How can we give thanks without guilt?
How can we give thanks without guilt?
Thanksgiving .
What a quandary this is .
In The United States of America there is this tradition made national holiday known as Thanksgiving .
We have been taught for a few hundred years that our "founding fathers " sat down one day and had a great feast which was to honor their long hard fight to become Independent from the restrictive confines of the Mother Land from whence they came ,and having conquered many gruesome battles with the "primitives " of the New Land .
We have been told that these gallant and brave fathers of our's embraced the harvest traditions of the Native people and had a Thanksgiving feast which could not be beat ,.
The Wild People were honored to dine with the ones who took their land and slaughtered so many of their respected elders , women and children - and it was all good.
What a strange twist that the "fore fathers' escaped the stranglehold of the Motherland by blotting out the very nature of the new motherland ,and calling it Freedom.
What we weren't taught in school was that while our brave fathers dined in honor of this new tradition ( new world order ) was that the Natives were kept imprisoned behind a wall while the great feast ensued.
Whose Freedom and what price ?
This is too obvious a question .So much of the native people of North America have been wiped out and along with them their languages ( too many to count ) traditions etc .
There are only certain cities in certain states where you can recognisze a population of native people these days.
It is hard to ignore that most people do not have knowledge of their ancestors .
Each person from every inch of the Earth has a desire to know who they were descended from ,and we tend to glorify or at least be amused by our ancestors even when there are perhaps many unsavory details in their midst , for we all love a good legend.
It is also a fact that people have always travelled and relocated and there is nothing wrong with that .
Through out history numorous circumstances have forced people to leave their homeland in search of something better , sometimes it's wanderlust , curiousity or the feeling that you don't belong in the place where you were born.
Unfortunately . in the "old days " most of the wanderers did not accept people of "less civilized " sensibilities to on the same level as they .
In fact most people who travelled did were not capable or willing to consider that the inhabitants of foreign lands were actually human at all , therefore giving them an excuse to do as they pleased when purusing foreign soil.
This is the downfall and the shame of it all.
The Natives did not give their land or their home willingly to the Europeans.
There were possibilities available for them to come and live here in accordance to the laws of the resident's of North America , but unfortunately history tells the outcome.
In cultures the world over there have been rites of thanksgiving for thousands of years.
In Ancient Europe as well , but we know that these were obliterated by the same Christian people who came to North America and reinvented what it means to give thanks.
The Druids can be likened to the Native Americans , or Mesopatanians , or ancient Italy , Malta , Asian continents and so on.
Thanksgiving was based on reverence for nature , for our birth , for our being granted food and shelter and harmonious weather every day and every year.
The same people who established the Thanksgiving tradition in North America also slaughtered millions of women , and people of non christian beliefs in the motherland before venturing across the Atlantic
I hate to think that I may be descended from any of these people for on a very deep level from a very early age , I have always feared these people.
As it stands at this point in time , countless people on this continent are of mixed blood and many have no idea.
Do we carry the DNA of contradiction and the conflict that that breeds within us ?
I think so.
North Americans are are nation of people with confused identity who so strongly claim to be rugged individuals.
What a predicament.
One thing I can say for sure is that my relationship to nature has been the one thing that has saved me.
Most of my life I felt orphaned and so disconnected from anything that remotely resembled family.
The mere thought or feeling invoked by the idea of family made me physically ill and drowning in unresolved anger and sadness.
Disapointment, Disowned , Despair , Destitute.
In recent years many of these issues of mine have been resolved , to a certain degree and for this I am thankful.
However , what I have to acknowledge ,and I believe this is the case with all people no matter what their background may be , is that we give thanks for those who have struggled and fought for something better .
We must remember that human matter is made up of many the same chemical compounds that makes up everything around us - animals , plants , water , people .
When we give thanks we give thanks for all "our relations".
We are all related .
There is no Good , Evil, Heaven Hell etc.
Death and Birth are a direct result of each other.
Night and Day and all the obvious equations of opposites.
We are SO LUCKY that we have homes, clothing , food , pets and so many things.
More than half of the Earths population do not have these simple things.
Even if we dispise our relatives or can't get along with them - at least we KNOW where we came from and this gives us something to work on.
We can be angry at the mistakes our ancestors made -I sure as hell am !
But we also have the ability to evolve.
Be angry , be passionate , and let those energies fuel your desire to make something better.
To aspire , transform , transpire .
To be idealistic does not need to be a final position.
To idealise is to dream of something which has the possibility to improve - it does not need to be a stagnant state of happy delusion.
This is something to chew on.
An after note : Before it was decided that the eagle would be the country's symbol , it was the turkey which preceded it.
The turkey was an animal sacred to the Indians of Southeastern America.
