Judy Leaver, Professional Writer | Best Words, Best Order

Literary Mileage
“A Cherokee Feast of Days”

08/23/2010

Photograph taken by Carolyn Fletcher on Lake Eufaula in Eastern Oklahoma.

(“A Cherokee Feast of Days” is the title of a book of daily meditations by Joyce Sequichie Hifler)

I’ve lived in Washington, DC for 17 years. I moved here after a 20-year stint in Tulsa, OK, where I raised my two sons (culture shock is a topic for another time). I mentioned in an earlier blog that I miss the brilliant red sunsets and thrilling thunderstorms in Oklahoma. Another bit of the Boomer state I miss is its Indian heritage, reflected in Oklahoma’s license plates that say “Native America”.

Before it became a state, Oklahoma was called Indian Territory. It is home to five Native American nations: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. They are called the Five Civilized Tribes because of a forced process of cultural transformation originated under George Washington in which they adopted many of the colonists’ customs and had generally good relations with their neighbors. The Five Civilized Tribes lived in the southeastern United States before their (again forced) relocation to other parts of the country. The Trail of Tears brought many of them to what is today the state of Oklahoma.

Photograph taken by Carolyn Fletcher on Lake Eufaula in Eastern Oklahoma.

The Cherokee Nation is based in northeastern Oklahoma, near Tulsa. My favorite meditation book is “A Cherokee Feast of Days” by Joyce Sequichie Hifler. Time and again, I’ll read a ‘day’ and it will resonate with me on so many levels I think it can’t be an accident.

Here’s a perfect example: “Summer heat has brought a lull to the meadows. Tiny titmice and bright yellow warblers stay close to watering places, and only the locust sings on in its raspy tones. It sings to remind us that it is summer and time to slow our pace … it is the nature of the Cherokee to go to a flowing stream with any problem he may have. And he comes away with the best harvest of all, a quiet eye and the peaceful harmony of summer.”

Something to ponder as we sweat and swelter during this record-breaking summer.

You can order Hifler’s books and other fine literary offerings at http://www.counciloakbooks.com. Click on BESTSELLERS.

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Literary Mileage
Remembering Hiroshima

08/09/2010

August 6 was the 65th anniversary of the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima, an event that killed over 100,000 people. In November of 1946, Rev. A. Powell Davies, the Senior Minister at All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington DC, delivered a widely-circulated sermon denouncing a newspaper photo of U.S. military officers celebrating around a cake shaped like the atomic cloud seen over Hiroshima. An aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Japan learned of the sermon and suggested that American children might share school supplies with Japanese students as a way to respond to the devastation.

The children at All Souls collected over half a ton of school supplies and shipped them to Japan, where they were distributed to children at two schools and an orphanage. In appreciation, the Japanese schoolchildren sent gifts of their own artwork back to the church–a small but significant exchange of gifts of peace between the children of All Souls Church and Hiroshima’s Honkawa Elementary School within the context of World War II. All these years, the drawings–many on Big Chief tablet paper–have been at All Souls. They are full of beautiful colors and depict joyful scenes, children at play, sunny days, Buddhist temples. There are no dark mushroom clouds, fighter jets, or tears.

Last week a delegation from the church traveled to Hiroshima to reunite the recently restored drawings with their creators who are now in their 70s and 80s. The drawings are now on exhibit at the Honkawa School Peace Museum and, in the last week alone, have garnered thousands of visitors and significant attention from the Japanese press. On the evening of August 5, the All Souls emissaries attended a memorial service for the Honkawa children who died in the bombing, and were honored to be the only non-Japanese invited to lay flowers at the shrine to the dead. Filmmaker Bryan Reichhardt accompanied the church delegation. He is completing a documentary about the drawings and the relationship between All Souls Church and Honkawa School.

Full disclosure—I’m a member of All Souls and this story is one of many reasons I love the church. I write this post with thanks to Rob Hardies, Senior Minister of All Souls, for his August 6 pastoral letter to members describing his experience in Hiroshima.