Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance

By Joseph M. Marshall

From best-selling Native American writer Joseph M. Marshall III comes an inspirational guide deeply rooted in Lakota spirituality.

When a young man’s father dies, he turns to his sagacious grandfather for comfort. Together they sit underneath the family’s cottonwood tree, and the grandfather shares his perspective on life, the perseverance it requires, and the pleasure and pain of the journey. Filled with dialogues, stories, and recollections, each section focuses on a portion of the prose poem “Keep Going” and provides commentary on the text.

Readers will draw comfort, knowledge, and strength from the Grandfather’s wise words—just as Marshall himself did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sterling Ethos
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781402772788

Book preview

PROLOGUE  

The Question

Afew years ago a young man named Jeremy learned that his father, Jeremy Sr., had cancer. The doctors warned the younger Jeremy and his family that the disease had not been detected in its early stages. Nevertheless, as people often do in the face of obvious hopelessness, the young man and his family prayed for a miracle.

The doctors, for their part, did the best they could. But the surgery and subsequent treatment only seemed to exacerbate an already difficult situation. Jeremy helplessly watched as his father’s condition deteriorated swiftly and he wasted away. The miracle his family desperately hoped for didn’t come.

On a cool spring night Jeremy’s father departed on his journey to the spirit world. And, in the months that followed, the young man was beset by a swirl of grief, confusion, and anger. Questions and issues about life and death overwhelmed him.

As a teacher of history, Jeremy spent his time and energy, for nine months of the year, on students, lesson plans, reading and correcting papers, and an apathetic principal more concerned with policy and dotting i’s and crossing t’s than in replacing woefully outdated textbooks. Jeremy relished the summers when he could play softball and read books he didn’t have the time for during the school year.

As a teacher he was experienced enough to write lesson plans and endure the mountains of paperwork, and was mostly successful in engaging students invariably turned off by history. And he somehow looked forward to crossing intellectual swords with the principal, to face the challenge of the man’s obstinacy and narrow-mindedness.

But as a young man he had already learned that life and death were realities for which there were no easy answers. Jeremy knew only one thing for certain: He had not lived long enough to find the right answers.

So he reached out to the one person in his life who always seemed to have an answer.

To his friends he was known as Old Hawk, but to his family he was simply Grandpa. Old Hawk was well past eighty. He had never traveled more than four hundred miles in any direction from where he’d been born. But that mattered little, because, as Old Hawk knew well, life itself was the greatest journey.

Old Hawk knew that the roads traveled in this life imparted lessons that experientially, emotionally, and spiritually were greater than the number of hills climbed, or the borders crossed. They were greater than the turns made, or the horizons waiting ahead. He knew that the most important and enduring lessons come from the difficult roads, those that twist and turn, are narrow and dark, and filled with challenges and obstacles. Roads easily traveled offer no travail and, therefore, no sense of achievement, because anything easily attained offers little value in return.

Old Hawk had no formal education to speak of and though he knew a little English, he preferred the familiarity of his native tongue. His hair was gray and his face weathered from sun and storm. The rich brown hue of his skin was testament to his native heritage. His hands were still strong, though bent and scarred from a lifetime of hard work. In his life Old Hawk had plowed and planted, was a trainer of horses, a hunter, and a builder of houses. He had lost count of the thousands of postholes he had dug to build fences, and likewise the number of posts he had placed in the Earth. He had known disappointment, heartache, sadness, and loss as well as the satisfaction of a job well done and the resolve of clinging to his beliefs and principles in the face of temptation and ridicule. In many, many ways he was like most men, most people. But to Jeremy, Old Hawk was his grandfather and, therefore, like no other.

Two characteristics always drew young Jeremy to his grandfather: a quiet demeanor and a steady gaze in his eyes, no matter what the situation.

Jeremy had spent most of his formative years with his grandparents, and he could not remember a single instance during childhood when his grandfather had raised his voice in anger. No matter the problem, crisis, or circumstance, the old man always faced it with a quiet resolve. Perhaps that was the reason there was always peacefulness in his eyes, like the stillness of a deep, quiet pool of water.

So one day Jeremy went to his grandfather carrying his grief and confusion as if it were all the heartaches of the world.

The old man took him to the shade of an old cottonwood tree where they sat and listened to the gentle rustling of the soft breeze among the leaves.

Since I was a boy, the sounds of cottonwood leaves in the wind remind me of my mother’s voice, Old Hawk began. But then I think that somehow it could also be the voice of God.

Jeremy listened for several moments, but for the life of him all he could hear was the leaves rustling.

