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Jess Mahler's avatar

I loaned my copy of Heschel's Sabbath to Michon. When ze returns is it, I think I need to sit down w/ the prologue of that and this post and read them together. I feel like there is some connection between the Jewish idea that things of space matter only in that they allow us to better experience/celebrate/use time and the 'things' of time (actions and experiences) and this indigenous reciprocity/network. The reciprocity is ultimately a process of action, it exists in time, though it may use things of space. For both, physical things can be a tool to facilitate what is truly important...

Yeah, I need to sit with this. Both for myself, and because I can see angles here to help radicalize some of my fellow Jews.

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Jess Mahler's avatar

Rambling, yes, but still covers a lot of ground fairly coherently. Thank you.

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emsenn's avatar

You're welcome! I'm excited because I just got an email from a friend south of us explaining a bit about how this language is used in their part of the world!

I didn't feel there was a good place to include it in the newsletter, but here's a poem written by Rainy Dawn Oritiz, the daughter of the incumbent poet laurate.

More Than Something Else

Something Else.

Some one else

Some where else

That place is here,

In my home,

We are here.

I am brown,

Brown hair,

Brown eyes,

Like cookies Feather tells me, and I like to think it’s perfectly cooked Pueblo cookies.

My kids are something else,

9 different shades of brown,

All beautiful.

My grandkids are something else,

4 brown eyes, 2 blue eyes,

All Native,

Definitely something else, as I watch them be rowdy, be loving, be here in this world.

We are here

On this earth

In this time and place

In our homes,

On our lands,

In the cities,

With our families, laughing loudly, cooking together, protecting each other.

We are something else

With our songs

Our dances.

We pray with corn meal,

Eagle feathers,

Medicine bundles,

Burn some sage, make sure to acknowledge the four directions, as the sun comes up.

We are the something else,

Who were here,

To greet Christopher Columbus

We were born from

This earth,

Crawled out of the center,

Of our mothers womb, we are important, we are strong.

We are something else,

We are Pueblo people, Plains people, Forest People, Desert people, Nomadic people, Cliff dwellers, Ocean fishers, Lake and river fishers, hunters,, medicine collectors, horse riders, artists, speakers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we are human beings.

We are something else,

We are Native People,

Indigenous to this land.

We are a proud,

Something else.

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