FWJ Early Bird Sale!

This issue—third in our series on Sustainability—is one you won’t want to miss!


Photo: Mirror Shield Project. Concept Artist: Cannupa Hanska Luger. Drone Still Image Credit: Rory Wakemup. Oceti Sakowin Camp, Standing Rock, ND 2016

Four Winds Journal (FWJ) Spring/Summer 2019, Voices for the Earth, features provocative articles, poetry, and art work exploring sustainability through the eyes of First Nations people, women, animals, and other sensitive souls.  The writers and artists whose work you will see here have each chosen a voice, and all speak for the Earth in powerful ways.

Four Winds Journal always looks great online, but it’s even more amazing in print—a perfect gift for friends and family members!

Pre-order your printed copy of FWJ’s Spring/Summer 2019 issue at a 15% discount now!  Sale runs from April 15 – May 31

Four Winds Journal Issues

Questions?

Call or email us:

505.780.5990

journal@orenda-arts.org

Winds of Change Press Logo Contest!

Our Winds of Change Press Logo Contest starts today!

Anyone may enter this open contest!  The lucky winner will receive FREE

The logo should reflect the power of wind to effect change, to clear out old, outdated ways of being, to introduce hope and belief in a positive future, and whatever else you think may fit this description. Logo submissions should be your own original work of art in banner format.  Please do not submit someone else’s work.  Please send a high resolution jpeg photo of your work, including your name, contact information and mailing address, and a brief bio with recent head shot (high resolution jpeg photo) via email attachment to:

Art Editor
windsofchangepress@orenda-arts.org

 Let us know if you have any questions!
505-780-5990
 
Winds of Change Press  
The Voice of Orenda Healing International
Publisher
Valentine McKay-Riddell, PhD

Four Winds Journal Fall 2018 now in print!

If you’ve enjoyed reading our Four Winds Journal online over the past few years, you’ll love it in print!  This semiannual  literary magazine is often provocative, always insightful, and a pleasure to read–  a great addition to your collection and a perfect holiday gift for family and friends.

We launched the Journal in Fall 2016* (theme: Winds of Change) and decided this past Spring to begin printing it as well.  Our printer is Jason Russell Poole– photographer, videographer, and owner of Image Ratio Productions here in Santa Fe.

Click here to order a copy of the current issue (theme: The Sociopolitical Challenge) and/or the previous issue (theme: Seven Generations and Counting).  Please indicate which issue(s) and how many copies you want, and be sure to fill in your mailing address.  Prices may vary depending upon the size of a specific issue.  Standard shipping rates apply.

*Back issues of the digital Journal are available in Archives.

Four Winds Journal Fall 2018 – The Sociopolitical Challenge

Four Winds Journal’s Spring 2018 issue introduced a few of the many facets of sustainability.  We touched briefly on human/animal relationships, our relationship with Nature, our relationships with each other.  However, sustainability is necessary—and possible to achieve—in every aspect of our lives, and it is currently missing, both here in America and around the world.

Four Winds Journal’s Fall 2018 issue investigates the real challenges that we face in resolving our society’s systemic dysfunction and how we might begin to benefit from thinking “out of the box” in order to arrive at a truly sustainable society here in this country and throughout the world.

Follow this link for your copy of Four Winds Journal Fall 2018:  The Sociopolitical Challenge

Four Winds Journal: Important Update!

The Fall 2018 digital issue of Four Winds Journal will be out around the middle of October, with the theme Exploring Sustainability: The Sociopolitical Challenge.  This issue is chock full of exciting and inspiring articles, poetry, fiction, and art by Joanna Macy, Starhawk, Ricardo Cate, Bill Peters, and more.  Watch for the publication announcement in your email and social media feed—you won’t want to miss it!

As an added bonus, we’ve extended the deadline for pre-ordering your printed copy of the Journal. You can still enjoy the Journal in print at a 15% discount—only $7.65 plus shipping*—through October 15!

