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The Wittenberg Center for Alternative Resources Inc
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World Peace & Prayer Day
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A Great Urgency
A Great Urgency
To All World Religious and Spiritual Leaders
My Relatives,
Time has come to speak to the hearts of our Nations and their Leaders. I
ask you
this from the bottom of my heart, to come together from the Spirit
of your Nations in prayer.
We, from the
heart of Turtle Island, have a great message for the World; we
are guided to speak from all the White Animals showing
their sacred color,
which have been signs for us to pray for the sacred life of all things. As
I am sending
this message to you, many Animal Nations are being threatened,
those that swim, those that crawl, those that fly, and
the plant Nations,
eventually all will be affect from the oil disaster in the Gulf.
The dangers we are faced
with at this time are not of spirit. The
catastrophe that has happened with the oil spill which looks like the
bleeding
of Grandmother Earth, is made by human mistakes, mistakes that we
cannot afford to continue to make.
I asked,
as Spiritual Leaders, that we join together, united in prayer with
the whole of our Global Communities. My concern is
these serious issues will
continue to worsen, as a domino effect that our Ancestors have warned us of
in their Prophecies.
I know in my heart there are millions of people that feel our united prayers
for the sake of our Grandmother
Earth are long overdue. I believe we as
Spiritual people must gather ourselves and focus our thoughts and prayers
to
allow the healing of the many wounds that have been inflicted on the Earth.
As we honor the Cycle of Life, let
us call for Prayer circles globally to
assist in healing Grandmother Earth (our Unc¹I Maka).
We ask for
prayers that the oil spill, this bleeding, will stop. That the
winds stay calm to assist in the work. Pray for the people
to be guided in
repairing this mistake, and that we may also seek to live in harmony, as we
make the choice to change
the destructive path we are on.
As we pray, we will fully understand that we are all connected. And that
what we create can have lasting effects on all life.
So let us unite spiritually, All Nations, All Faiths, One
Prayer. Along
with this immediate effort, I also ask to please remember June 21st, World
Peace and Prayer
Day/Honoring Sacred Sites day. Whether it is a natural
site, a temple, a church, a synagogue or just your own sacred
space, let us
make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our
children¹s future
and well-being, and the generations to come.
Onipikte (that we shall live),
Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe
(Wolakota.org)
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For updates follow us on facebook : World Peace and Prayer Day,
Woodstock NY
Dear Ones,
The Earth cries for our help, our prayers our consciousness.
We ask that all who are called
participate in World Peace and Prayer Day June 21 wherever you are for the sake of all our relations, all sentient beings.
The Mid Hudson Valley URI CC will
be hosting an interfaith event in Woodstock NY at St Gregory's Curch from 5 PM to 8 PM.
But wherever you
are please circulate this message from the Keeper of the Pipe and send your prayers for healing. Rev Betsy Stang
The Wittenberg
Center for Alternative Resources Inc
bebird@aol.com
St Gregory's Episcopal Church Garden
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The Great Spirit
Sioux Indian chief calls all nations
to action on June 21
By Juliane Poirier
The leader of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Oyate, the great Sioux
nation, is a
man with a vision. Chief Arvol Looking Horse sees a great danger threatening
"Grandmother Earth"
and a great hope for restoring her wholeness. So he is
calling all nations to prayer of any kind on June 21 in an effort
to return
the planet to balance, the people to spirit. I asked him why this path is
the right path to take.
"A man or a woman without spirit is very dangerous," Looking Horse explained
in a recent phone interview.
According to this Sioux chief, the absence of
spirit is causing suffering everywhere. "We are in a time of survival,"
he
said. "But we don't want to believe it because we have forgotten our
spirits. We have forgotten that Grandmother
Earth has a spirit."
Disconnected souls, according to Looking Horse, are "hurting others without
even
knowing they are hurting others." Those being hurt include animals,
trees and waterways.
The Sioux have
an inclusive worldview, but it was not shared by the
transplanted Europeans who undertook genocide on Indian land, culminating
in
the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890. That final brutality broke the "hoop"
binding Indians together;
however, Sioux prophecy foretold that in a hundred
years the people would be reunited.
Although surviving
tribe members and their descendants were stripped of
religious freedoms (returned to them only 32 year ago by the U.S.
government), the rituals were kept and the prophecy not forgotten. So the
Sioux nations set out on horseback to "mend
the broken hoop" of their nation
in 1986 at a sacred site known to non-Indians (and Close Encounters of the
Third
Kind fans) as Devils Tower or the Great Horn Butte; their ritual went
on for four years and concluded in 1990, 100 years
after Wounded Knee.
During the course of that long ritual, Looking Horse was surprised by a
vision that came
to him of peace and unity that included not only the Indian
nations but all the nations of the world, each gathering
with ritual plants
around sacred fires on every continent. The Sioux chief felt called to
oversee a much broader
mending. But who was going to listen even to the
chief of a people largely ignored in the country where they lived?
"We had to leave our homeland to be a voice in the world," said Looking
Horse. "We are up against
a lot of violence and anger and hatred. We need to
go back to our sacred places and pray about this. In every generation,
there
are changes. But our way of life, our ceremonies, our prayers don't change.
Our sacred sites don't change.
"When the first non-Indian came to this land, our people said, 'What shall
we call this man?' and they called
him Wasicu," he continued. "It means
'takes fat,' which we know today means the white brothers are taking fat
off
Mother Earth. Long ago, when the first nations lived on Turtle Island,
through our prayers and ceremonies, we
maintained harmony and peace, a way
of life where there's no ending, no beginning.
"It's everyday life
for us that we hold Grandmother Earth sacred, we hold
the trees and the plants, everything has a spirit. We need people
to be
really respectful for each other. The Great Spirit put us here all together.
If we're going to survive, we
need to have spirit and compassion. On June 21
we're asking people to go to their sacred places or sacred spaces to pray."
Looking Horse seems surprised to be a global spokesperson for the
environment. "It seems like it was just
yesterday when a woman had no voice
in this country, when our people were fighting for their rights," he said.
"Just a hundred years ago, our people were in concentration camps called
reservations. Our ceremonies were outlawed,
and we were put in boarding
schools. I never thought I would have the opportunity to go to the White
House. Now
today, people all over the world are listening to us."
And here's the message. "On June 21," said
Looking Horse, "shut off the
electricity and let's pray."
To learn more about Chief Arvol Looking
Horse, go to www.wolakota.org.
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We are thankful to the entire community
to supporting this event for all our relations
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