Meditations with the Navajo
Prayers, Songs, and Stories of Healing and Harmony
- Pages: 144
- Book Size: 5.38 x 8.25
- ISBN-13: 9781879181670
- Imprint: Bear & Company
- On Sale Date: October 1, 2001
- Format: Paperback Book
- Illustrations: 6 line drawings
A collection of stories, poems, and meditations that illuminate the spiritual world of the Navajo.
• Explores the Navajo's fundamental belief in the importance of harmony and balance in the world.
• Shares Navajo healing ways that have been handed down for generations.
• Includes meditations following each story or poem.
Navajo myths are among the most poetic in the world, full of dazzling word imagery. For the Navajo, who call themselves the Dine (literally, "the People"), the story of emergence--their creation myth--lies at the heart of their beliefs. In it, all the world is created together, both gods and human beings, embodying the idea that change comes from within rather than without. Poet and author Gerald Hausman collects this and other stories with meditations that together capture the essence of the Navajo people's way of life and their understanding of the world. Here are myths of the Holy People, of Changing Woman who teaches the People how to live, and of the trickster Coyote; stories of healings performed by stargazers and hand tremblers; and songs of love, marriage, homecoming, and growing old. These and the meditations that follow each story reveal a world--our world--that thrives only on harmony and balance and shares the Dine belief that the most important point on the circle that has no beginning or end is where we stand at the moment.
Foreword
Interpreting Navajo Stories
Author's Note
1. Changing Woman
2. Animals
3. Coyote
4. Blue-Eyed Bear
5. Healings
6. Stargazer
Afterword
About the Author
Richard Erdoes, author of Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions and Crying for a Dream
"In his reverent, gentle workings of traditional themes, Gerald Hausman displays a deeper understanding of the natural world than most of the writers of our generation."
Joseph Bruchac, Abenaki storyteller and author of Keepers of the Earth
“Meditations with the Navajo is a work refreshingly unlike many others dealing with Diné mythology. It is free of the anthropologist’s specialized verbiage. It speaks to people.”
--Richard Erdoes, author of Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions and Crying for a Dream
“In his reverent, gentle workings of traditional themes, Gerald Hausman displays a deeper understanding of the natural world than most of the writers of our generation.”
--Joseph Bruchac, Abenaki storyteller and author of Keepers of the Earth
Navajo myths are among the most poetic in the world, full of dazzling word imagery. For the Navajo, who call themselves the Diné (literally, “the People”), the story of emergence--their creation myth--lies at the heart of their beliefs. In it, all the world is created together, both gods and human beings, embodying the idea that change comes from within rather than without. Poet and author Gerald Hausman collects this and other stories with meditations that together capture the essence of the Navajo people’s way of life and their understanding of the world. Here are myths of the Holy People, of Changing Woman who teaches the People how to live, and of the trickster Coyote; stories of healings performed by stargazers and hand tremblers; and songs of love, marriage, homecoming, and growing old. These stories and the meditations that follow each reveal a world--our world--that thrives only on harmony and balance and shares the Diné belief that the most important point on the circle that has no beginning or end is where we stand at the moment.
GERALD HAUSMAN is a storyteller and author who has spent twenty-two years learning Navajo creation stories directly from tribal members. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and the History Channel. The author of more than fifty books, including The Kebra Nagast: The Lost Bible of Rastafarian Wisdom and Faith from Ethiopia and Jamaica and Tunkashila: From the Birth of Turtle Island to the Blood of Wounded Knee, Hausman lives on a barrier island in Florida.
