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Dave had me spend an entire day doing nothing but observing from early morning to evening. I had to sit in a field all day long without moving my body - he told me just to move my eyes very slowly from side to side.
What was I observing? What direction is the wind coming from? Does that cloud seem to contain any large amounts of moisture? Is it dark on the underside and light on the top? If so, perhaps its going to rain. If you see birds flying, are they circling or going in a straight line? Are they birds flying to where there might be some water? If you're looking for water, perhaps you should head in that direction.
If you don't think observation is all that hard, try to sit still for twenty minutes. If your nose itches, don't scratch it. If your leg cramps, don't stretch it.
These are some of the things you have to content with in observation. It's a far reaching training that enables you to take in a whole situation in seconds.
There didn't have to be any particular significance to all the things I
observed - the point was to not let anything escape my awareness, to
master the difference between looking and seeing.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 57, 59
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Three practices make up the nature awareness phase of the Earth path: stillness, focus, and study.
Stillness requires that you slow down to nature's pace. At least once a week, go to a place full of non-human living things, find a place to sit, and spend at least ten minutes sitting still and noticing everything around you. Relax your body, and turn your attention away from the chatter of thoughts and worries that usually fills your mind. Sit still, watch, listen, and feel.
[…] Try to broaden your awareness - notice sounds, scents, wind, light and shadow, changes in the sky and in the distance around you. Let the world fill your mind and guide it.
[let] your field of vision spread out as wide as possible, instead of focusing tightly on something in front of you. Let your eyes soften and take in everything within your field of vision - to left and right, but also above and below.
Focus [...] involves paying close attention to what you encounter. You can learn this by focusing your mind and senses on the details of specific natural things: a stone, the bark of a tree, a handful of dirt, a pool of water, the crumbling end of a fallen log.
[...] Choose something and spend at least five minutes as close to it as possible, with every sense focused on it. Push aside all other concerns; simply look, listen, smell, and feel.
Study is the third step in expanding your awareness of nature.
Almost any source of information about nature can be useful [...] Paying attention to nature takes on new dimensions when you recognize the birds around you, the cloud types above you, or the varieties of stone and soil beneath your feet.
[John Michael Greer]
The Druidry Handbook, p. 146-8
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Stay Centred
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When we perceive any situation, whether it's an activity, a sport, a fight, or anything else, it's important to be able to observe without getting emotionally involved. When you see someone in great pain, your emotions may want to jump in so you can both have a good cry together - someone who cries with them might help a little, but very little.
You can be of greater help if you are strong enough to lift that person's spirits up and not allow your emotions to get in the way. It's called empathy - you put your mind in that person's situation, but only your mind, while you stand in a safe place and try to bring that person to the same point of safety you are at.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 55
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When we perceive any situation, whether it's an activity, a sport, a fight, or anything else, it's important to be able to observe without getting emotionally involved. When you see someone in great pain, your emotions may want to jump in so you can both have a good cry together - someone who cries with them might help a little, but very little.
You can be of greater help if you are strong enough to lift that person's spirits up and not allow your emotions to get in the way. It's called empathy - you put your mind in that person's situation, but only your mind, while you stand in a safe place and try to bring that person to the same point of safety you are at.
[Bear Heart]
The Wind is My Mother, p. 55
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Sentencing Circles
In traditional court procedures, the accused is brought before a judge, possibly a jury, and legal counsel seeks to establish guilt or innocence and the appropriate remedy.
More recently, the victim or the victim's family has been allowed to offer "victim impact statements", describing the ways in which the crime has affected the individual and his or her relatives.
Traditional courts maintain distance and hierarchy.
In a sentencing circle, the offender, his or her victims, the victim's family, peers, elders and other community members sit down together in a circle and work together to understand what has led to the crime and to negotiate appropriate redress.
Rather than being purely punitive, the circle promotes healing.
Instead of removing the offender from the community and isolating him or her, the circle affirms the essential goodness of the offender, attempting to restore and re-build the offender, the victim, and the community to which they all belong.
Circles: It's about Justice. It's about Healing.
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The sentencing circle is about “community building,” he says; it is about “healing” those affected by crime, and those who committed it. It is repairing relations; making victims and perpetrators “feel better” with the outcome of a criminal incident.
[...] “What social scientist in the last 100 years has said, ‘Gee, punishment changes behaviour’?” Mr. Stuart asks.
Much better, he says, is for criminals to feel their community’s “love.”
[...] “If the judge were to effectively ignore the circle that would be sending a message that we don’t want your opinion on justice matters or that somehow punishment is more important than building community,”
[...] “There’s a basic philosophical question that has to be engaged before you even get involved in sentencing circles and that is what are your primary goals or objectives in sentencing,” says David Paciocco, a law professor at the university of Ottawa.
“It all depends on your perspective on what we’re trying to accomplish when we sentence.”
Sentencing circles appeal to those wanting primarily to reintegrate criminals into their offended community, he says. “If on the other hand you believe that sentencing is a principled exercise designed to express societal revulsion at criminal conduct, or if you believe that proportionality is the underlying consideration in sentencing, then you’re probably going to feel uncomfortable with a regime that’s designed to see how we can move forward rather than respond to what’s happened in the past.”
[...] Supporters of the circles say their strength is that the process reflects a more time-honoured form of justice; it is, Mr. Stuart points out, a community choosing to “roll up its sleeves” in the grandest traditions of civil society, to solve its own problems.
“We’re living now in this la-la land where nobody really participates,” he says. “It’s all done by professionals . . . we’ve outsourced everything.”
'Sentencing circles for aboriginals: Good justice?'
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We believe that the penal code of the old covenant - an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth - has been abrogated by Jesus Christ, and that that under the new convenant the forgiveness instead of the punishment of enemies has been enjoined on all his disciples in all cases whatsoever.
To extort money from enemies, cast them into prison, exile or execute them, is obviously not to forgive but to take retribution.
[Leo Tolstoy]
The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 4-5
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If a person can't do what he or she's s'posed to do - well, they die.
Everybody has to follow his purpose. David is a storyteller and if a storyteller stops telling stories, he stops having his life. Then he dies.
As long as people can keep on doin' what they're s'posed to be doin', they can keep on living.
People are s'posed to be supported so they can do their thing. Without the help of others, no people can carry out their identity - I don't care who they are or what they're s'posed to be doin'.
And if it doesn't need others, then it's not their true identity - not for this world - and they might as well not even be here.
People keep each other alive with support. So if someone is a musician, we ought to listen. If they're a cook, why, you go ahead and eat and tell 'em how that hit the spot, how you needed that.
And if he can't be a storyteller, he'll die. That's the way it works.
[Rolling Thunder, quoted by Doug Boyd]
Mystics, Magicians and Medicine People: Tales of a Wanderer, p. 190-1
A true community begins in the hearts of the people involved. It is not a place of distraction but a place of being. It is not a place where you reform, but a place you go home to. Finding a home is what people in community try and accomplish.
In community it is possible to restore a supportive presence for one another, rather than distrust of one another or competitiveness with one another. The others in community are the reason that one feels the way one feels.
The elder cannot be an elder if there is no community to make him an elder. The young boy cannot feel secure if there is no elder whose silent presence gives him hope in life. The adult cannot be who he is unless there is a strong sense of presence of the other people around.
This interdependency is what I call supportive presence.
[Malidoma Patrice Somé]
Ritual, p. 51
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