Sassy goats and sanity

When we were smudging at the Lodge last week, someone asked to smudge their cell phone with the rationale that it is how they communicated with many people.  This raised a little side discussion on keeping ceremony up to date and someone mentioned that they receive this smudge on facebook sometimes.  What do you think?  Is it a tacky cop-out or a recognition of modern indigenous reality?

I also wanted to note that Mrs Universe, a Cree woman, won a role model award from the UN.  We are still here and still representing.

Needing some sassy goat embroidery in my life but a sore hand is slowing me down.  So many good ideas and so little time. 

Thinking about the book "Going Sane" by Adam Phillips.  I read this book some time ago but I like to come back to the quotes I took.  This book in many ways is the companion to "Madness and Civilization" by Michael Foucault which I am part way through.  Phillips speaks to the focus on "madness" in post-European culture and the lack of a mature discussion about what sanity looks like.  "There was too much unhappiness, too much madness to talk about" and "There are no modern utopian stories that tell us how we might live in a way that would make the fear of madness disappear. " This he says leaves us as, "becoming extremely narrow-minded about what we want, about imagining possibilities for ourselves. Imagining possibilities for ourselves involves telling stories about what we think we are like, what we think we want, and what we think we are capable of."  So in short, we don't focus on what healthy mental spaces looks like so we get drawn into unhealthy models. as they are more familiar.   In this context he talks about our societal love of the mad artist so that, "Accounts of good mental health are scarce and usually trivial."  I feel like finding these healthy models and this valuing of sanity can be challenging.  This is a very thoughtful book that weaves together a wide number of thinkers to present a coherent story on sanity,  So go forth.  Be sane and get some sassy goat into your life.