Turkey was known as the Peace Eagle
Thanksgiving .
What a quandary this is .
In The United States of America there is this tradition made national holiday known as Thanksgiving .
We have been taught for a few hundred years that our "founding fathers " sat down one day and had a great feast which was to honor their long hard fight to become Independent from the restrictive confines of the Mother Land from whence they came ,and having conquered many gruesome battles with the "primitives " of the New Land .
We have been told that these gallant and brave fathers of our's embraced the harvest traditions of the Native people and had a Thanksgiving feast which could not be beat ,.
The Wild People were honored to dine with the ones who took their land and slaughtered so many of their respected elders , women and children - and it was all good.
What a strange twist that the "fore fathers' escaped the stranglehold of the Motherland by blotting out the very nature of the new motherland ,and calling it Freedom.
What we weren't taught in school was that while our brave fathers dined in honor of this new tradition ( new world order ) was that the Natives were kept imprisoned behind a wall while the great feast ensued.
Whose Freedom and what price ?
This is too obvious a question .So much of the native people of North America have been wiped out and along with them their languages ( too many to count ) traditions etc .
There are only certain cities in certain states where you can recognisze a population of native people these days.
It is hard to ignore that most people do not have knowledge of their ancestors .
Each person from every inch of the Earth has a desire to know who they were descended from ,and we tend to glorify or at least be amused by our ancestors even when there are perhaps many unsavory details in their midst , for we all love a good legend.
It is also a fact that people have always travelled and relocated and there is nothing wrong with that .
Through out history numorous circumstances have forced people to leave their homeland in search of something better , sometimes it's wanderlust , curiousity or the feeling that you don't belong in the place where you were born.
Unfortunately . in the "old days " most of the wanderers did not accept people of "less civilized " sensibilities to on the same level as they .
In fact most people who travelled did were not capable or willing to consider that the inhabitants of foreign lands were actually human at all , therefore giving them an excuse to do as they pleased when purusing foreign soil.
This is the downfall and the shame of it all.
The Natives did not give their land or their home willingly to the Europeans.
There were possibilities available for them to come and live here in accordance to the laws of the resident's of North America , but unfortunately history tells the outcome.
In cultures the world over there have been rites of thanksgiving for thousands of years.
In Ancient Europe as well , but we know that these were obliterated by the same Christian people who came to North America and reinvented what it means to give thanks.
The Druids can be likened to the Native Americans , or Mesopatanians , or ancient Italy , Malta , Asian continents and so on.
Thanksgiving was based on reverence for nature , for our birth , for our being granted food and shelter and harmonious weather every day and every year.
The same people who established the Thanksgiving tradition in North America also slaughtered millions of women , and people of non christian beliefs in the motherland before venturing across the Atlantic
I hate to think that I may be descended from any of these people for on a very deep level from a very early age , I have always feared these people.
As it stands at this point in time , countless people on this continent are of mixed blood and many have no idea.
Do we carry the DNA of contradiction and the conflict that that breeds within us ?
I think so.
North Americans are are nation of people with confused identity who so strongly claim to be rugged individuals.
What a predicament.
One thing I can say for sure is that my relationship to nature has been the one thing that has saved me.
Most of my life I felt orphaned and so disconnected from anything that remotely resembled family.
The mere thought or feeling invoked by the idea of family made me physically ill and drowning in unresolved anger and sadness.
Disapointment, Disowned , Despair , Destitute.
In recent years many of these issues of mine have been resolved , to a certain degree and for this I am thankful.
However , what I have to acknowledge ,and I believe this is the case with all people no matter what their background may be , is that we give thanks for those who have struggled and fought for something better .
We must remember that human matter is made up of many the same chemical compounds that makes up everything around us - animals , plants , water , people .
When we give thanks we give thanks for all "our relations".
We are all related .
There is no Good , Evil, Heaven Hell etc.
Death and Birth are a direct result of each other.
Night and Day and all the obvious equations of opposites.
We are SO LUCKY that we have homes, clothing , food , pets and so many things.
More than half of the Earths population do not have these simple things.
Even if we dispise our relatives or can't get along with them - at least we KNOW where we came from and this gives us something to work on.
We can be angry at the mistakes our ancestors made -I sure as hell am !
But we also have the ability to evolve.
Be angry , be passionate , and let those energies fuel your desire to make something better.
To aspire , transform , transpire .
To be idealistic does not need to be a final position.
To idealise is to dream of something which has the possibility to improve - it does not need to be a stagnant state of happy delusion.
This is something to chew on.
An after note : Before it was decided that the eagle would be the country's symbol , it was the turkey which preceded it.
The turkey was an animal sacred to the Indians of Southeastern America.
Turkey was known as the Peace Eagle