THE SOUTHWEST TEACHING MISSION REUNION AND RETREAT

 Transcripts from the 2005 Albuquerque Retreat and Reunion:
Saturday Evening Concert



Gerdean: “This is an honor for the Rio Rancho TeaM base, to host you here and we have – as the Teachers have always said – come closer by having this shared experience. This is something we will be able to talk about for the rest of our lives, maybe throughout eternity – “You remember the first Southwest TeaM R&R at the Canossian Center in the south valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico? I was there!”

[Dorenda Morse, a Concert Pianist from the Rio Rancho TeaM, is introduced to the audience]

[Applause]

Dorenda: “This is the second movement of Beethoven’s Opus 27, No. 2 Sonata. It is commonly referred to as the “Pathetique.”

[Dorenda plays “Pathetique” followed by applause]
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Gerdean [transmitting]:

“I am the spirit of the descending son. This is indeed a memorable gathering. This gathering of workers committed to the field that the Father sends you into, as he sends me into your midst.

This is a call to service. This is encouragement to you in your hidden knowledge that you are born to serve, that through your compliance to his will and dependent upon his power as your source, you will do great things.

What are these great things? The music has said. The “Pathetique”. Those of you who know the joy of the Father, you who have basked in his presence and acknowledgement from him of your worth to him as his ambassador and carrier of light, you who leave these times of rejoicing and safety in the spirit, who by universal law must relinquish this appreciation for divine relationship in service to your fellows as you return to the field, this supplies the Supreme. What this entails is reaching deep inside to say, “Where shall I serve thee? How shall I serve thee? Send me to your university that I may learn, and to your community that I may do your bidding.” Thus given a place for your energy, you are actualized, made stronger, and the Father has been revealed one more time in the immensity of his creation. This onward roll toward perfection is one that will not allow for those who struggle as if alone to be left without guidance and care. This falls upon the son who reaches back in deference to the Father, in service to the son, that understands the power inherent in descending into the realm where you will work to reveal the Father through your actions to the children of time.

Not for sissies.

Many are called but few choose. Those of you who choose, blessed be art thou. That we be able to assist in the reclamation, in the discovery of that who is pathetic and breathes into him the breath of life. This you can do through the Master and through the Spirit, and this we shall do as we descend into the realm in service.

Thank you for this opportunity to address you. Go in peace.
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Dorenda: Bach’s 2nd Movement from the Italian concerto
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Men-O-Pah (also known as “Waya Wahili” in Cherokee): [In Cherokee and in English] “Hello, my brothers and my sisters. Good evening to you, and welcome to this place. I hope you perhaps remember a few of these words from the native tongue of my great-grandmother.

In order not to ramble, and to get straight to the point and put a two-by-four across it and a ten-penny spike in it, I write my thoughts out ….

Many things come and go as the years go by
Fads change every season
The years of life change our faces and our bodies
Yet the real … The Real … The eternal, the spiritual, never changes.

If we learn, our knowledge increases as we travel the pathway of life, for what we receive and learn from the time we are in our mother’s womb through childhood and through coming of age, adulthood, and the grandfather and the grandmother times, we become more spiritual, as we develop ourselves to our greatest potential.

The more I learn of the Real, the more I apply this knowledge to my work, to my home life, to my personal life and my relationship to others. This knowledge makes me a stable person, so that when bad things happen to me or to those that I love, I have a Real foundation under me, which will not fail. We hear the lines of the old hymn, “in times like these, we need an anchor. Be very sure, be very sure your anchor holds and grips the solid rock, that rock is Jesus. Yes, he is the one.”

The pathway that we walk has many footprints on it of those that we have known and have gone on before us and who have known the power of our culture, the assurance of the eternal, the abiding presence of the GrandFather Spirit. When we sing, [Native American], there shall never be any bad medicine that can kill the [Native American]. We know the power of the spiritual path, the power of our ancestors who walked the infamous trail of tears and sustained them and sustains us to this very day.

Here are the words of the philosopher and writer Alexander Pope. He lived quite a long while ago. He made the remark, “Lo, the untutored Indian who sees God in the clouds or hears his voice in the wind. Yes, yes. Great Spirit whose voice I hear singing in the wind, wind that gives the breath of life to all the world, hear my prayer and find my little medicine song acceptable.”

All we Indian tribes are rich in symbolism to express the believe that they have and we all basically believe in one God, one creator, one great loving GrandFather Spirit over all the world. The Cherokee had their Father Creator and they called his name Yo-wah, and I can see the semblance, I’m sure to our Hebrew brothers who called his name Yah-weh. And, like them, this name is very sacred, so that only a few of the shamans or medicine men were allowed to speak it.

These < ? > beliefs, this God Fragment which is attached to every one of us, lives in every one of us, but we have some trouble to uncover it. Worship is of the heart. It is deep. It is joyous. And it is personal. It is a real live current that flows between each of us and our Creator, and we have the power to choose, you and I. And so we may, by using our power of choice, destroy our selves, but we may never destroy the love that goes beyond and past all understanding.

It is there. It’s always there. Even when we are too stubborn and intransigent to receive it, and I am reminded here about the lines, again, of an old hymn, “Oh, love that will not let me go. I would not hide myself from thee. I give thee back the life I owe. Yet from its ocean depths, may fuller, richer be.”

