Spiritual wellness is being connected to something greater than yourself and having a set of values, principles, morals and beliefs that provide a sense of purpose and meaning to life, then using those principles to guide your actions.

Join us Wednesday, 12 Octember at 6pm at the Mancos Public Library, 211 West First Street in Mancos.

There are times when everyone’s life pours out extended periods of uncertainty in which meaning and purpose are little experienced, if at all. And then something happens!

What is that something? Perhaps it is some strange and beautiful recollection of something once known and long forgotten:

“Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day. . . we become seekers.” (Peter Matthiessen, Nine-Headed Dragon River, p. ix)

The task before us is that of bringing to conscious comprehension that-from wherever-our uniqueness, our life’s purpose, lies dormant within, awaiting our discovery.

There is something that we are all struggling to remember: Something of long ago almost entirely forgotten: Is it the forgotten unity of the child with all that exists?

And what is that something YOU are struggling to remember? What innate gifts are you now carrying in this world of deep uncertainty and so struggling to remember from a time and place far away?

James A. Mischke retired after thirty-one years as Professor Emeritus of psychology, sociology, and social work at Dine’ College. Chair of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division for fifteen years, he retired as the senior academic social scientist for the Navajo Nation.

Professor Mischke won an international award for facilitating the advancement of the human race in 1990. The Rolex Award for Enterprise was presented him from Geneva, Switzerland, in recognition of his project: “Resuscitation of Navajo Culture through Economics and Mythology” recognizing the planting of 50,000 fruit trees in Navajo Nation soil at the request of an elderly Navajo lady that “the trees that the white soldiers destroyed be restored in Canyons de Chelly and Del Muerto”.

A non-profit corporation under Colorado law and the U. S. Internal Revenue Service, section 501(c)(3), called Trees for Mother Earth was formed. Mischke subsequently became chair of its Board of Directors. A major purpose of Trees for Mother Earth was to simultaneously create a link of life between the natural environment and the Navajo people while providing a long term independent and family based source of economic strength for the Navajo Nation: fruit trees. The basis for this cultural engineering project was a systematic study of ancient Navajo mythological and legendary themes. The project eventually spilled over into half of all Navajo Nation chapters. Dine’ Trees of Life, the organization which arose from the endeavor, is still alive and working today. It was renamed when it was placed in the hands of the Dine’ people.

In 1994, Mischke was selected by students, faculty, and administrators as the recipient of the Burlington Northern Faculty Achievement Award, a national honor. This award was rendered in recognition of teaching excellence and activities in support of student learning. In 1998, Mischke was invited to join a team of Fulbright-Hayes scholars with the assigned mandate to travel across Inner Mongolia and China in order to identify and adapt educational paradigms utilized in the service of Chinese minorities for the benefit of contemporary Native American students.

Currently, Mischke is completing a trilogy of novels designed for publication. The work reflects the intent to share with the industrial world the traditional psychospiritual world of the contemporary American Indian utilizing the academic lenses available to the professional social scientist.