The author of the nationally beloved inspirational column Think on These Things offers a book of daily meditations drawn from her own rich Cherokee heritage and that of other tribes. Joyce Sequichie Hifler presents readings for each day of the year from Una la ta nee'--the cold Month, January-- to U Ski' Ya, the Snow Month of December. Each provides insights expressed both in English and in Cherokee, and germs of Native wisdom recorded in the words of Native speakers. This little treasury is for readers of all fauths, and for those seeking faith.
In this charming collection of brief essays, Hifler pays tribute to the simple blessings of daily life and shares the lessons she learned from those who nurtured her during her childhood in Cherokee County. In each small piece, she reflects upon a memory or incident from which she extracts fresh meaning. Planting beans, for instance, prompts a meditation on the unending story of creation.
Explains the ancient astrological system sacred to the Cherokee and how to use it in the modern world • Provides easy-to-use format for determining what signs and numbers rule the day of your birth and what influence they have on your destiny • Includes a traditional Cherokee ephemeris through 2015 An essential aspect of Cherokee religion is the belief that everything on Earth is the reflection of a star. This includes not only people and animals but also trees, rivers, stones, and mountains--all sentient beings to the Cherokee. Astrology has always played a strong role in the Cherokee tradition because of this belief, but unlike our Western system of astrology, Cherokee astrology is based on a 260-day Venus calendar, which includes 20 individual day signs and 13 numbers. It was the task of the Cherokee daykeeper to coordinate this calendar with those of the Sun and the Moon to determine the most auspicious times for ceremonies as well as to understand the star wisdom carried back to Earth by each newborn child. The day sign of a child explains his or her strengths and weaknesses; the number explains the individual’s role in the great cosmic scheme. Raven Hail, an elder of the Cherokee nation, provides insightful descriptions for each of the twenty signs that identify characteristics of those born under a particular day sign and gives the meanings of the thirteen numbers that determine the significance of that sign in the larger scheme of life. The author has translated the traditional Cherokee ephemeris into an easy-to-use format that allows readers to quickly determine which sign rules the day of their birth and which number has influence over it.
Revised and back in print is a much-loved inspirational book which sold over 75,000 in its first edition, by the author of the nationally-syndicated column "Think on These Things". Hifler brings to her writing a natural spirituality that happily blends both her Christian and Cherokee backgrounds.
Winner of the American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Awards, Best Picture Book. Trickster Coyote is having his friends over for a festive solstice get-together in the woods when a little girl comes by unexpectedly. She leads the party-goers through the snowy woods to a shopping mall -- a place they have never seen before. Coyote gleefully shops with abandon, only to discover that fi lling your shopping cart with goodies is not quite the same thing as actually paying for them. The trickster is tricked and goes back to his cabin in the woods -- somewhat subdued -- though nothing can keep Coyote down for long. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.4 Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
126 myths: sacred stories, animal myths, local legends, many more. Plus background on Cherokee history, notes on the myths and parallels. Features 20 maps and illustrations.
Intelligent and deeply felt, Feast Days follows a young wife who relocates with her financier husband to São Paulo -- a South American megacity that impresses and unsettles, conceals and erupts. Here in her new home, she reckons with the twenty-first century as she encounters crime, protests, refugees gentrification, and the collision of art and commerce, while confronting the crisis slowly building inside her own marriage. In stylish prose and with piercing wit, Ian MacKenzie tells the story of Emma, a young woman who has moved from New York to Brazil just as massive demonstrations against the government are breaking out across the country amid growing economic inequality. Emma has come to Brazil for her husband's career, with no job prospects of her own, a weak grasp of the language, and a deep ambivalence about having a child. Her early days in Sao Paulo are listless but privileged; she dines at high-end restaurants, tutors wealthy Brazilians in English, and observes the city she now calls home. But when Emma volunteers at a local church to assist refugees and grows more deeply connected to the people she meets in the course of her days, she finds herself unable to resist the tug of Sao Paulo's political and social unrest. As the country moves seemingly closer to a breaking point, so does Emma's marriage, as she and her husband can no longer ignore the silent, tectonic shifts beneath the surface of their relationship. Feast Days is a sharply observed story of expatriate life, as well as a meditation on the hidden costs of modern living and how easily our belief systems can collapse around us. "Devastating, funny and wise, it's among the best novels I know about the fate of American innocence abroad."-Garth Greenwell
