On This Spirit Walk: The Voices of Native American and Indigenous Peoples
By Henrietta Mann and Anita Phillips
Recommendation by Rev. Miriam Slejko, Minister of Discipleship at Trinity
Maybe you are like me and, as a newcomer to Colorado, now 26 years a resident, have a desire to learn more of the history of this area and its indigenous people. So when Dr. Henrietta Mann spoke at our Rocky Mountain Annual Conference last June, I was fascinated by her stories of the history of her people, the Cheyenne.
Henrietta Mann is Professor Emeritus in Native American Studies at Montana State University. In 1991
Rolling Stone Magazine named her one of the top ten professors in the nation. In
On This Spirit Walk, which she co-authored with Anita Phillips, a member of the Cherokees from Park Hill, Oklahoma, Mann shares the stories from her culture about traditions of welcoming and naming, stories of creation and genesis, and stories of vision and prophecy.
On This Spirit Walk is not only a selection of stories from the histories of native peoples, it is a vivid portrayal of these storytellers who "do not choose to be storytellers" but "are chosen to be the Keepers of Living Stories. With our breath, we give life to the stories and they take flight." These stories include reflections by native people on recent efforts by the United Methodist Church's General Conference of 2012 to engage in an Act of Repentance including confession, repentance and forgiveness for the manner in which religious ideas were forced upon native peoples.
If you are a storyteller, story writer or a person who is interested in the spiritual walk of peoples of other cultures, you will enjoy this informative and stimulating history.
On This Spirit Walk reminds me that we all benefit from sharing stories from our history. "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
Order online:
http://www.amazon.com/On-This-Spirit-Walk-Indigenous/dp/1426758413
As a member of a book club that meets once a month, I enjoy a good novel here and there, but I also try to include a self-improvement or productivity book when I can. I love tips for being organized, but often find that I am already employing them. I recently read a book by Colorado author and “Productivity Pro” Laura Stack that caught my attention. Written in 2012, her book offers fundamental and philosophical approaches to organization, time management, and institutional challenges as well as practical tips to improve work flow, organization, and overall effectiveness. For years I used the Franklin Covey planner to plan my work and work my plan and loved the basic structure the system provided for my life and goals. With the increase of email and electronic planners and the reduction of paper, my daily planner has taken a backseat to my handheld device, and I miss the fundamental virtues upon which the Franklin planner was built. Stack’s book was a reminder that you need to make time for the “big rocks” and priorities in your life and that if you are organized and have control over the fundamentals, the smaller, less important issues will fall to the bottom, exactly where they belong. The book touts that you can save 90 minutes a day by using her tips and tricks. There are no gimmicks, and the practical application of her suggestions impacts my overall effectiveness on any given day. She calls it her Productivity Workflow Formula (PWF) and encourages the reader to organize life around those things that are actually important and those things that appear to be important but really aren’t. Using strategies I learned from this book that reduce or eliminate distractions, interruptions, commitments, and inefficiencies, I have been able to reduce my to-do list and increase my productivity. 
