Black Elks Vision- Love Each other- Heal Mother

Healing Ourselves and the Earth.

 

Early on my spiritual path, I read an amazing book called "Black Elk Speaks"

It is a book written about a Oglala Sioux Holy Man. Black Elk, who had visions of healing of the Native peoples and of the Earth by all of us becoming one.

He was revered by his people, and now by people all over the world.

 

It leaves us asking; How can we heal ourselves and the world?

Is it through drama and conflict, or Peace and Love?

 

At the end of the book, he asked to return, before his death to pray on the spot where his original visions came.

 

Let's not let the vision die.

 

 Our thought of the day the authors postscript from

Black Elk Speaks by John G Neihardt

 

Here is the thought for the day

 

 So the trip to Harney Peak was arranged, and a few days later we were there. On the way up to the summit, Black Elk remarked to his son, Ben: "Something should happen to-day. If I have any power left, the thunder beings of the west should hear me when I send a voice, and there should be at least a little thunder and a little rain. " What happened is, of course, related to Wasichu readers as being merely a more or less striking coincidence.

It was a bright and cloudless day, and after we had reached the summit the sky was perfectly clear. It was a season of drouth, one of the worst in the memory of the old men. The sky remained clear until about the conclusion of the ceremony.
    "Right over there, " said Black Elk, indicating a point of rock, "is where I stood in my vision, but the hoop of the world about me was different, for what I saw was in the spirit."
    Having dressed and painted himself as he was in his great Vision, he faced the west, holding the sacred pipe before him in his right hand.

Then he sent forth a voice; and a thin, pathetic voice it seemed in that vast space around us:
    "Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey!

Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer.

All things belong to you--the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live.

You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other.

The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross; and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.
"Therefore I am sending a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.
"You have said to me, when I was still young and could hope, that in difficulty I should send a voice four times, once for each quarter of the earth, and you would hear me.
"To-day I send a voice for a people in despair.
"You have given me a sacred pipe, and through this I should make my offering.

You see it now.
"From the west, you have given me the cup of living water and the sacred bow, the power to make live and to destroy.

You have given me a sacred wind and the herb from where the white giant lives-- the cleansing power and the healing.

The daybreak star and the pipe, you have given from the east; and from the south, the nation's sacred hoop and the tree that was to bloom.

To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother--and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to me and I have seen.

At the center of this sacred hoop you have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
"With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather--with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed.

A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!
"Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.

Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds.

Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old.

Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree! "

    We who listened now noted that thin clouds had gathered about us. A scant chill rain began to fall and there was low, muttering thunder without lightning. With tears running down his cheeks, the old man raised his voice to a thin high wail, and chanted:

"In sorrow I am sending a feeble voice, O Six Powers of the World. Hear me in my sorrow, for I may never call again. O make my people live!"
    For some minutes the old man stood silent, with face uplifted, weeping in the drizzling rain.
In a little while the sky was clear again.

 

Namaste,

Marianne Goldweber