Monday, August 26, 2013

STORY TELLER ~ NOODIN

STORY TELLER ~ NOODIN
 
JAMES BEARD aka Noodin [wind]
                                                                   
I never would have envisioned myself following Native teachings. Not being Native. I really didn’t understand why I was taking that turn in my life. I was a businessman, successful, family and there was no reason for me to walk away from all of that.


From the Summit - Grand Monadnock
As Spirit guided me I came to see that there were answers I was looking for in my life that I wasn’t finding in our modern society. I grew up in the sixties. The fifties and the sixties. I watched the transition of our society of our young people from a people who seemed to be very respectful of their parents and of government and of all things to a people who seemed to think that everything was wrong and they had to change everything. I watched the hippie movement and I was in the service. I watched the Beetles come out and then they grew their hair long, I couldn't believe it. I couldn’t understand why a man would want to wear long hair. I saw values change. I saw women become more loose. I saw a society that didn’t seem to have any respect for anything. I watched drug use become an almost natural daily thing in our society.

I don’t agree with all societies’ rules or all societies’ values or even all of society’s political ways of running the world. As a matter of fact I probably disagree with most of them.  But, in watching, I also watched our cultural structure break down and it has continued to break down over the years to a point that we no longer have that respect of one another. We no longer have that feel that we are all together. We are separated by being of different countries, by being of different languages, by being of different colors, by being of different politics, by being of different religions.


Ojibwe Elder ~ Larry Matrious

What I have come to see through my native teachers is that we are not different because of any of those things. If anything, we are more like one another. We need to look for the similarities rather than look for the differences and then build on the similarities so that we create a strength of oneness and go forward as a better people in this world.

We are only one of the peoples of this world. We two leggeds, we humans. The people of the four leggeds have different tribes too. There’s the deer, there’s the moose, there’s the bear, there’s the wolf and many others. The people of the winged, they have many tribes. The Crane, the Eagle, the Loon. The people of the waters, the finned ones. They also have many tribes as do the tall ones of the forest. All of these people have their own tribes but they are all like us and we are like them. We need to treat them as equals. Not as something that we are charged by some great power to oversee and take care of but as fellow people on this earth and we need to all help each other. We need to look at what all other life does that helps us and look at what we can do to help all other life.

To Native teachings that goes even deeper. Even that stone that is sitting on your desk has life. Even the desk has life. Because all things of creation were given the life and spirit of creator. Creator put life into everything and everything is of the creator. Including us!


Excerpt from: Wisdom of the Wind – interview by Hannah Thomas ~ HeartRising


To read more about Noodin electronically (click) >>> Ebook, IbookNook BookKindle Fire 

To read more about Noodin click on this linkWhite Mocs on the Red Road / Walking Spirit in a Native Way


 

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

WHAT ? I DON'T KNOW !


WISDOM !

Grew up ! Learned lots !

Learning what life is about
My daughter Kathryn's first attempt at standing.
Daughter Kathy ~ 1969


Thought I knew it all ! 


Grew older ! Learned more !



Now I don’t know anything !




Guess I’m getting smarter !












To read more about Noodin click on this link ~ White mocs on the Red Road / Walking Spirit in a Native Way

You can own this book electronically (click) >>> EbookIbookNook BookKindle Fire 

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

For the sake of a little pleasure !



AN OLD TEACHING



Do not be distracted because of little pleasures.  


A number of flies were attracted to a jar of honey which had been overturned in a housekeeper’s room, and placing their feet on it, ate greedily. Their feet, however, became so smeared with the honey that they could not use their wings, nor release themselves, and were suffocated. Just as they were expiring, they exclaimed, “O foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.” 

Pleasure brought with pains, hurts. 

Aesop’s Fables written in B.C. 

Looking around, I think ~ Is this what we have all done? 

Noodin


To read more about Noodin electronically (click) >>> EbookIbookNook Book,Kindle Fire 

To read more about Noodin click on this link ~ White Mocs on the Red Road / Walking Spirit in a Native Way


Thursday, August 1, 2013

EXCELLENT BOOKS FOR SUMMER



UNDERSTANDING HEART 

Three suggested summer readings by my fellow author and good friend, Skye Stephenson. Her novel, The Spirit of Jade, is an excellent guide to connectivity through spirit and a beautiful story line.









"Jade felt herself entering into its heart...which seemed to reach from the center of the Earth to the black expanses of the distant stars. Then she saw nothing, and she became one with all this and more."
Excerpt from The Spirits of Jade (Skye Stephenson author).

Listen to Noodin's interview with Hannah Thomas ~    "Wisdom of the Wind"

 

Information on ~    White Mocs on the Red Road by James B. Beard

 

For updates on programs by Noodin go to ~   Northeast American Cultural Resource Newstream