Eighteen Fifty-Five

BY DAVID NEWTON
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SACRED JOURNEY, Spring 2011

When you are born with the “gift of the gab” you generally have full confidence in your own ability to maneuver in and out of most situations that present themselves.  However, when Janet Haag, Fellowship In Prayer’s executive director, asked me to complete a president’s message for this month’s issue of Sacred Journey, I found myself in one of those narrow places where a quick solution was not apparent.  This quarter’s issue of Sacred Journey is devoted to Native American Prayer and Spirituality and she suggested that in my letter I give some attention to Mother Earth.

Introducing myself in the previous issue I established for readers that I am an observant Jew, born in England, living most of my adult life on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.  My sole exposure to Native American Prayer and Spirituality, other than through Hollywood’s eyes and the paintings of Frederick Remington, was a copy of a manuscript that hung on the wall of my friend Joy’s Manhattan apartment, titled Chief Seattle’s Letter, which was purportedly written to U.S. President Franklin Pierce by a Suquamish chief who lived on the islands of Puget Sound.  The letter included many memorable quotes including:

“Humankind has not woven the web of life.  We are but one thread within it.  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.  All things are bound together.  All things connect.”

“Earth does not belong to us; we belong to earth.”

“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?  The idea is strange to us.  If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?  Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.”

Unfortunately, in spite of the beautiful prose, the letter is not even remotely authentic.  Snopes.com, the final word on urban legends, says that the speech was not written by the very real Chief Seattle in 1855, rather by a Hollywood scriptwriter in 1971.

With my shortcut blocked, I thought about my own Jewish tradition, where there is an abundance of blessings of acknowledgement for God’s creation.  In fact, the name of God mentioned in the opening chapter of Genesis, Elokim (k is inserted in place of an h), has in Hebrew, the same numerical equivalent of 86, as the word Ha-teva, which means nature.  Jews are obliged to thank God for all aspects of the natural world which they occupy for no other reason than God is source of everything, not only spiritual but physical as well.

Before a meal we bless whatever we are about to eat and drink; and following a meal (as a result of the commandment in Deuteronomy 8:10, “You shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God”), we bless the land, the food and Jerusalem.  There are blessings on smelling fragrant shrubs or trees; on smelling herbs, grasses and flowers; on smelling fragrant fruit; on seeing the wonders of nature, such as lightning; on hearing thunder or experiencing a hurricane; on seeing a rainbow; on seeing the ocean; on seeing trees blossoming for the first time in the year; on seeing beautiful scenes of nature and so on.  Every month, we bless the new moon and once every 28 years we bless the cycle of the sun (most recently in 2009).  We bless the seasons, the rain and the dew.

In January of this year my father passed away, coincidentally at the age of 86.  Like many Englishmen he worked hard in creating and sustaining his garden.  It was a place to him of great tranquility and joy.  With enormous pride he surveyed the trees and the bushes, the flowers and the little orchard, the Cherwell River that meandered through the garden, and the water meadow.  His garden was a source of great blessing.

Growing up and spending time in that garden also takes me back to childhood memories of reading the great words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Written in 1855 his poem, The Song of Hiawatha, may more accurately reflect the sentiments of Chief Seattle as well as the purity and simplicity of the Native American’s co-existence with the natural world:

“Ye who love the haunts of Nature, 
Love the sunshine of the meadow, 
Love the shadow of the forest, 
Love the wind among the branches, 
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, 
And the rushing of great rivers 
Through their palisades of pine-trees, 
And the thunder in the mountains, 
Whose innumerable echoes 
Flap like eagles in their eyries;-
Listen to these wild traditions, 
To this Song of Hiawatha!”

I hope you enjoy both the Spring season and what you are about to read in this edition of Sacred Journey.