Follow this link to pre-order your copy of Four Winds Journal in print, and be sure to include your name and mailing address on the order form.

Happy Autumn!
The Editors:
Katrina Rahn, MLIS
Valentine McKay-Riddell, PhD
Guest Editor Alan Levin, MFT

*Shipping cost anywhere in the US is $3.  Foreign shipping costs may be a bit more.

Letters to the Editor, Santa Fe New Mexican

My View:  David B. Van Hulsteyn

The 2018 mid-term election will be a referendum of historic significance, a referendum on whether or not Donald John Trump will be given free rein to continue his assault on our democracy.

Whenever one political party controls both houses of congress as well as the executive and judicial branches, the situation is rife for political mischief. This time around, with a rogue president who neither understands nor appreciates his responsibilities and a compliant congress which neither understands nor appreciates its duties, the situation is dire. All concerned citizens must do whatever we can to make our renegade ruler accountable to us.

In November we, the voting public, will have an opportunity to elect senators and representatives who will make Trump aware that it is totally unacceptable behavior to separate the children of immigrants from their parents and incarcerate them; that it is not acceptable to cater to dictators of other countries while at the same time alienating our long time allies; that it is not acceptable to defile women, to embrace bigots and racism, to create chaos with lies and deception.

The presidential election of 2016 was a disaster that could and should have been avoided. This year, we have the opportunity to begin the process of putting this abomination known as the Trump Administration behind us. The ball is in our court.

David B. Van Hulsteyn is an 84-year-old retired physicist who has lived in Santa Fe since 1974.

 

 

Sociopolitical Sustainability – Call to Action!

As we mentioned in our recent Call for Submissions, the Fall 2018 issue of Four Winds Journal will explore ways in which we, as Americans, can create and sustain a more equitable and universally supportive society than what is currently in place.

After reviewing multiple conversations with friends and colleagues, dependable media updates, and our own and others’ research, we realized that the topic of sociopolitical sustainability covers a lot of territory.  So we asked each other the following questions.

  1. What exactly is wrong with our current system?
  2. What would we like to see in its place?
  3. How do we get there?

In order to make it easier for you to determine which of your articles, poetry, or art work best fit the theme of this issue of the Journal, we’ve created a short list of action points:

  1. Identify the various problems:  what isn’t working?
  2. Envision in detail the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.1
  3. Discuss appropriate strategies and begin to implement action plans for reaching this goal.

Your interests and work in the world may include more than one of these action points.  However, we suggest you pick the one that you’re most passionate about in choosing what to submit.  Again, please be sure to visit our Submission Guidelines page for details on how to submit your work.  Please send your submissions or questions via email to:

The Editors
Four Winds Journal
journal@orenda-arts.org

Please note:  We’ve extended the deadline for submissions to August 31, 2018.  The Journal will be released on or shortly before October 15, 2018.  A printed version of the Journal will become available in early November.  Participating authors and artists will receive a free copy of the printed version.  Others may purchase printed copies through our website, and we are taking advance orders at this time.

Enjoy the Summer!

The Editors:
Katrina Rahn MLIS
Valentine McKay-Riddell, PhD
Alan Levin, MFT

1 Quoted from the title of Charles Eisenberg’s recent book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. (2013).  Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

#NeverAgain

Letter from the Founder

 

We marched in Santa Fe this past Saturday—my husband, one of my sisters, and I—with thousands of teenagers and adults.  This “sibling” March for Our Lives was, as Parkland survivor Cameron McKasky said in Washington DC, only the beginning—here in Santa Fe as well as throughout America.  As New Mexicans push for sane gun legislation in this state and around the country, more skeletons leap out of America’s collective closet, and the elephant in the room grows larger and far more menacing than any rogue elephant could possibly be.

