a while. Dad won the costume contest at one of the base functions and Tojo was the prize! We had dogs and we spent most of our recreational hours outside, whether in the yard or camping by a river.

Last night I was reviewing a journal I started last May. A journal that, for some reason, I set aside about six weeks ago. The intention of this particular journal is to list some things from my day that brought me pleasure or joy, that allowed me to give and/or receive love, things that inspired me. One of the entries struck me so sweetly that I would like to share it with you this morning.

May 29, 2016

Pleasure: morning walk,prayer,talking with a squirrel – it sat on a tree very close to me and looked at me for quite some time. I spoke a few words, almost in a whisper and we seemed connected. Then Squirrel took its right front “hand” in a wee fist and touched its chest (heart). It stayed like that looking at me until I did the same and then it brought its hand down and so did I – and we parted. It was so sweet.

I walked on and felt the life force energy of the trees that canopy the streets here. I felt welcomed, known, supported.

Everything Is One Thing. I am not a squirrel and a squirrel is not a human being and yet, for a moment, we were part of the same thing. Different but not separate. Different but not separate.

People think I am so “disciplined” to walk or ride my bike every day. Nope. Discipline has nothing to do with it. Nature is God loving my very Soul, My True Self flourishes when I experience creation, when I feel the Divine in Everything, including myself.

 

U.N. International Day of Peace

Let it begin with me. On 9/11 I invited the students in all of my yoga classes to join me in sending love, comfort, and peace to those directly involved in the attacks, as well as to all of the first responders, families, etc. I kept reminding myself and them that the greatest gift we could send in that moment was the truth of our hearts: Divine Love. In order to do that we had to bring our minds into the moment and breathe into our own love and peace…we were not going to find that outside of ourselves. That is no less true today.

Let it begin with me. Will you join me today as people around the world stop and meditate for peace? Today, September 21, the United Nations invites us. I am inviting you. Keep it simple. Here is an example (you can read & record this on your phone):

Sit comfortably and let your eyes slowly close. Place your hands in a position that brings you peace – palms up on your lap, softly over your heart, or in namaste or prayer position. Become aware of your breath and, as you gently expand it into your chest and abdomen, scan your body releasing surfaces tensions and making adjustments to allow for ease as you sit. Allow your breath to settle into its normal rhythm and bring your awareness to your heart. Soften the belly and feel the spaciousness around your heart. Explore the love and peace that is your true nature and rest in that for several more breaths. Visualize peace as a soft energy that begins to ripple outward from the heart center just as water does when a pebble is dropped into a still pond. Let peace flow outward filling your home, your neighborhood, your city, state, and country. Let peace flow outward in gentle waves to our world, joining the waves of peace emanating out from every person meditating in the world today. Let peace flow outward until our planet is bathed in peace. Continue until you feel complete.

Thank you. Aum shanti shanti shanti. Aum peace peace peace.