I was interested to hear the remarks that our brother … Barry, I believe; the one who came in last … talking about some work that he is doing, listening to the Voice Within. I want to hammer on that a little. When something on our mind rings a bell, that warns us, then we do well to listen. What is it that wants to lure us from the chosen path? Is it not from the evil side? It runs like a rabbit. Every one of us has a sounding board, that testing place, that directs our path. Like a compass, it points the true direction, and we are foolish not to understand … “Golaga” To ignore the impressions that are within us is like trying to go through the door without twisting the knob first. It is one thing to be dense; and quite another to be fully determined to be lost in the wilderness and listen to the voice within. It is there for a reason. Later on, you see, we will have to say ‘something told me that I should do this or the other. I should have taken this path, but I didn’t listen and I didn’t do it.’

Great Spirit, let me always walk in beauty before thee. Make my hands respect those things that you have made. Let me understand the mysteries that lie buried deeply in every rock, every leaf, every snowflake. Make my ear sharp that I may hear thee.

I told you last evening that I am from the woods. I am a wooden Indian. I lived in the Great Shawnee Forest almost all my life. On the winter evening the owls call on each other as the last rays of the setting sun sink into a rosy glow, a silence steals over the countryside and for a short while everything is hushed, and in that near dark hour the wind brother lays down, and no sound is heard. The whole forest listens, but the moment is brief, and those of the daytime creatures, they find their place of abode and the nighttime creatures start to awake. And for us, the two-leggeds, it is a time to rest from our labor, find a quiet place and let the pressures of life ebb away.

One of the great wonders of the universe is the rhythm and order of nature, but even greater, perhaps, is the flexibility of the human nature. We can move, we can think, we can project, we can plan, we can see the whole thing, the whole picture before us, and as the day wanes, we can put it all down and take on the peace of nature.

History has a way of intruding on the present. Perhaps those who read it will have a clearer understanding of what the American Indian is by knowing what he was. They will be surprised to hear the words of wisdom coming out of his mouth and of an individual who had been stereotyped by the American myth as a ruthless savage. Perhaps they will learn something about their own relationship to the earth, to the earth brother, from people who lived in balance and in harmony with nature, who were true environmentalists, true conservationists. The Indians knew that life was equated with the Earth Mother and her resources.

I say to you that the America that they knew was a paradise, indeed, and they couldn’t understand and they couldn’t comprehend why the intruders from the east were determined to destroy everything that was Indian, and even the Earth Mother, our America itself.

The American Indian has always loved a feast, long before the pilgrims came to dinner.
When the missionaries came to tell them of the crucified Jesus, the Chief stood up and said, “No, we would never do such a thing. This Jesus sounds like a fine warrior. If he came to us, we would ask him to sit down and feast with us.”

And so comes the invitation for the Feast of Days. That feast, I say, begins every morning, when the sun pokes its head over the crest of the mountain and sprays its golden rays on the valley below, it is time to turn over a new leaf and celebrate a new beginning. The way of the Cherokee is to know that the past is gone. Though we are tied by a golden thread to it, it no longer holds us captive and our feet are not stuck anymore in the mud of the trail of tears.

[Native American] “There is no bad medicine that can ever kill the [Native American]

Wahili. Eagle. Wahili flies again. We have a new understanding, a new wisdom, and we dare to put down yesterday and reach for the new day.

Early morning sunlight sets the frosted grass ablaze with gems – topaz, emeralds, diamonds -- the heart is supremely rich and lifted up and enlightened. Such mornings call us to brightness of spirit, to healing of the deep earth that lay deep within us and say, ‘step out and breathe in the peace. Turn up the palms and give thanks and receive strength and wisdom for the new day because nature thrives where humans fail and give up. The negatives turn away. All around us the breathtaking scenes say to us ‘You do the same.’

[Native American] “Thank you”
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Dorenda: [Plays a third piece of music with an invitation to transmit – no one accepts the invite]

Dorenda: “The first piece was Beethoven’s second movement of the Pathetique sonata
The second piece was the second movement from the Italian concerto by Bach
The third was the first prelude in C major from the first book of the Well Tempered Clavier (Bach)”

“This next piece is the first Arabesque by Claude Debussy.” [Sounds like waterfalls.]
[Dorenda plays followed by applause]

[next] A favorite Scott Joplin song – called “Bethina”
[Dorenda plays followed by a very enthusiastic applause]

“You want one more? Or do you want two more?” [Uproarious response] “All right. One or two of these you will recognize somewhat, probably right away.”

Dorenda plays
1. [Pink Panther type rendition of “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho”]
2. [Dramatic piece…skulking, slinky, high-steppin “When the Saints Go Marching In”]

[ followed by a Standing Ovation]

Encore: Dorenda’s “favorite” Scott Joplin Piece -- the Grand finale.

Dorenda: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
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Angus: “ Now you understand why every chance we get for our Sunday meetings we have her play prior to our meetings. Awesome. Awesome.

First of all, I want to invite everybody tomorrow morning, at 10:00, we are going to have a worship service in the chapel.

We need to be checked out of our rooms by noon. Before lunch.”
 

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