We are not just facing off against the NRA.  The foe is archetypal and ubiquitous.  Fear and greed have dominated Western culture for millennia and have spawned many monsters, especially here in America:  mindless grasping for power by corporations and those who benefit from their actions; willful disregard of the principles that governed the founding of this country; senseless hatred of anything and anyone “different” from those in power; an atmosphere of brutal commercial competition in which no one wins; worldwide wars of acquisition and aggression; mockery and repression of all who live by truth, decency, and honor; hypocritical worship of a god said to approve this depravity; and utter disregard for life in all its many forms—human, animal, even the planet itself.

As Founder and Executive Director of Orenda Healing International, I believe it is imperative that we act upon the principles that inform our mission: to promote individual and community health and well-being. 

The senseless massacre of 17 bright young people on February 14, 2018 is the latest in an appalling roster of school shootings—and only one of the many other insane assaults on life—not just on school campuses but at festivals and in theaters, shopping malls, grocery stores, bars and restaurants, administrative buildings, public transit, abortion clinics, and individual homes.  This does not support individual or community health and well-being.  We know that individual and community health and well-being can only exist in an atmosphere of safety, not in a cultural war-zone.  To that end,

  1. We believe that military weaponry does not belong in the hands of civilians. An automatic weapon in the hands of a disturbed individual of any age does not constitute a “well-regulated militia.”
  2. We support a national ban on automatic weapons and any accessories that enhance their operation.
  3. We support comprehensive background checks on any individual who wishes to purchase a gun of any kind, and a substantial waiting period before that individual can walk out of the store with a weapon.
  4. We support increasing the number of trained mental health professionals in every school, so that troubled youth can be helped in time to prevent further tragedies.
  5. We support arming teachers—NOT with guns, but with books, art supplies, assistants, smaller classroom sizes, better pay and benefits, and appreciation for the difficult work that they do in helping us raise our children.
  6. And finally, we support education based upon truth, no matter how painful that truth may be, so that our youth can grow up safely to become wise and responsible adults in a country guided by the principles of its founders and not by the greed of corporations.

In order to honor our mission, Orenda Healing International is taking a strong and non-political stance against violence in any form whatsoever.  We pledge to support the youth of this country in whatever peaceful work for change they undertake.  We will do our best to help spread their words, share their videos, attend their gatherings, and argue on their behalf with our legislators.

Welcome to the Revolution!

Dr. Valentine McKay-Riddell, Founder and Executive Director

 

Photo courtesy of Apple News

Share Your Views on Sustainability in Four Winds Journal’s Spring Issue!

 

This Spring our Four Winds Journal is focusing on the challenge of sustainability.

Before First Contact—the arrival of Europeans on these once pristine shores—the original human inhabitants of the Americas were careful guardians of the land, waters, and nonhuman others with whom they shared this continent—not through a sense of guilt or the threat of reprisal from some higher power—but because they recognized the extent of human dependence on right relationship with all other life forms.  As the First People supported life, life supported them.

Patriarchal traditions, on the other hand, have taught that Man has dominion over all other creatures, and his relationship with the elements of earth, air, and water is, if not outright blasphemous, far too ephemeral to exist.  Therefore, ever since First Contact, the symbiotic relationship between humans and our environment has suffered.  Now more than ever before—in the widespread, shocking treatment of the environment, vulnerable humans, and nonhuman others—we see the devastating results of such androcentric, hierarchical thinking.

This issue of Four Winds Journal explores some of sustainability’s many facets.  We move beyond simplistic definitions and limited attempts at solutions to understand just what this word truly means, and in how many ways we can begin to restore right relationship with our planet.

We are currently accepting Submissions for articles, poetry, and art work in which you share your personal experience of sustainability.  Understanding that what we call “sustainability” is actually a state of dynamic balance—with branches that spread much further and roots that go much deeper than you may have previously considered—we invite you to share how your relationship to Spirit, to your own mind and body, to your community, and to the planet itself contributes to a sustainable future.

The Spring issue of the Journal will be released in mid-April.  Deadline for Submissions is February 28. Please send your Submissions to journal@orenda-arts.org, Attention:  Editors.