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March Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Since my last newsletter, spring has come early to my life. My oldest daughter Nichol and her husband, Nate had a 9 lb. baby boy named Adrien Allen Walla, and my youngest daughter Lisa and her husband, Brian will have their first baby in two weeks. To sweeten my already overflowing pot, my son Thomas got engaged to a wonderful girl named Erica.
Years ago when Milt and I were first starting to produce Oyate (native music series), our first encounter was with a Siletz woman named Aggie. We’d traveled to Oregon to interview her husband, Grant Pilgrim. We were nervous and unsure of how we’d be received (strangers in a strange land) and Aggie met us at the door and said, “Oh, the creator is so good to us—he has sent us just what we asked for.” Later, we discovered Grant was dying of cancer and his family’s greatest wish was to hear him sing once again--and to record that music for later generations.
Aggie’s words, “The Creator is so good to us” have become like a mantra to me and the beginning of 2008 seems even more abundant than usual.
Before Christmas this past year I was feeling grumpy from my overloaded schedule and was whining around (forgetting my mantra). One night I got tired of hearing my own complaints so I sat down and wrote for three pages nonstop listing every single thing I’m grateful for. When I finished, my self-pity had evaporated like mist and rain. It has yet to return.
Today I think I had another lesson in this curriculum of life. I was driving back from Pine Ridge after a long week of classes and plugged in an old cassette tape (we‘ve been doing a lot of sorting and clearing). On the tape a man was talking about shamanism and how we must say “yes” when spirit calls. He kept saying it over and over again. When spirit calls, say yes. When spirit calls, say yes. He jokingly said we put spirit off as if it had gotten a message on an answering machine that says, “Hi, you have reached the body of Alberto. He isn’t in right now but will get back to you as soon as he can.” This made me laugh aloud in the car, and I thought of how often I put off what spirit has asked me to do.
What spirit asks us to do may not always match what we think we should, could, or want most to be doing. As our world unfolds, I feel an urgency that more and more of us need to say “yes” and quit buzzing around empty beehives thinking that is where the honey is.
I was struck by my own ability to put spirit off. I realized that I project my beautiful worlds into fiction and then long to enter those worlds—where rivers, stones, trees, and animals all communicate, where mighty winds blow knowledge into the minds of the forgetful humans. I say yes to writing the stories spirit tells me to write—but then I don’t share them. I keep them as if they “belong” to me.
So, in the midst of my familial abundance, I make a new resolution for this new (but aging) year. I will say yes to spirit by sharing anything I can with others. I’ve already begun but didn’t realize I had. I started a new blog and am posting the equivalent of one of these newsletters several times a week. Sometimes I plunk an old piece of writing that moves me into it—a short story, an essay, a bit of this or that or some entirely new thought. Those of you enjoy my sporadic newsletter, please visit www.jamielee.manykites.org and wander through my posts. You can even register to get the posts sent to you in an email. Please feel free to forward this newsletter (or the blog address) to others.
One story in particular I’ve wanted to share with others is Albert’s Manuscript—the true story of The Wind of a Thousand Years. This short novel tells of one man’s journey to the spirit world and what he learned there about our human state. The story came to me in complete form, and when I tried to do any major editing on it, I couldn’t. For the months of March and April, I’ll send a pdf of this book to any who request it and welcome all comments and thoughts on that story.
In the meantime, what is spirit asking you to do?
The creator is so good to us.
Jamie
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Jamie Lee was awarded a
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