H2O Man - Water Man Spouts - 9/7/05: A Change of Worlds .....

[im10ashus]

"Your God is not our God. We are two distinct races with separate orgins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us. To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is sacred ground. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems; and it is written in the hearts of our people.

Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the white man whose God walked and talked with him as friend with friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.

Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. The very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footstep than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet the shadowy returning spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall become a myth among the white men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds."
-- Seathl (a.k.a. Seattle) Dwamish chief, Washington Territory, 1854

posted by Patrick O'Waterman @ 8:44 AM

http://h2oman.blogspot.com/

[JuniperLea]

1. Gotta love the Animists

Everything connected; every thing has a soul and is meant to be and has a purpose.

Good stuff.

[leftchick]

2. beautiful

and heartbreakingly hopeful at the same time.

3. ancestors

America is filled with the spirits of the first peoples who lived here (and still do). There are many earth mounds built by the Indians here in Wisconsin where they buried their ancestors. It is kind of eerie to walk around them. I wonder how these Indian spirits affect the people who live here now. It seems the puritan spirit has a tight grip on America. I also think different peoples have their own journeys, though we are intertwined in some ways. I hope all of those black people who have died in the hurricane have ancestors greeting them and comforting them on the other side.

[Me.]

4. Not Surprised

that a Waterman would come up with something like this.

[Me.]

5. kick

maybe there is space for this amid all the rage

[H2O Man]

6. A still small voice?

Wouldn't that require pushing some of the rage aside?

[Me.]

7. Might

Though, as I still can't stop myself from raging against the dying of the light, I may not be the one to judge.

[H2O Man]

8. Though we may at times

feel we are raging alone in the wilderness, the light is still there.

[Me.]

9. True

Nice to have it confirmed for my clouded eyes

[im10ashus]

10. We need to push aside some of the rage...

in order to see more clearly. Your words never fail to inspire me to a higher level of learning and that's what we should all aspire to. One thing that irritates me is how our focus, or lack thereof, is easily distorted.