The Four Worlds International Institute

Hello to all, Since I use the term "Sacred Circle" frequently perhaps I should clarify what Sacred Circle means to me. Every circle has a center. For me the Great Spirit, God, Wakan Tanka, or whatever you call the creator, is the center of the Sacred Circle. To me the circle is composed of individuals whose vision- aim--goal, is unity, justice, love, and peace for all of creation.I believe the Sacred Circle is a part of a bigger circle of life. I don't feel that being in the Sacred Circle we are separate from creation nor are we elite or better than anyone else. I believe every individual is unique in there own way. We are just people working and praying for the same goals. It is said "there is strength in numbers" and I believe a group of individuals praying for the same things are stronger than an individual prayer; although I know individual prayers are heard as well.
I would welcome knowing any other meanings of the Sacred Circle if you would share them with me.
Velma .

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Comment by Ellie Brooks-Derzay on August 3, 2010 at 8:35am
I read this yesterday. It's a little long, but worth the read.....
The wisdom tree
Sometimes the place where you used to find wisdom gets destroyed.
By Meg Barnhouse
8.2.10
…He would bring his class to sit under a large oak tree out on the quad, and the conversation would range over history, philosophy, and theology. Summer after summer folks would look forward to that class, to sitting under what they came to call “the wisdom tree.”… One summer night, during the church camp, a storm came through. As the people slept, winds and rain whipped the campus. Lightning flashed and struck hard. It struck close. In the morning, daylight revealed the wisdom tree scattered in splinters on the ground.
As the grounds crew came to clear it away, church people came from every corner of the campus to circle round. One by one they asked to take a piece of the tree home with them.
… Sometimes the place where you used to find wisdom gets destroyed… It’s as if your wisdom tree is lying in splinters.
In the aftermath of such a coming apart, we are tempted to take our piece of wisdom home with us and stick it in a place of honor, savoring and celebrating that one little piece of wisdom of which we can be sure, pulling it out whenever there is a new question, a new issue, acting as if that piece of wisdom is self-sustaining, and as if it is enough, on its own, to sustain us.
In acting like this, we are forgetting the crucial next step. What is needed is to bring our piece of the wisdom tree back together with the others, to stand together on the roots of what wisdom we have. We do have wisdom within us, but it is not enough to hold and savor just the wisdom we can grasp. Our piece needs to be added to the others.
It is difficult to walk a good spiritual path solo. It helps to be in relationship to a community where your wisdom can be made more whole, challenged, and where it can have fresh life breathed into it by touching it, again and again, to its roots, by bringing it together with the wisdom others carry with them. Then if lightning strikes, if all the places you used to go to learn are ruined, if all the things you used to know for sure are gone, just hold up your piece of wisdom. I’ll be holding mine, and we’ll find each other.
Comment by Billy Howell-Sinnard on June 25, 2010 at 4:45am
Well, I've heard it said by my indigenous friends that no one is left out in a circle, no ones in a corner; there are no corners to a circle. The same is true of the Sacred Tree. Everyone is a part of the Sacred Tree. There aren't two trees: a tree of good and a tree of evil. There is only the One Sacred Tree and we are the leaves, branches, flowers, and fruit of that Sacred Tree.

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