Title: The Sacred Space
Publisher: Acornpress
Author: Brian J. Francis
Rating: 5/5 stars
Pages: 88
Review:
This book is a collection of writings and paintings. Poetry, prose, and beautiful paintings come together in this book. It’s such an immersive experience, and yes, I say that reading this book is an experience. A thoughtful conversation of life and death, freedom, self-reflection, time, and what lies ahead in the future. This book hold to Indigenous beliefs, and as someone who does not have those beliefs, I was very interested to learn about the values of the Indigenous. There’s this one poem that stuck out to me:
The spiritual planes and which we travel may be times past that remain timeless.
Our souls reminiscing of lives lived as beings from endless galaxies.
Living in current times of our made-up Gods and other deities that we make attempts to justify mortal pleasures and sins.
Are me merely living lies that soothe our conscious minds to get through the daily desire for excess?
How do we return to our true selves?
How do we find ourselves, our true selves, that are honest to our creation and Creator?
It is impossible for us, as mere mortals, to ever comprehend the ancient and complex makeup of humankind. We can only live within the made-up facade of the life we know and the lies we live of who we are.
The closer we traverse within the realm of the Spirit is the closet we will come to defining the greatest mystery of all time:
Life.
At surface value, it’s a pretty poem, but then you get to the deeper meanings of Indigenous beliefs. From this book, I gathered that the Indigenous belief is that there is no Heaven or Hell, no God, their belief isn’t based on works or good deeds, it’s about the Spirt, the embodiment of the world, and what gives life to everything in Creation. Listening to the ancestors, the journey along the way and following the path to a destination is the process of how it all comes together.
It’s all very natural. The belief is that they are created, whether it be from the stars, the forests, the rivers, or the stones, and that there is a sacred space. A space between worlds, between the heavens and the mortal world, where the ancestors live. When they pass, they enter this space, and from there, the journey of their past life ends and a new one begins.
I loved learning about all of it. I’ve really never read a book like this before, where I read about the Indigenous beliefs. I especially liked that it was underneath poems as well, because then I had to analyze them and find out what the true meaning of it was.
Another thing that was mentioned were the “Sisters of the Dawn”.
I read a bit about it in the book, and I was very interested in it, so then I did some further research of what the Sisters of the Dawn meant to the Indigenous, so I found like two websites.
BBC World’s Table, The sacred ‘sisters’ of ancient America
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220801-the-sacred-sisters-of-ancient-america
USDA National Agriculture Library, The Three Sisters of Indigenous American Agriculture
https://www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters
You can probably clue in a bit to what the Three Sisters are, and what they mean, they represent agriculture and providing for the people that “plant them” as crops. They stand for three main crops, corn, beans, and squash, and these crops were usually harvested by the women. Corn, beans, and squash were usually planted together in small mounds, so that they’re kinda like… a super plant… or something.
But what really got me interested in it was the way they were so prettily described in this book. They are seen as so much more than crops and plants. In this, they are described as “givers of life”, “praying for strength and guidance”, “peace and protection”. It’s all so beautiful.
“Freedom begins in our hearts and minds. We are only as free as what our minds allow” ~ Brian J. Francis
Alright folks. That’s really all that I have to say about this book. I thought it was all so interesting to read about, so nice to see the paintings and read the colorful prose and poems. It was all so well done, and I learned something new, I learned about the Sisters of the Dawn, Indigenous beliefs, and I even got to compare and contrast them to my own a little bit. It was a fun journey and a fun experience. I highly recommend! <3
Bye!