So, Grandson, the old man went on, I can see by the look on your face that you are troubled. There seems to be something pulling down at your heart.

So the young man asked his question. It was the same question that he had asked several times before and in many different ways. But the anguish and confusion from which it came was always the same.

Grandpa, why is life so difficult?

ONE  

Looking up at the rustling leaves, or perhaps past them, Old Hawk listened to their bright song again, and then turned to his grandson.

I am an old man, he said. I’ve seen something of life, but I don’t know if there is one answer that will satisfy you. I think there are many answers out there waiting for you to find them. And I do know this: Life is not easy. But that is the way it is and we cannot change it. The only thing we can do is try to understand it.

Jeremy was not surprised by the answer. He knew his grandfather had a way of providing answers that had to be found, or earned.

How can you be so certain of these things? Jeremy asked. There are times when I think it would be far easier to accept pain and what life brings, rather than try and understand it.

I know these things because I have traveled a long way down the road we call life. The old man pointed. You’re still at the beginning. And at the beginning, we don’t know anything. At the end, we have experience to draw on, and my experiences tell me that there is more to life than simply accepting it.

But don’t you still wonder about life? Jeremy insisted. Lately, that’s all I’ve done. So I guess what I’m really asking is: Why do bad things happen? Didn’t you ask those kinds of questions when you were young?

Yes, I did. I asked my father and my grandfather, answered Old Hawk.

What did they say? Jeremy wanted to know. What did your grandfather say to you when you asked these same questions?

He told me to make the journey that lay ahead of me, the journey that would be my life. That was the only way, he said, that I would learn.

Old Hawk paused and Jeremy leaned forward in anticipation, eager and desperate for the conversation to continue. He noticed that the leaves above them seemed to rustle a little louder.

Grandfather says this, Old Hawk

Reviews for Keep Going

[shaunesay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I discovered this little book in our collection the other day as I was poking through our basement books as I often do, just to remind myself of what is there. I didn't remember buying it, or even seeing it there before, but as my family is going through some difficulties right now it seemed that it may have appeared in front of me for a reason. I chose to honor the sign, if that's what it was, and give it a read.

This is a gentle, down to earth book of encouragement. It does not sugar coat reality but instead emphasizes the duality of all aspects of life and the importance of taking another step, no matter how weary you are, or how small that step is. Life is difficult, and those steps will be hard, but you must keep going, and in facing down those storms, you will gain strength.

[ozzieslim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A friend gave me this book and then gently kept harping at me until I read it. After a particularly difficult day, I grabbed the book in a bit of huff and read it in two sittings.

The book consists of a conversation between a native american man and his grandfather. It is actually true stories compiled into one running conversation.

The crux of the matter is that without pain and sorrow, there cannot be happiness. The only way to proceed in life is to keep going - which is the central message of the book. Sometimes you go alone and sometimes with others but you always keep going.

There is something for everyone to relate to but the words that resonated with me were the following:

" A river begins its journey quietly as a small stream, usually in some obscure place. But it is a seeker determined to find its way. It does not know how to yield to obstacles, which can deter it for a time but cannot stop it. In a good season, a river grows and gathers strength from melting snows. Spring and summer rains also send down their encouragement. However, a bad season with less snow and rain may slow its flow to a mere trickle at times.

Nevertheless, the river inexorably follows the path it has made for itself, or it carves a new course if necessary. It is unstoppable.

A river can be wide or narrow, shallow or deep, swift or slow. But of all its characteristics, two are most distinctive: It creates its own path and it flows relentlessly. So long as there is winter snow in the mountains, spring rains and gravity, rivers will flow, they will persevere."

I am in the process of carving a new path, and I have slowed to a mere trickle, and I am alone but I am a seeker. And still I flow.

Lesson learned. Thanks for making me read the book.

[books4mysoul · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Nice little book with Lakota stories that teach you lessons for life. Gives inside to the Lakota philosophies and way of thinking. Enjoyed reading it very much.

[seph_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is a lot of comfort and wisdom in these pages, but the delivery was just unbearably corny *in my opinion*, and I've read a lot of corny self-help books. I found this book really hard to get through because of it's tone and I wanted to rate it less than three stars just because it grated on my nerves, but I recognize that the feelings I have towards this book are purely based on personal preferences. I know it would be the perfect source of comfort and inspiration for other people/personalities, so I'm rating it an even three stars. I did not like it though. I constantly wanted to put it down, but I couldn't bring myself to quit a read on persevering. There is wisdom in these pages, but I found it to be completely obscured by corny, drippy story-telling and cliches. ...No, I have to rate it less than three stars. I just really did not like it.