What Is My Place In the Midst of the Fires?

As I watch the fires in the great Northwest and hear of floods in my home state of Texas, I am aware of our changing earth, and I can only imagine what these changes mean.

My husband, an engineer, says, philosophically--"Things will be different." And, in my mind that is the way it has always been--only now things are different, faster.

As a grandmother, a mother, a woman, concerned citizen of this earth, I know it matters that I keep myself steady in the midst of these changes--standing firm and awake, with my heart open to the message Mother Earth is sending.

There is action to be taken--our response to this climate change. And, as the Council of Grandmothers suggests, this is also a time to connect ourselves with our "ancestral ways of prayer". These indigenous women gather with their traditions. My much more recent ancestors are Southern Baptist, but as a friend of mine once said (and I paraphrase)... "The aiyee-ya-ya-ya sounds of our Native brothers and sisters are strangely similar to the old Baptist hymns we sang as children...."

The fires are here, encroaching upon beautiful Montana, and I join these Native Grandmothers in the prayer of our collective ancestors.

We, the International Council of Thirteen
Indigenous
Grandmothers, believe that our ancestral ways of prayer,
peacemaking
and healing are vitally needed today. We come together to
nurture,
educate and
train our children. We come together to uphold the
practice
of our ceremonies
and affirm the right to use our plant medicines
free
of legal restriction. We
come together to protect the lands where our
peoples live and upon which our
cultures depend, to safeguard the
collective
heritage of traditional medicines,
and to defend the earth
Herself. We
believe that the teachings of our ancestors
will light our way
through an uncertain future