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MY SUNDAY JOURNAL
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Feature
2-2-03
WHAT IS HOLY?
The great cartoonist Bruce Bledsoe did a super-cool visual support for
an article I wrote about my childhood addiction to nature. It's a
drawing of a young boy watching an anthill.
One Sunday when I was an elementary school child I spent the whole day
watching a hill of ants. I broke bread up into different size lumps to
see how much they could tote into their hole.
Monday morning when mother woke me to go to school I said, "Aw,
shucks. I wanted to finish watching the ants." She said, "That
is as important as anything you could possible learn at school today so
stay home and watch the ants."
Mother's grandfather was a Cherokee. In watching her communion with
nature, I am convinced that racial and cultural values are transmitted
through the genes. I know that I got a good shot of it. It makes me
disappear into the woods listening to the wind, laying on my back and
belly to feel the power of Mother Earth infuse me with energy. It makes
me feed and make homes for birds and bring injured animals into my home
for treatment.
Cats in the house get on my nerves because they are always breaking
things I treasure and their excrement must be the foulest smelling stuff
on this planet. But I have saved many cats from certain death, nurtured
them back to heath, spayed them and found them a home. I cannot help it.
Something deep in my soul tells me all life is sacred. I believe it's
that Cherokee blood.
Cherokee writer Joyce Sequichie Hifler writes, "The Cherokee
believes that whatever the Great Spirit made is holy. A mountain, a
tree, the whispering stream is holy."
One common practice among Indian tribes was the "vision quest"
where the individual goes into the woods and fasts until he/she is given
a vision of their life work or their next assignment in life. Jesus also
practiced this. Look at all His trips into the wilderness and his bouts
with doubts. If He needed to enter isolation, silence his physical
nature for a while and open up his spiritual being, how much more do we
need it?
Until we realize the holiness of the Sacred Thread running through all
life and see it is the same Life that runs through our own being we are
missing the power of connection with other life forms. We are not
savoring the diversity of the creation into which we were born.
Feel the power. Experiment with ways you can contact it. Realize if God
is Life, you can be in constant contact with many expressions of the
Divine. Follow the Thread - even into little anthills.
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