I Will Follow The Sun

This writing is from several years ago and comes from my journal.  As I read it, I once again felt the emotions from that day.

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 I was away at a funeral for my Uncle.  My Aunt and Uncle were a constant in my life from when I was born.  As their children were born, they too, became a constant in our family.  

While I was sitting in the service, I was thinking how different life is now that my Uncle is gone.  My Dad predeceased my Uncle by three years.  They were good friends, and did several things a week together.  After Dad died, my Uncle became more important because he was the Elder of our family.

My Uncle’s interment happened late in the day, around the time he would go to do chores when he was still farming.  He always wanted to get the chores done before the Sun set, and he started chores just after sunrise.  Lunch was always at noon, when the sun was high.  We actually could set our watches by what my Uncle was doing.

I realized as we were sitting through the last prayer in the service, that my Uncle was very much in touch with Nature.  I thought about all the changes that he had seen – he was 92 – and how he kept in stride with what was going on with agriculture, even though he did not have to “mind the farm” for many years because his sons and grandsons now are the caretakers of the land.  

I thought about all the times he pulled all of the kids on the toboggan behind the old truck so we could fly down the ditch through the snow.  I thought about him hiding Easter eggs in their yard for all of us to find, and their old black retriever finding most of the candy and eating it before we got out there.  I thought about all the Christmases and Easters and birthdays and Sundays that we spent at one another’s houses, having wonderful meals and telling stories, and being family.  I remember how he always checked the weather, and then compared it to the Farmer’s Almanac.  I think this is a good song for him.

I’ll Follow The Sun

One day you'll look to see I've gone
For tomorrow may rain,
so I'll follow the sun
Some day you'll know I was the one
But tomorrow may rain,
so I'll follow the sun
And now the time has come
and, my love, I must go
And though I lose a friend
In the end you will know, oh
One day you'll find that I have gone
But tomorrow may rain,
so I'll follow the sun
But tomorrow may rain,
so I'll follow the sun
And now the time has come
and, my love, I must go
And though I lose a friend
In the end you will know, oh
One day you'll find that I have gone
But tomorrow may rain,
so I'll follow the sun.

-Written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon

Blessings,

Judy

Caring For Our Own

 Picture of illness from Microsoft Clip Art

In our Ancestors’ days, when someone became ill, the family cared for that person.  Usually, there were several families, (mother, father, children) living under the same roof, with grandparents or elderly aunts and uncles.  That meant that there would usually be someone available to do some healing and caretaking.  As well, someone in the family, or someone within walking distance, had a knowledge of herbs and would probably know the herbs required to speed up the healing.

The person with the healing knowledge was usually considered a shaman, medicine man or women, healer, or witch man or woman.  Note that in Roman and Celtic languages, the old meaning of witch was “one who knew of the earth”, or someone who knew about what grew and what was helpful.

In extreme cases of illness, families might pilgrimage, with the sick one, to a well known healer, or to a sacred shrine, to ask for healing from a particular god or goddess or saint or from Christ.  Now things have changed.  The healer that we go to is a doctor and the pilgrimage is to a hospital.  Seldom do we care for our own – we are all busy, with jobs, and cannot care for someone on a 24 x 7 schedule.  We trust others to care for them, and then are outraged when abuses take place, for example, as in abuse of the elderly in care homes.  

Instead of natural herbs being cooked and made into teas or salves or poultices, our ill are given synthetic products, in large quantities. The drugs react to each other, in many cases, and possibly are toxic to each other.  Unlike the healer/herbalist, the doctors getting samples and products from the drug companies may not know what the ingredients and the side effects are.

Why did we get to this place of not being able to care for our own? There are five reasons:

1. as the practice of medicine developed, people were taught that only doctors knew enough about the body to treat the body, and that people who used natural remedies were con artists.
2. as the industrial society required more people to work in factories or in other labour positions, people were taken out of their homes on a daily basis, and there was no one at home to care for others.
3. this problem of being out of the home increased through World War I and II, and because so many young men (and women) were killed in the wars, created a gap where there were not any children left to care for elderly parents. This created small nursing homes to care for injured and elderly people, left without family.
4. in the rebuilding of countries, through the fifties, sixties, and seventies, all able bodied people were needed to be in the work force.  Corporations were replacing “mom and pop” shops. Women were increasingly taking on what were deemed "male” jobs. Soon babysitters were required for children, and day-cares became the norm.
5. entrepreneurs, always watching for a service niche, realized that there was a market opportunity to care for children, the ill, and the elderly.  Hospitals with a dollar agenda became big business, as did personal care homes, and education.  Pharmaceutical companies grew up around the “illness” industry, for there is not the same amount of money or annuity in the “wellness” industry.

No, this does not make us bad people.  It does show how we have been manipulated by circumstances and by those looking to profit from those circumstances.  Perhaps it is time to take our power back!

Blessings,

Judy 

Beaver Traits

Beavers have been around for a very long time.  We see them from time to time at dusk in the Bow River.  I find them fascinating because they are caretakers of the Earth and water managers.

Beaver was sitting across the channel, on the bank, looking for some tender young trees and, keeping an eye on the dogs and on me.  Beaver has been in this channel for about four years.  She has created several good dams, and she has helped change the eco system of the channel and the river.  The channel now has young trout in it.

Beaver has some traits that humans can use.  They are:

• when you see water that is stagnant and mucky, find a way to clean it up.  You may have to get dirty to do it; it will be worth it. 
• being industrious leads you to discover new ways of doing things.  So, be busy when it is required – as when you need to fix your den, the dam, or gather food for winter.  When you are not busy, play and socialize. 
• when somebody says that “it can’t be done”, go ahead and do it anyway.  See the picture below of the world’s biggest beaver dam.

  

  

The dam is located on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park in Northern Alberta, Canada Photo: BNPS 

 

 

• understand that there is a shortage of fresh water.  Beavers know how to maximize fresh water and aerate it to create a healthy environment for fish and wildlife.

Many blessings,

Judy

Myth and Religion

  

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.  James Feibleman

I was contemplating the mystery of faith in my meditation, and did not reach any conclusions.  Then, I saw this quote, and it was like a telescope coming into focus for me.  The reason that we are going through such interesting times are that we are in the process of creating a new myth – Christianity At Work; Judaism at work; Muslim at work, etc. – and that while many people are done with all of these, and are ready to move on, enough people are still trying to make them real that the myth is still  being created.  The Greeks must have felt like this when the people were still hanging on to the Oracle of Delphi.

This is a time of coming to balance.  A time of righting wrongs.  It is a time when Nature asks us to believe in her and to become the caretakers of Earth.

Many Blessings,

Judy