Saga Quotes

Saga is a term that refers to female Sages, wise women.  It is also a word that derives from the Finnish meaning "a long story".   Couldn't resist posting two of my  favorite quotes by  my favorite Sagas.............

Remembering Peace Pilgrim

Peace Pilgrim was truly an American saint, and it is good to know and remember  in these cynical times that there are people like her in the world.  

Remembering Peace Pilgrim - An American Sage

 At age 44, Mildred Norman left her life in California and became Peace Pilgrim -- walking coast to coast for peace, living on faith, and sharing her wisdom and exhuberance generously with people across the land. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years. On July 7, 1981, while being driven to a speaking engagement in Indiana, Peace Pilgrim was killed in an automobile accident. At the time of her death, she was crossing the United States for the seventh time. Below is a 60-minute documentary about her life and message, which  includes are interviews with the  Dalai Lama, Maya Angelou, John Robbins, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and many of Peace Pilgrim's friends, along with newsreel footage from the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's.

Peace Pilgrim:  An American Sage Who Walked Her Talk

  

"The second relinquishment is the relinquishment of the feeling of separateness. We begin feeling very separate and judging everything as it relates to us, as though we were the center of the universe. In reality, of course, we are all cells in the body of humanity. We are not separate from our fellow humans. The whole thing is a totality. From that higher viewpoint there becomes just one realistic way to work, and that is for the good of the whole. As long as you work for your selfish little self, you're just one cell against all those other cells, and you're way out of harmony."

Peace Pilgrim, in 1953, at the height of nuclear armament, took a vow to walk for Peace until all of humanity could live in peace. In her own words,

"I felt guided or called or motivated to begin my pilgrimage for peace in the world - a journey undertaken traditionally. The tradition of pilgrimage is a journey undertaken on foot and on faith, prayerfully and as an opportunity to contact people. I wear a lettered tunic in order to contact people. It says 'PEACE PILGRIM' on the front. I feel that's my name now - it emphasizes my mission instead of me. And on the back it says '25,000 MILES ON FOOT FOR PEACE.' The purpose of the tunic is merely to make contacts for me. Constantly as I walk along the highways and through the cities, people approach me and I have a chance to talk with them about peace.

I have walked 25,000 miles as a penniless pilgrim. I own only what I wear and what I carry in my pockets. I belong to no organization. I have said that I will walk until given shelter and fast until given food, remaining a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace. And I can truthfully tell you that without ever asking for anything, I have been supplied with everything needed for my journey, which shows you how good people really are."

With nothing but the clothes on her back, she devoted her life to becoming "a walking prayer" for peace.  

Q: Do you work for a living?

 
A:  I work for my living in an unusual way. I give what I can through thoughts and words and deeds to those whose lives I touch and to humanity. In return I accept what people want to give, but I do not ask. They are blessed by their giving and I am blessed by my giving.

Q: Why don't you accept money?

 
A: Because I talk about spiritual truth, and spiritual truth should never be sold - those who sell it injure themselves spiritually. The money that comes in the mail - without being solicited - I do not use for myself; I use it for printing and postage. Those who attempt to buy spiritual truth are trying to get it before they are ready. In this wonderfully well-ordered universe, when they are ready, it will be given.

https://youtu.be/6ySs2rLcPhU

A Year Ago.........

My mother passed away exactly a year ago, and my brother six months before that.   I took this picture of their chairs, in the place where they both used to like to sit and watch the sunset.   I miss them.

Too Brilliant, too true, and too funny Australian Look at Corporate Ethics..............

On the eve of the TPP passing and all those suits with pens signing away the future for more unlimited greed,  slave labor in China and Bangladesh, and disposible plastic gee gaws and "instant fashion" for us, this marvelous satire of the coal industry's executives in Australia is true of more than just that country.

https://youtu.be/tqXzAUaTUSc




***and, well, I couldn't help but throw in John Oliver as a Post Script.

Homeric Hymn to Mother Earth

from "Numina - Our Changing Earth", a play by Ann Waters

To Earth the Mother of All

I will sing of the well-founded Earth,

mother of all, eldest of all beings.

She feeds all creatures that are in the world,

all that go upon the goodly land,

all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly;

all these are fed of her store.

Through you, O Queen, we are blessed

In our children, and in our harvest

and to you we owe our lives.

Happy are we who you delight to honor!

We have all things abundantly:

our houses are filled with good things,

our cities are orderly,

our sons exult with feverish delight.

(May they take no delight in war)

Our daughters with flower-laden hands

play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field.

(May they seek peace for all peoples)

Thus it is for those whom you honor,

O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!

Hail Earth, mother of the gods,

freely bestow upon us for this our song

that cheers and soothes the heart!

(May we seek peace for all peoples of the well-founded earth)

Homeric Hymn XXX,

adapted by Elizabeth Roberts

Midwives

Ancestral Midwives (2013)

I was thinking of my friend Lorie, who provided the hands for this sculpture.  Lorie retired just a few years ago from a long career as a midwife in Pittsburgh, and when I asked to cast her hands she assumed this pose, which she told me is a hand gesture used to symbolize midwifery.   To have spent so many years bringing new life into the world! 

"Numinous".......Personal Icons

She will rust us with blossom

She will seal us with Her seed.

Robin Williamson

The first deities of Rome were agricultural.
Before they became an empire or adopted Greek mythologies, the Romans called their deities  "numen",  which roughly translated meant "spirits of place", the "mind of place". These early deities included Pomona, goddess of the Orchards, and many other local deities concerned with the well being of trees, springs, deer, rivers. and caves.

I've been looking at many of my personal "Icons" lately, and I realize that, like the early Romans, so many of them are about the Numinous in nature, the felt prescence, the the intelligence and conversation experienced in the garden, or at the top of a mountain for that matter as well.  My  personal Icons return always  to the intelligence of nature, the "numinous".  


When I was younger  I remember  conversations I had with beaches and stones and butterflies, the world was full of Talismans to be found and treasured, magical signs and portents.  There are still places I can go, where those  mysterious voices are heard.  The divine is beneath our feet, in the roots, the cracks, the dragon trails of wind and rain moving across the expressive faces of the day.

In the past I was fascinated with the ubiquitous "hand and eye" symbols found among the prehistoric  peoples of early America, the mysterious Mound Builders.  Also exploring in my art the equally ubiquitous stories of the Great Weaver, the Spider Woman, I began making hands with eyes myself, and called my project "Spider Woman's Hands".    The  eyes mean to me that immanent presence and intelligence in nature.  The eye in the hand also means to me, personally, the divine manifesting and creating in this world, through all natural processes, and through the works of our hands as well.  

And the roots are the Web, the sustanence and interdependancy that unites us with all Beings of the Earth.   The Body of the World, our Body.  
  

16 million tons of rain
are falling every second

on the planet,
an ocean
perpetually falling
and every drop
is your body
every motion, every feather,
 every thought

is your body

time is your body

every leaf, every river,
every animal,
your body

Drew Dellinger