The Reawakening of the American Tradition

All around me I am witnessing, the rebirth of a new American Tradition. It is time. This dawn is blooming as a result of the seeds once planted by our ancestors. We are so quick to travel hither and thou to find our own roots, and it is my belief that the time is now to stop and rediscover our very foundation. Over the past twenty years we have been busily collecting up the ancient practices of the other tribes throughout the world, and we have had our eyes closed to the very traditions that are our own. Unlike a country like Ireland whose native cultures were destroyed, we have the two hundred plus years of our own makings. It is time we stop to remember what it is that our ancestors shared with us.

I speak this day; because I am standing at the doorway where none of the training I have received is matching my new cosmology. This past weekend sitting with the elders from around the world, I realized simply put that we have arrived at the same gate. In no way am I saying that I have not benefited from the mountain top trainings in Peru, or the long days of chanting my hindu mantra, or sitting in the Lakota Lodge, or any of the teachings. Perhaps they are the foundation of our tradition. This country to me was always the place of refuge and hope. Despite our treatment of the relatives who inhabited this land, our ancestors came here with the belief in a better world where one could dare to dream. So this dream has taken us far from our homes in search of some meaning that we were blind to see in our own gardens and lands. We have been seeking to reclaim our power outside of ourselves, and become our harshest judges, that somehow, somewhere our own culture was less than the other teachings.

We have stood in judgment of our own practices. This past weekend I sat and fully understood my role as a keeper of a new but ancient tradition. We are the keepers of this sacred knowledge. I am one who has done much work and spent many hours seeking the answers that I though lie outside of this time and space. I hayet again I was awakened to the vast knowing inside of me, built from my own struggles and cosmology of the cities and towns where I have lived, been educated, and worked. This journey an hour away from my home made it clear that my own traditions and life has led me to the same agreements with these wise elders. As they spoke my heart sang with joy in this realization that despite our different shoes we had arrived at a very similar place.

Perhaps the one elder who speaks more openly to the corn, had a more refined palate with the subtly of that which lives in and around her, but it is no different than my understanding of the buildings, electronics, and shifts happening within the confines of my village or community. I am returning to these other places their tools, and their systems of living well. In the process of this annyi, I am becoming clear as to our mission, which is to rebuild our own tradition. It is time to speak to our ancestors, to find out what it was that they were thinking at the industrial revolution, or when they invaded the other countries in an effort to maintain peace. Was this not some ideal that they were ultimately defending of our inherent rights to be free. We are so quick to diminish what these ancient ones did for us, but even as seekers we were allowed to seek. This freedom of choice was set down before us as our ceremony to a better world.

Clearly we have been in judgment of ourselves for a very long time. We lived with another/other. The belief that our mysteries were locked up in someone else’s tool box. So desperate for attempt at answers to our own common entrapments, we headed to the highland of the mountains, to gain an understanding of their ways. Not only did we enter onto their lands, but we reinterpreted their method, and terminologies to fit our own chaos. With all respect to the Quero’s there language was only concerned with their villages and their crops. We have extracted that language to fit our own brokenness, and to fix ourselves using their cosmology. However foolish as it may seem, so many of us have failed to use this work as it was intended. As American, we took it home to heal the individual. Yes, we missed the mark again, as it was designed always to heal the community, and the individual was always second. As for so many of these traditions that we borrowed to heal ourselves, and we forgot the healing of our own cosmology and tradition.

For me this means giving back the symbols that do not represent my path any longer. I do it with great respect and honor for the opportunities and education. After watching speaker after speaker, speak to what I already knew; I had realized that I had come home once again to our land and our ways. It is time for our villages, our communities to grow corn. We have the foundation of a constitution that allows us to meld into our healing pots everything our ancestors have brought forward Perhaps this is the fascination we have had traveling to all these distant lands seeking our roots. However we are now standing ready to reclaim our own power. Through the vast technology and experience that we have, it is time to remember that we are a nation who came forth to express our inherent freedoms.

I suspect that somehow the idea that our common welfare should come first got lost in the translation. So my search is now ended, and I am ready to take my place at the council of elders who will come forward to heal this community, this land, and the growing number of displaced individuals who are in need of a common cause. Be it as simple as planting a community garden, but what I did hear this weekend that rang true loud and clear as that we are all one, and we are all here now. So lets put aside all judgments of our fellows and truly grasp the notion that this is our tradition, and we have the inherent right to be where ever we are on the spiritual ladder or not, but we are all in this transformation together, and it is time we remember why it is we are here.