Rattling the Bones

In the ‘90’s the trend of telling our children “not to talk to strangers” had just started.  My husband and I actually questioned it for years before cautioning our kids and even then, it was always with a big story attached and a reminder that we weren’t born on this planet just to hide in a hole.  “Keep your wits about yourself,” we’d say, “and listen to the dreaming, listen to your gut.”  At our house, we have often had these kinds of conversations.  The kind that starts with “wait a minute” and “is it absolutely necessary.”  With time you notice things change, and the factors are never the same.   We don’t live in my parents’ world anymore where families lived in the neighbourhood for generations and it was OK to treat the neighbour’s kids as your own.  Today, most people move every 3 to 5 years and you never know if the nice man next door won’t be the kind to make a move on your daughter after she’s babysat his ki...

QUESTION PERIOD. With Ted Jauw. I regularly ask people for blog entry suggestions.  TJ – left this message on our Facebook page in early spring: “ There used to be a village shaman. Do you see it becoming more democratized? Each our own shaman? Do you see the 'medicine wheels' of the world coming together? Overlaying? Or interacting? What do your elders say about these times and (as there become fewer of them) is there any urgency to further share what they know and add to what you already put forward? As media creates a new collective consciousness (movies for instance) do you see a change in the language of dreams? Perhaps compared to oral tradition. Can you talk about the pipe? It's relation to dreaming? I'm fascinated by the use of common items that are now elevated to sacred. Marriage baskets, pipes, fans, etc. perhaps because we don't use them for their original mundane purposes? Does your tradition have a clown...