Jul 16th, 2010 by Kay
Rarely do I find a book I cannot put down, but yesterday, when SON OF A FARMER: CHILD OF THE EARTH arrived, I could not put it down until I had savored every page! Eric Herm’s story is both informative and funny. At times, I wanted to laugh, then cry, then write my Congressman, boycott big corporations, and march in protest somewhere!
“And just how is that different for you, Kay,” you ask? Well, this book has armed me with facts. Facts coming from a farmer who is living in the midst of the systematic, greed-based take over of our food supply and destruction of the ecosystem on which it depends. If there is one important message to take away from this story it’s “Wake Up!” And to assist us in “waking up,” Eric has lists of books, web pages, videos…all with even more ammunition for the arsenal of mind as it forms arguments to combat this take-over.
But the story is also a personal story — a story of youthful rebellion, of dropping out, of searching to “find himself,” and of hearing Spirit’s call to return to the land where he finds, “Everything is one here.” Certainly, the book is not a downer. After we “Let that marinate a spell” (which Eric asks us to do throughout), we arrive at an inspired kind of optimism.
Peter calls Eric, “Spirit of Crazy Horse.” And after I put Eric’s book down, I opened a book I have on Crazy Horse and found the following a most fitting way to conclude…
“Upon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.” – (This statement was taken from Crazy Horse as he sat smoking the Sacred Pipe with Sitting Bull for the last time, four days before he was assassinated.)