A New Year’s Message for our NCMC Friends

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Dear NCMC Friends,

AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS NEW YEAR we want to take a moment of your time to let you know how much your support means to us. Without the support of our NCMC Friends — whether participating virtually in social media or physically at the programs — we couldn’t have provided the transformative programs that we’ve brought to the community.

This past year we are especially grateful to our longtime VENUE PARTNERS — Index Art Center, Rabbit Hole Farm, and Military Park Partnership. A new venue this year has been the Ironbound Community Corporation and it has been such a pleasure to work with them as well.

We also want to thank the COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATIONS who invited us in 2018 to present at their programs or held cooperative programs with us, including Greater Newark Tennis & Education, Hikeolution, I’m So Yoga Newark, Louise A. Spencer Community School, Newark Museum, Newark Yoga Movement, NJPAC, Rutgers Law School, Sis & Bro Foundation, Source of Knowledge Book Store, and The Spirit Centered Life. We enjoyed and very much appreciated the teamwork with these community partners.

We can’t say enough too about our WONDERFUL VOLUNTEERS who have consistently been patient and provided diligent assistance for us over the past year. We can’t name you all here, but you know who you are!

Wishing you all the very best in 2019!

Your friends at NCMC,

Kazi, Marcie, Cornelia, Andrea, Ihsaan, Kamilah, Javier, and Jennifer

Thanks Giving Reflections from the Indigenous Culture of America

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NCMC wishes you a day of abundance or simplicity — and thanksgiving — for clear water, good food, and Mother Earth to sit on!

WITH ONE MIND
Greetings to the Natural World!

The Earth Mother
We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The Waters
We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms — waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of Water.
Now our minds are one.

The Food Plants
With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Plant Foods together as one and send them a greeting of thanks.
Now our minds are one.

(Excerpted from a Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address)

INTERDEPENDENCE
The Three Sisters of Corn, Beans, and Squash

For many Indigenous People in the Americas, the triad of corn, beans, and squash is called the Three Sisters. Traditionally grown together, this crop trio are all interdependent on one another. Beans grow up the corn stalks and add the nutrients (nitrogen) to the soil that the others need to grow. Squash is planted in between them to keep the weeds out. These three staples remain the heart of most Indigenous diets and are often eaten in companion with each other.

 

A Moment of Grace

By Ib’nallah S. Kazi

savingPNG.jpegThe act of saying grace over a meal and of blessing the dinner table are sacred rituals practiced for millennia across the globe.

From Ghana to Burma and all the way to the Netherlands, human beings incorporate the daily act of eating into their personal and collective spiritual lives.

The blessing of the meal is a time for giving thanks.

Prayers may be directed to a supreme being, to ancestors, the earth or whatever spiritual agency is believed to be of assistance in securing sustenance. Sometimes family members, employees and employers are thanked for the part they play in sustaining an individual or household.

Still a concern for many to this day is the healthiness of a meal they’re about to eat. Invasion of the body by food-born pathogens is a threat that challenges human beings daily. Therefore, some cultures may include request that the meal be allowed to provide strength and vitality — or at least be rendered free of harm.

Not to be overlooked is the impact upon the psyche of that moment of silence when one’s head is bowed and gaze lowered in recognition of our mutual dependence upon all we consider powerful, holy and beneficent.

The few seconds taken to reconnect to the part of us that remains in constant connection with the Unseen Real opens a “spiritual moment.” And in that moment, we invoke the soul elixir that releases the strengthening, healing, beautifying properties of the meal.

We can use the tradition of saying grace as a “conscious opportunity” to create more of those spiritual moments in our day. We don’t have to limit our spiritual practice to being locked away in a specially outfitted room with dimmed lighting, lots of plump pillows and scented candles.

Let’s bring our practice into our “common spaces” — with their sounds and scents of life at its core. First we take back the kitchen, then the toilet, then the garden.

It all adds up.

Ib’nallah S. Kazi is the Spiritual Director of Newark Center for Meditative Culture and a Spiritual Health & Wellness Coach at The Spirit Centered Life.