Nancy Shattuck, Steve Curtin
Native American wisdom: The Medicine Wheel

What wisdom is addressed in the Native American Medicine Wheel? It is a way of orienting ourselves within nature despite our life’s fluctuating paths. This non-linear cyclical view of existence links together the seasons, our physical, mental, spiritual and ethereal selves, our natural world in the cosmos, allowing us to view life in terms of a continual renewal.

Nancy Shattuck is an author and Secretary/Office Administrator of our church. She is the author of a travel memoir, a children’s book, and three historical novels in a series titled The Watertown Chronicles. She writes in Farmington Hills, Michigan where she lives with her adopted cat Houdini, and taught English Composition at WSU and several other local colleges. Shattuck became interested in Native American shamanism when her neighbors invited her to a sweat lodge and Yuwipi ceremony conducted by Luciano Perez, a Yuwipi man who trained with the shaman Leonard Crowdog of the Lakota Rosebud reservation in South Dakota. Working with Luciano’s followers and connecting with a second shaman in Idaho, Nancy followed the Native American teachers for ten years. She learned the medicine wheel—fundamental to all the Lakota spiritual rituals—was a means of orienting oneself to center and maintain balance.

Steven Curtin has been a member of 1st UU Detroit since 2016 and a member of the chorus where when we had in-person services he also played bass, congas, guitar and other instruments. Since the start of the Covid lockdown he's served as "Zoom Guru" for our teleservices and continues to play instruments with Todd and Eric and mixes the videos for our Zoom Chorus pieces. He maintains a 40 year Zen Buddhist practice, and since 2003 has observed all eight events of the wheel of the years in the Celtic Pagan tradition.

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