Tag: cultural story

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Song of the Tribes

Someone shared this poem, by Patricia Monaghan, in a group I facilitate, and I keep reading it over and over again.

The Old Song of the Tribes

The sky draws its curtain
across the season. Any day
now it will snow, curtaining

the footprints in the soft earth
we made today, but any day in this life
or another, if I meet you, the earth’s

pull will be upon us, the mark of the forest
will be on us, indelible handprints, birthmarks.
We will know each other in city or forest,

despite continents and oceans, we will know
each other as much, as little as
we know ourselves, as much as we know

what the mind is, what the body
can be. Amidst
all the changing, our souls will remain
true to each other. The rest can be mist.

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Giving Energy and Paying Attention

There’s a difference between giving your energy to something and paying attention.  It can be hard to distinguish sometimes, since these days there are things screaming at us all the time to “look at me” and “pay attention to me” and so forth.  The media generally does whatever it needs to do to get people to take notice.  It is generally considered a good idea to keep up with what’s going on in the world, to be an informed citizen.  Etc.

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I’ve been struggling with an illness for the last 2-3 weeks – some days I wake up thinking, “oh yeah, today’s the day I’m not going to feel like coughing anymore” just to wake up, like I did this morning, at 3:30am with a cough that was just annoying enough to keep me from sleeping anymore.  I’m really tired, my five year old woke up crabby, and I let my energy go where it wasn’t helpful as I lamented not being able to go for the hike that I wanted to go on today.  The shadows were dark this morning, for myriad reasons.

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