Power in Their Name

There is something great to be gained in the study of good peoples’ lives.  It is important to immediately interject that "good" does not mean "perfect"... for humanity has long been far from this!  Good here means pure, of kind and noble spirit... passionate and connected to natural life.  Running this land, as the Native Indians did, has been my beginning.  Distance running is a celebration of our primitive design.  Doing so with heart, thought and with empathy is an enhancement to our humanity.

 

Now crossing the path of collecting the artifacts that evidence them!!!  When we come across the presence of human life and occupation, we collect their "Names" as well! Hundreds and thousands of Names... names representing people groups each one. To collect and accept is to grasp the power in their unknown Name. Each articulate expression, etched in rock, is a powerful statement about a singular "Who".

 

Deeper still is the ability to esteem their "Name" when its evidence slides across our fingers... to honor the "Being" as equal in humanities story.  I think this is one thing we have many missed.  To grasp and contemplate the Person (evidence in hand) as a contributing force to our own humanity... so worthy of esteem. 

 

Ancient people's have for too long been ill esteemed by the likes of our Modern generation. That we could assume technology, and the presumption of technologies importance, as a stamp of authority??!!  What have we done? 

 

Esteem for the peoples of ancient life must be grasped and given!  Our "power" is, and has always been, presumptuous. THEY were the Majority Race. They were NOT striving for the "modern life" we have distorted... they were walking after THEIR life. It was never ours. 

 

So, in discovering the expression of ancient life, in the power felt in their Name as it crosses our fingers, we are allowed to touch the life of the Majority Race.   Rather it always seems to  "touch" us.  We then pause for a moment and become more human. 

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

That which was once lost...

Now found

A memory long forgotten...

Now collected

Life touches life.

~ BH

In this pressing world of digital communication and electronic contact, we have still had the "other" things which have needed our attention.  LIFE!  Our loved ones, our hopes & ambitions and the many every day things which make up our life-way... jobs, hobbies and play!  Time clicks forward and months take the place of weeks.  I have been away too long!  As for Holistic distance running!??!  Let's take a look!

 

Well, I have been covering the land the ground running upwards of 250 miles a month, so a continued turn to a closer look at areas has been natural!  After many great "finds" I will never again simply “run the white line”!  Sure I ran the road this past week in Concord.  It was about 28 degrees... it was cold!  I was forced to run the roads being a complete stranger there!!!   Anyway, finding & collecting Indian Artifacts would not come into my consciousness until the very end of 2011!!!  Now before back-tracking to lay out the desire to collect... combined with the love for distance running, I will also share this:  I have covered the land/roads all around my home, now representing some 44 prime artifact sites for nine years… through seasons and seasons of agriculture and good conditions… where all I would have had to do was venture more off road and find something!  This was some 18,000 miles – AND DIDN’T KNOW TO COLLECT!!!  It just did not dawn on me! 

NOW the “setting” as to what got me interested and why I connect with collecting!  The understanding of the plight and life of Native Americans since European contact has contributed greatly in my desire to save the evidence of their heritage.  Nomadic by nature, the Indian tribes were a unique and awesome example to minimalist ability!  ALSO, since recent (last two years) in-depth pre-Columbian North American Indian studies, I have only grown more fascinated, more devotional and more happy to find the evidence of their life.  More in a second…  A favorite quote I often read says it best, “The desert winds would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, no spirit or scribe, to tell any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place had died.”  ~ Cormack McCarthy 

I opened Indian Trace. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtPsjWl4n0dO06oFwIAjy-A/videos) last week!  The video documentaries increase in quality and the criteria of the artifacts through the progression of entries. I never expected to even make them public… I thought the evidence might one day be precious to someone… a loved one or not.  For the last year my requirement to myself in documenting were simple… keep the video under two minutes, and ONLY film with significant, full artifacts.  Of course the mileages I cover as a distance runner contribute heavily to this success. 

Okay!  As to the roots of my heart’s hunger to represent the Indians before us!  I call the Indian’s the Majority Race.  From a day about two years ago when I accidentally ran across a crystal arrowhead, all my life & studies confirmed a new set of possibilities!  Here is how it sets up easy: I moved to live directly with the Navajo Indians in NM through 4/5^th grade… and then back to Upstate NY; through this exposure and through influences of my parents social consciousness for the plight of the Native American, I always had an initial interest in their social welfare.  Soon after graduate school and becoming a History & Civics teacher (of middle & high school) I began serious study moving back through the Indian Wars and through European contact beginning in 1200AD-1500AD; you can now imagine as I made the discovery of tangible pre-Columbian evidence in the arrowheads I have now!!!  Of course my pre-Columbian studies took off!    

In conclusion!!  I am sad for the state of affairs and what has happen through untold ages of human history with respects to all Nations… greed and selfishness have readily often spun into hate and then genocide.  Here in the United States it was all unavoidable… human nature aside from God is weak.  The collision of the wild, precious, expressive, creative and instinctive Indian Tribes {inherently hunter gatherers}, met people groups steeped in religion, ideology and greed.  There were not just hundreds of years of difference in our respective “life-ways”, yet multiplied thousands of years difference!!  It is hard to imagine such a thing!  Because the realities of our North American history are so rich and mind-blowing, I feel I help myself honor and cherish their memory with so many holistic distance running efforts, and why not collect the evidence of their lives too!