Exerpts and thoughts:

There are words for day, night, sunrise, a lunar cycle, youth, adulthood and old age, but no word for an absolute time which measures the universe from outside of it. Time separates us from the past and the future, but in Micmac, the emphasis is on the here and now. The tales of the great past and prophecies of the future are all related in the now. Native traditions have been in a process of constant change for 10,000 years yet are always in the now. There is no one point in that story where you can divide old from new.

Traditionally, there are no holidays” or even weekends — every day is a holiday to those who are interested in finding that sacredness around them right now. Feasts and celebrations occur with actual visible physical events — no description of time separate from events.

“More always comes to replace what we give away.”

A universal intelligence is at work organizing — and sometimes healing — among us. It doesn’t run on a schedule. It is an exact sense of time shared by flocks of birds and herds of elk as they turn together and stop together in synchronicity.

“Time” in itself has no meaning, but every experience we encounter has meaning which becomes a story we share with others.

When beginning a story, it is simply “One day…” Algonquin recognized the power of connecting with this moment now. Clocks and watches often dilute that power and make us believe there is something going on which is not part of now. Clocks make us worry and split us into pieces. They conflict with biological time.
..It takes a lot to keep us from the here and now, but measuring our very beingness with judgmental little minutes and seconds can do just that.

It’s good to remember that real productivity is measured by the long-term effect of what we are doing and how well we are doing it not by the quantity of activity.

Things are best done in their natural order, first things first, but they “take as long as they take.” and no shortcuts are needed or asked for.

What is sacred is not just transcendence; what is sacred is not just the world of things, it is the relationship between the two. All the directions are sacred, but only because of each other.

Through living the four directions — to walk, talk, think, and pray everything you do and believe — you can live the sacred manner and your speech will match the poetry of the ”old ones.”

Keep it simple or you will lose your heart.

Lying is worse than dying.

In the Micmac view, cleverness of speech is opposite to sincerity; clever words close the heart.

We are the truth, the truth of what the Creator made us, but when we pretend to be something we aren’t — even the person we’d like to be — we split the self into two parts. Then we become “lost,” an odious fate for people of a hunting culture.

The sage strives not to impersonate a wise and respected elder, but to actually become the person he wants other people to see, a whole person without projections, fantasies, or delusions, uninsulated by false pretenses and prejudices.

Connection: healing and honesty.

Stories are three-dimensional. Everyone will have a perspective on what it means according to where he or she is standing, just like life.

Few things are abstract, everything wants to become grounded in reality, to complete the circuit between heaven and earth, which is so important if Creation is to continue. Life wants to manifest fully, and the traditional person offers himself or herself as a vehicle.

Exchange, trade, sacrifice, offering, change, are all the same word in Micmac. It is understood that any offering is sure to
bring a fair exchange, an equal return from spirit, so the idea of self-sacrifice in the conventional sense is foreign.

Originally, sacrifice meant simply “to make sacred”..but which convention has twisted into something regrettable.

Sacrifice is the embodiment of Creation, but you have to do it yourself. No one can do it for you.

All is change. All is exchange. In order to receive, you must give of yourself. The Vedas refer to sacrifice as ”the knitting together of the worlds,” which connects humans with the substance of nature.

Will power is not discipline, control is not mastery. The eagle does not fight the wind or tell it where to blow, he takes it as it comes and works with it. We can have our free will if we want it, but according to ancient teachings, there is a better way. When we come to know our own power, only then do we have something of value which we can truly offer up to the Creator in exchange for becoming Its tool.

The most important language to learn to read is the language of the heart. You have to find your own answers, perhaps by slowing down and letting spirit catch up with you.

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