Sweet sleep overtook me and I vividly dreamt reliving all the wonderful and loving moments I have in my memory refreshed. I have a healing, new visage to meditate upon from a moment shared with my Northwest family, about Little D, my grandson, listening to me sing that last song in his cozy, warm Eugene kitchen. 

Therein lies a story waiting to be birthed, told and retold in other hearth homes, other cozy kitchen's everywhere. About newness of things familial, for the healing always gathering, and for the ancient way or the Modern Times we are facing. Creator God is with us (Emmanuel-God with us) always there. He reaches out a loving embrace to whomsoever when and if we listen and believe reminding our spirit/soul of all that is faith and He, Creator God, who is faithful. 

Love, the foundation is all encompassing, blanket like, comforting, soothing, nourishing, healing with an abundant outpouring of Spirit. We in turn, obedient in the Living Word held sacred in story, song or in prayer inside us, lift humbled eyes with fervent gratitude recollecting passionately dream or vision much like the roaring, crashing waves of Pacific waters over salt-sand beaches. 
Through vast, timeless remembrance, foremost, there is Love unquenchable - unfathomable, like my heavenly sent dreaming of Echo Canyon on Cougar Reservoir or the porpoising of native trout entering rivulets that become mountain streams that merge into silty, lake flows.


In another instance of similar quietude, the same dreamtime recalled, I hear the harsh pounding wings of frightened Canadian geese rising on wind currents momentarily slipping the bonds of gravity and floating aloft in uniform formation on unseen curl-lents of seeking hearts, racing childlike with them wishing for other fanciful flights of purity. 
Once more, I impart in word expressing and convene in my own Florida kitchen munching chicken gumbo soup mixed with multi-grain crackers, listening content to rain gently falling on my metal box house top. All the while, Rebelution's CD 'Bright Side of Life' lyrics mesmerize my exuberant-on-fire soul in this blessed season, all about Him! 


I rekindle memory, my week spent in Oregon's embrace/impact; invigorating me in body and spirit. Re-wonderfullizing the mystery of Creator and His enduring Love for His earth children in this Holy Gifting season of "Emmanuel-God!"  
May Creator God's Love, Mercy and abounding Grace continue to nourish, sustain and overflow our lives in these times until Forever reigns!  Haa-wuu D'waa-eh!!


And Yes, a resoundingly Yes, Little D, my Oregon Grandson, if Creator God, the Father so wills, I will come again soon to watch, share and be with you on your continuing journey.  Be happy! Papa's love is right in front of you!

Harold Littlebird (Laguna/Kewa Pueblo) is a nationally recognized potter and singer/songwriter.  He currently resides in Oxford, Florida. 
(Photo by Deborah Littlebird)

Climate change as contemporary civilization is discovering ever more quickly day by day the world over is elusive until the atmospheric shifts appear to manifest as happening suddenly.  Change is a constant.  It is always with us.  Nothing happens suddenly.  Morning is glorious and nightfall arrives to claim its fair portion of every day.  High noon when the sun is directly above illuminates a sense of coming to a halt.  It’s an illusion and only for a moment. Very much like our own human bodies the heavens have been set in motion.  

Every action is significant paced within orbital spheres that move beyond our earthly occupation.  These are known facts gathered piece by piece within the human experience.  They are valuable allowing for the recognition of human souls and connections to a spirit common to everything.  When we are preoccupied, attempting to live, existence over takes us, and we lose our sense of child-like wonder and delight.  Discovery slips past even brushing the surface of our sensitive skin.  We are made for finding one another. Yet our very inventiveness deceives our innermost yearnings.  Who can overcome this inner urge wanting only to make itself known?  Who is it that would strive to become ruler in their fate? Anyone who will learn to listen will find the peace required to enter the realm where that one waits.  

Listen.  It’s the humming in the sound of our breath bringing our heartbeats together, in the endless magnitude, One.  Then, now, all ways, always.    

Marc Choyt's conversation with Larry Littlebird on CSRwire Talkback.  
Marc Choyt is Director of Fair Jewelry Action, an environmental justice and human rights network. He is a journalist and public speaker, covering ethical jewelry and sustainability issues.  Marc was named an honoree for Sustainable Leadership for the state of New Mexico in 2012. 

Marc Choyt: Over the 20 years that Larry and I have known each other, Larry's views as a Native American elder have shifted my perspective. Most recently, I sat down with Larry to discuss climate change. 

Marc Choyt: It is hard, when considering climate change, not to feel hopelessness and grief. Reading the latest news about the polar caps, or polar bears, is almost too much.
Larry Littlebird: We are alive in a time when we are going to have our opportunity to discover choices. The reality is that climate change has been coming for a long time and up until now, many people have been totally unaware.

MC: Isn’t this a result of a breakdown in our relationship to our “relations,” the connection to the web of life that sustains us?
LL: Climate change is the result of Western thought, Western intellect -- which has not been happening very long, in relation to human existence. Our efforts to control the environment are breaking the structure of something that is already so perfect.

Climate change is the Earth’s idea. The Earth is a living being. What are humans going to do with this idea? For the first time, human beings, no matter where we are living, are going to be faced with the same experience. We are all being provided the same opportunity to discover our flesh and bone.

We are all becoming “Indian.” The trauma that indigenous people have faced for thousands of years as “progress” marches “forward” is now slowly becoming collective. We can now confront the shortcomings of the intellectually driven attempt to control life through technology and power.

MC: Is that why we have to get out of our anthropocentrism looking at what is easy, more comfortable, is better for us and instead see benefit in suffering cataclysmic forces, typhoons, tornadoes?
LL: These things are confronting human beings, pounding the human spirit. We can start to feel the collective anguish. Adapting to the Earth’s changes is our greatest opportunity to make choices.

MC: Now, over 80 percent of people in New Mexico and even Texas see the weather extremes resulting from global warming.
LL: Human beings are like scattered seeds. These seeds are sown and they require time. All things, all creation, is given the gift of time and it is endless. That outer protection of a seed has to be softened so that what is alive inside may germinate.

What is alive inside of humans that will bring well-being? It is not all advancement and technological wonders or our man-made sense of intellectual mind. The mark of a true human is compassion. Compassion cannot be conditioned. It is in the seed that was sown from the very beginning. It has to be cared for and nurtured by a culture that brings forth health and well-being.

MC: It seems like at least at certain points, like in the 1960s, there was this attempt to create this counter culture, the hippie culture, summer of love...
LL: In 1959 and 1960 in San Francisco, I was meeting the beat writers, poets, intellectuals immersed in their own history of bards, troubadours. Some were writing in opposition to where things were politically.

I was listening to them and thinking, this is incredible, but what is their action? It was drugs. That became this movement across the country -- you got to get high to have a different view. But most everyone could not speak about a natural high, based on a more intimate relationship with what is natural.

Our natural state is something like pure water. Water, which is what life is formed in. Water, air, earth and then fire. Those elements are what people can learn from.

MC: How can we find a new direction, or home? 
LL: I believe that we are collectively attempting to rediscover this starting over place. One people’s starting over place is all too often very different from another people’s. Whatever you are caught in is greater than you are, but you are in it at the same time and part of it.

The starting-over-place, or what you call home, is discovered in the chaos, when everything is blown apart and you are grabbing at planks -- and finally there is just a relinquishing. You let go. And that is where that first inkling of, “I have to do something” begins.

It is so simple! You are being tossed in this ocean and a wave flips you way up in the air for a moment and you see something in greater trouble than you. Something within you says, “I have to do something.”

The chaos brings you in relationship to a place where all our needs are always met -- a place between what has happened within and the contact with the need that will provide a starting over point.