Talking Late Afternoon Light with Rainbow and Great Spirit

A Lummi friend told me about this website some time ago, and just recently I have subscribed to their daily meditations for elders via email:

Elder's Meditation of the Day April 9
"Everything really is equal. The Creator doesn't look at me any better than He looks at the trees. We're all the same."
--Janice Sundown Hattet, SENECA
Sometimes humans think we are the center of the Universe. Sometimes we think we are above or better than other people or things. The Great Spirit made a set of Laws and Principles by which all things should live. Everybody and everything lives by the same Laws. We are all made of atoms just like the trees. The life force in the middle of the atom is the life force of the Great Mystery. It is the same for everything. We are all equal in the eyes of the Creator.

Great Spirit, today, I will respect your handiwork.

he ping / 和平

 Listen:  和平

For some time now, I've been slowly reading Red Pine's translation of Lao-Tzu's Taoteching, which has the Chinese characters next to the translation. Gradually I am learning to recognize some Chinese characters. In particular, I've been looking for 和 because I have a small framed calligraphy of the characters 和平, with the word "peace" below it. I had noticed 知 (knowledge) because it looks similar to 和.  Finally, in the 55th verse, I saw 和 in a line translated as "knowing how to be balanced we endure." Just now I was able to figure out, via the internet, that the framed calligraphy is made up of the characters he 和  and ping 平.

Yesterday we had snow mixed with rain in the morning and exquisite sunshine illuminating the clouds to the east in the late afternoon.