Are You Feeling It?

In the scheme of things, I believe we each get ‘nudges’ from our muse, angel, our higher consciousness, or you even might call them our guides or our ancestors. I don’t judge how you call the source of that little push that directs you to do something beyond what you usually do or believe you are unable to do. The fact is, we all get them. Some of us don’t sense these nudges. Others of us rely on them for life management.

For instance, Emandal’s choir director, Don Willits, felt a nudge when he decided to attend a fund raiser for the legal fund for those arrested at Standing Rock. He invited each of us to consider donating our time for this event. Many of us joined him. Many of the choir then were also educated regarding what this movement represented: the unity of tribes and indigenous peoples all over the world for their treaty rights, clean water, the health of Mother Earth, and the commitment to make this stand a prayerful one.

One of our group was nudged after the November election results to become more active in government affairs. Her first step was to begin educating herself on the issues. She subscribed to the New York Times Newsletter and then found an article about the inception of the Standing Rock movement.

The article is titled, “The Youth Group that Launched a Movement at Standing Rock” by Saul Elbein, January 31, 2017. It details the work of a 19-year-old who for reasons of her own (and that infamous nudge) decided to help her tribe and especially the suicidal teens on the Cheyenne River Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. The article gives voice to the many people who responded to their own nudges and stood in prayer for clean water and to block the contamination of the Missouri River by DAPL.

Bear with me now as I tell you a little bit about the only true story (as I was told it) recounted in my new book, The Spirit Bundle. The abbreviated version of this story is of Martin Charger, a Lakota, who in 1862 gave everything he owned to ransom 2 white women and 6 children from the Santee tribe and return them to the army. He was labeled a fool by his own tribe but stood his ground saying he would do anything he could to preserve peace.

I removed this story after the first draft, but, three months before publication of The Spirit Bundle, I was nudged to place it again in the book. I had been concerned I was breaking confidentiality because I had heard it first as a family story. Then I realized the story was on the internet by both the Charger family and by a descendant of one of the women who had been captured and ransomed. The renditions of the details are different, but the basic story is there.

Can you imagine my surprise when I learned that the young woman who followed her own ‘nudge’ to stand for lost youth and Mother Earth was Jasilyn Charger, a direct descendant of Martin Charger, the man whose warrior society of the Dependables was renamed to the Fool Soldiers? Without the actions of either of these people, in the first place, women and children may never have been returned to their families. In the second place, a group of teenagers might not have had the foresight to stand peacefully for the goals of treaty rights, clean water, and Mother Earth.

All the individuals in this round-about telling of mine moved forward because of a calling or a push. I’m proud to have returned the story to its place in The Spirit Bundle and am humbled by the synchronicity. Each of us has the opportunity to follow a ‘nudge’ that might build a web of compassion and community and possibly carry us through these difficult times.