The Student and the Elder

We love our children. We send our children out into the World hoping that they will make it, We hope that our children will have a better life. We send our children to the white man’s school so they can get an education to make it, We want them to make it, We want them to have a better life. But we know that the World is not always a welcoming place for our children outside our wombs, In the bosom of Mother Earth. But… We have the rhythm of our words. The rhythm of our drums. The rhythm of our love. We must share with our children the ways of Old. We must teach them the rhythms. Then, when they go out into the World to make it, They hear the rhythms in the beating of their hearts, They hold the rhythms in their souls—to guide them when they are far from home in the white man’s world. This is a story of teaching the rhythms in a good way. This is a story of the sharing our wisdoms, as we have for thousands and thousands of years. This is a story to guide our children in the ways of the white man, So they can be safe, So they can be protected. The student is a youth in university. The Elder is teaching the youth who believes they have made it because they are learning the ways of the white man. The youth is on their way to a better life. Yet the youth is troubled. The Elder speaks of Old, The rhythms of Mother Earth and the Cosmos.