stop and make something

Sometimes in life it's important to just stop, make something, and relax.

“You can run with the big dogs or sit on the porch and bark.”

“You can run with the big dogs or sit on the porch and bark.”

Charlie the dog blog

This morning we woke up relaxed and felt excited about what the day has in store for us. Amber has been stepping outside of her comfort zone this week, working on an exhausting project, going out with friends doing new things, and trying to enjoy what life really is. She has spent alot of time in worry and that doesn't help anyone. There are alot of fears out in the world, financial, spiritual, romantic, maternal. It's easy to get caught up in them if fun isn't scheduled into the mix. Isn't that what we are supposed to do? Enjoy life, chase dogs, run in the wind, chew up new bones? Why wait until you have the perfect bone to chew on instead just go and have fun with what you have. God will place what you need in front of you, and if we do the work, have the playtime, experience our friends to the fullest, we may just have an "experience" we will cherish. Life is about those little magic moments we find in between our fears and worries. Life is about loving those around us, and staying open even if we can't see the sunlight. I don't blame Amber, she is human of course, but whoever said we were supposed to worry when we aren't rich, or popular, or perfect. That is a chase I don't want to be a part of. Instead Amber went shooting at a gallery for the first time in years, got a new tattoo, and is in constant prayer for direction on Gods will.

Today we are going to the house of the wolf to make more fun leather things. Then dinner with the wonderful Greg Brooker, and home to work on research for Ambers latest project with the lovely Dianna Terranova. Prayer and dancing and loving is at the top of it all. May we stop and pause when agitated or fearful, and know that we are born to be big, born to run with the big dogs, born to play full out, and born to trust God.

dancing with wolves

Shoes make me happy. Bags make Amber happy. This week she has had a wonderful time creating things out of leather with her good friend Henry Duarte the designer. It has helped ease other tensions going on around her, and just seeing her get lost in making things crafty makes me very happy. Marcello has a wolf in the back of the place where Amber runs away to create things. I never can fully relax knowing that the wolf is there, prowling around in the trees behind the house. It has been there since it was a baby but it tore up a mans face once who came into it's space. Marcello's own brother got mawled by the beast. IT really wakes up the tribal instincts within to be around leather and feathers and creativity. It's been said that to look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul, and I think that is true.

Cherokee Prayer
As I walk the trail of life
in the fear of the wind and rain,
grant O Great Spirit
that I may always walk

Amber is Cherokee-- her background is awakened with each step she takes towards it.



People: 'Cherokee' is Creek for 'people with another language'. (It's amazing how white settlers always managed to learn another tribe's name for any group of Indians. They learned the Creek word for the Cherokee tribe, but not the Creek word for themselves.) Anyway, our original name for ourselves was Aniyunwiya, but Cherokee is fine too (though we say it Tsalagi). There are 350,000 Cherokee people today, mostly in Oklahoma and North Carolina.

History: The best-known episode in Cherokee history was also the worst: the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral home in the southeast to Oklahoma. The Cherokee people were an urban, Christian, agricultural, intermarried society who had supported the United States against other tribes. In the end this was all for nothing. Though prominent Americans like Davy Crockett and Daniel Webster spoke against Removal, and though the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, President Andrew Jackson sent in the army. Fifteen to twenty thousand Cherokee Indians (along with Choctaw, Creek, and other tribes) were rounded up and herded to Oklahoma in the winter of 1838-1839. Driven from their homes without being allowed to collect their possessions first, even their shoes, the Cherokees were no better equipped for an 800-mile forced march than people today would be. Between four and eight thousand Cherokee people died of exposure, starvation, disease, and exhaustion along the Trail of Tears. If you understand this, both the extent to which the Cherokees had adopted American standards of civilization before the Removal and the ultimate futility of it, you will go a long way towards understanding the Cherokee mentality and also the attitudes of other Indian peoples towards us.
like a woman