Product Review
In Lakota tradition, the bow and arrow were more than tools for hunting or battle. The bow’s resilience and flexibility, the arrow’s grace and power, the archer’s focus and patience—in these, we find the essential qualities for living a life of strength, purpose, and simplicity. In ,em>The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage, Joseph M. Marshall builds upon the central metaphor of the bow and arrow to provide a treasury of insights, stories, and irreplaceable wisdom. With elegant and captivating writing, this master storyteller illuminates timeless lessons on:
- Transformation—how we can preserve what is fundamental even as our external circumstances change
- Simplicity—the story of grandmother Grass Braid, who understood that “the more you know, the less you need to carry”
- Strength and Resiliency—what the history and lore of the Lakota can teach us about growing through adversity
- Purpose—how the world unveils our purpose to us, as revealed in story of the Keeper of the Winter Count
Once, the Lakota people relied on the ash bow and the willow arrow to provide food and sustenance. Today, these simple tools can offer us something even more precious: a way to nourish our souls with spiritual wisdom. Joseph M. Marshall offers a book that is at once profound, honest, and rich with meaning as he reveals
The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage.Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(16 customer reviews) 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Great Insight into another culture that touches the spirit,
February 23, 2012 Diane Davis White "Historical and Contemporar... (North Central Plains) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage: Lessons in Resilience from the Bow and Arrow (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Last year I read The Lakota Way by Joseph M. Marshall, which is a wonderful collection of folklore, each story having a moral, as in the stories in Aesop's Fables. It sits proudly on my keeper shelf and is well worn from constant use.
Now, from the same author, we get another bequest of wisdom in The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage.
It's always nice to look at cultures not your own and take the gifts of insight that are offered. In this case, as in the previous book, there are lessons taught, but the theme is not varied as the bow is the key to each experience. But the focus is the same: courage and honor, discipline and self-sacrifice.
No matter the belief system, traditions or the way of life, each society has much to offer in rich, vibrant tales of wisdom. This book offers such a contribution.
I highly recommend this to anyone looking for ways to improve the quality of life, outlook and self-esteem, and those raising small children can...Read more
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
excellent metaphor for the photographer and other visual artist,
March 23, 2012 C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage: Lessons in Resilience from the Bow and Arrow (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
We photographers may find herein the patience and courage for our craft.
There is a series of sayings which include the line "Good photography is patience."
In this book we learn the patience of the hunter, and other strengths, virtues and qualities necessary to the great hunter and the skilled photographer.
The textbook chosen for my first university level photography course was Zen in the Art of Archery, in which we learn the archer, the arrow, the subject, are all one, and the arrow already shot, shot as an afterthought, shot as no thought, with no thought, already one with the subject.
This past weekend, when shooting with great patience candid photographs in the streets of Ciudad Juarez, including of a helpless homeless woman from the north seated on the sidewalk, I came away with...Read more
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Lakota treatise on values and personal growth,
March 15, 2012 James G. Snyder "taiji dreamer" (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage: Lessons in Resilience from the Bow and Arrow (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This is a wise little book, a continuation of the author's plain spoken story telling from his earlier works such as The Lakota Way... Using traditional stories and autobiographical experiences he speaks his own wise elder observations on the qualities that persons need to acquire as they grow and mature.
Lakota culture values qualities in an individual that contribute to family, tribe and society first and foremost, while attributes of personal success and uniqueness are of only secondary importance. The fame and fortune that western culture values and pursues with complete commitment and disregard of consequences is understood by the Lakota not so much as a bad thing as simply the nature of uniformed youth. Stories generally feature wild youth starting with one goal and being transformed through the journey and its hardships into stronger and more resilient adults. Growth is a matter of personal perseverance through lessons the world offers and shaving away the extraneous...Read more
