Giving and Taking: Relationship or Control

Differing concepts of property and ownership are deeply entangled in the colonized overlay that attempts to separate and control the whole of Creation. It is challenging to see through the darkness but the Original Instructions are still there, held as they have always been in the Earth and connection with all of our relations. The Western Abenaki word Tabaldak - used to refer to the Great Mystery - signifies the Owner, and gives us an insight into our own relative positions within the wholeness.

We are taught that we hold direct personal responsibility only for what we have made for ourselves and for what we have been gifted (and they are often the same thing, through reciprocity). We are not the Creator, we are simply makers, using and honoring what we have been explicitly given. And that responsibility does not stop with the exchange but it is properly assumed by recognizing and honoring all of the Spirits that are vested in that transfer - and then to gift back as a matter of maintaining balance and good relationship. This is to be conducted with a spirit of gratitude, which in the original meaning tells us is in the normal, expected way of being.