Waves Fall 2004 Newsletter

...I knew that God had placed them there as warring angels...who believed in God and loved him enough
to give their lives to his service. -- The Awakening Heart by Betty J. Eadie, p. 88

September, 2004

W.A.V.E.S. Newsletter

Fall Edition

Embraced by the Light

Prayers

Seeking the Balance

Posted by Henrietta Atkin on August 12, 2004

Dearest WAVES comrades (just a touch of Soviet Russia tonight!),

I have internalized a lot of what happened to me at the Gathering and wanted to share. I'll be brief and share only the main points.

The main thing was that I really started to understand, and crave at a deep level, Native American spirituality. It was as if I went through a cell awakening. Before I had been only mildly interested in Betty's Native Paths and had even wondered if it was for me. After all, I am white.

It started with watching Betty, Kristen and Barb. Kristen and Barb really honored Betty by setting up her shawl on her chair, and "preparing" us for her. Barb said once, in a wonderfully soft voice, "Our Beloved Betty is here." The whole way they interacted really got to me. I wondered why my attention was so drawn to this.

Respect, as I read later, is a very strong Native virtue. I pondered for many days what respect for all life really means. The Spirit spoke to me and said that if I could really learn to respect everyone, without judgment as Native people have always taught, that I would be blessed with peace beyond comprehension.

I have a ways to go, but I can assure you that the Spirit was right. I have been praying in the woods and met many, many animals and birds that came to give me messages. I already posted about this, but a deer and her two fawns came very close to Marina and me and did not seem afraid.

The other "knowing" that came to me was about the teaching of the Four Directions. Native People honor the Four Directions as the place where power comes from. I remembered a game I used to play as a little girl in England. Some friends and I belonged to a "Secret Service Society" that helped people, and we made four places in the woods for our clubhouse. We called those four places the North Pole, the East Pole, the South Pole, and the West Pole.

When I was in England, I had never met a Native people or heard of their teachings. Yet somehow I had thought to honor the Four Directions in my own way. This was mind-blowing when I made the connection!

Intuitively I realised that perhaps there was a connection between Native America and me. I realise that part of my purpose for coming here to the U.S. was to reenact the voyage to Turtle Island that my ancestors from England made so many years before. In fact, my family did come here in a boat for the first time in the 60s. The first white people here were called boat people.

I cried as I realised the wrong some of my ancestors did to the Native People, and I asked the spirits to forgive my people and me. That simple act, I think, was making right on earth what has already been made right in heaven. I felt such peace after that prayer.

Anyway, this is just some of what happened. The most important thing I have learned is to move away from the idea of sin, and right and wrong, and the judgment that goes with it, and rather to seek to walk in balance with everyone and everything on the earth.

My Western upbringing taught me that I should try to understand why people are the way they are. This is good to a point, but it gets tiring after a while, and judgment tends to come into play. Now I like the ideas of respect and no judgment and accepting the mystery of people and life, while loving them as they are.

Sisters and brothers, this brings such freedom.

(Okay, so I wasn't brief after all...lol!)

Love, Henrietta

Warring Angel Volunteers on Earth, (WAVES) is acknowledged as a trademark of Betty J. Eadie