Growing Corn : Tools for Community

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Story of Corn

“Place cornstalks at your altar,” my teacher told me, “You will learn from corn; everything you will need to know you will learn from corn.” Corn became my teacher.

As I sat at my altar, a wind blew through the room. I heard, “To be a shaman, you must have a community.” I knew at that moment that a shaman is not self-declared, but one who has been given authority by the people and acknowledged as a healer and spiritual guide for the people.

I watched corn grow in the garden and sat with the mature harvested corn stalks at my altar. I continue to learn from Her. Tamatsi Niwesika, the Great Grandmother Corn Goddess and Tatei Oteganaka, the Corn Mother as well as her daughters, the five corn maidens (all colors of corn) continue to teach me.

Deanna Jenné has dedicated her life to community as a healer and spiritual consultant and a ceremonial and ritual leader. Deanna is a weaver: one who helps others reconnect to the web of life, unravel the pain and suffering and reweave the tapestry of a life that is worth living. The landscape of her homeland informs her, the wild beckons her and the fire of the heart and hearth connects her.

“To plant, feed, and observe the stages of growth; to harvest, cut the stalks, save the seed, rest the soil and then nourish it to repeat the cycle; we plant again. From this I have learned the primordial roles of the feminine and the masculine in our lives.”

Deanna's Biography

Through her ancestral lineage, she is an initiated marakame (shaman) in the Huichol tradition and a granicera, weather worker, in the Nahuatl tradition of Mexico. She and her husband Gary Weidner are keepers of the Fire, where they invite people to create community.

She brings experience and wisdom to men and women by providing guidance and ritual leadership to circles around the globe. She is a member of the Council of Elders for the Marakate, with other elders she offers the Sacred Fire Community's Lifeways' Initiation into Womanhood, she's the Director of the Blue Deer Seminary of the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing and is a co-coordinator for Sacred Fire Community Lifeways Programs. With Gary and others, she is building an intentional residential community called Mesa Life Project in Western Colorado.