Books, books, books

I met a dear friend for lunch today. In fact she was my companion at Manchester Community College's Mishi-maya-gat Spoken Word & Music Series in 2007 where we both gave readings to a captive audience. Our enjoyable lunch lasted from 1:00 until past 3:30. We spoke of where we are in our writing careers and our lives and made plans to organize a reunion gathering of our former teacher and our classmates. After lunch I went to Borders Books because I had a 33% off coupon and a $25 gift card that I won in a raffle at CAPA-U in May. My intent was to find books pertaining to either Native American Studies or Montana travel guides. My plan is to volunteer for a Red Feather build next summer. What I instead found myself drawn to was Native American Spirituality. I discovered the following books:

1 - 365 Days of Walking the Red Road by Terri Jean - a book of inspirational quotations
2 - Native American Wisdom by Kent Nerburn and Louise Mengelkoch - a book of random quotations
3 - The Wisdom of the Native Americans by Kent Nerburn - a book of words to live by
4 - Indian Spirit by Michael Oren Fitzgerald and Judith Fitzgerald - pictures of great Native Americans and their words
5 - Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt - the premier Native American book widely hailed as a religious classic. Black Elk is considered a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux.

I will take the best excerpts from these books and post them weekly to my blog. The quotes are classic, in-depth revelations of how we as a society should behave toward ourselves, toward other creatures in the world, and toward Mother Earth herself. For without wisdom, compassion, love, and understanding, what are we?