Maura D. Shaw - Ten Amazing People: And How They Changed the World

2010 Hardcover Edition, Fifth Printing

2007 Hardcover Edition, Fourth Printing

2006 Hardcover Edition, Third Printing

2003 Hardcover Edition, Second Printing

2002 Hardcover Edition, First Printing

Text 2002 by SkyLight Paths Publishing

Illustrations 2002 by Stephen Marchesi

Foreword 2002 by Robert Coles

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shaw, Maura D.

Ten amazing people : and how they changed the world / Maura D. Shaw ; illustrations by Stephen

Marchesi ; foreword by Robert Coles.

p. cm.

Summary: Introduces the lives and work of ten influential religious leaders from around the world.

ISBN-13: 978-1-893361-47-8 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1-893361-47-0 (hardcover)

1. Religious leadersBiographyJuvenile literature. [1. Religious leaders.] I. Marchesi, Stephen, ill.

II. Title.

BL72 .T46 2002

200.922dc21

2002004047

10 9 8 7 6 5

Book and jacket design: Drena Fagen

Manufactured in China

SkyLight Paths Publishing is creating a place where people of different spiritual traditions come together for challenge and inspiration, a place where we can help each other understand the mystery that lies at the heart of our existence.

SkyLight Paths sees both believers and seekers as a community that increasingly transcends traditional boundaries of religion and denominationpeople wanting to learn from each other, walking together, finding the way.

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Dr. Robert Coles

No matter how old we are, or where we live, we will at times wonder about this life given uswhat matters, and why. We look to our parents, of course, for answers to the mysteries that keep coming our way, and, as well, we turn to our teachers, to friends and neighbors, to other family membersand somehow, we hope, the result will be a heightened understanding on our part: a realization of what the world needs and how the world might change for the better. The search for that kind of understanding helps us to grow, and those who help us in that search are enabling us, thereby, to be sturdier members of particular families, communities, countries.

Here in this book are ten human beings (eight men and two women) who lived in the past one hundred years and yet clearly remain with all of us today. What they believed and, even more important, what they did in order to uphold their beliefs, values, and principles keeps them still very much with us. We look to them as moral guides, as individuals who dared to live honorably, decently, and as persons who thought not only of themselvestheir hopes and wishes and worriesbut of other people, many of whom were living in poverty or under persecution. These ten people from the past can help us all think of the future: what needs to be done if this world of ours is to become a better one for all who enter it as childrena world in which people respect one another and try to help one another, as they move through their lives, from year to year.

In a sense, this book offers its young readers a visit with truly extraordinary moral leaders, each in his or her own way a person of thoughtfulness and compassion. Through the pages that follow, their efforts to make things in this world better (and more fair) for more people will be recognized and, one hopes and prays, will be given the new life that those who inspire offer to those who seek and need inspiration.

One world, one family

When Black Elk was only nine years old, he had a spirit dream that showed him the sacred hoop of the world, where all living things dwell together, each hoop joined within one circle. An Oglala Lakota Sioux, Black Elk grew up in Wyoming in the late 1800s, a time when the American Indian way of life was in great danger of disappearing. Black Elk helped the world to understand the Plains Indians religion and culture by sharing his visions in a book called Black Elk Speaks.

Black Elk was an old man in the summer of 1930. He lived in the hills near Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in a one-room log cabin in such disrepair that weeds grew out of the roof, and he was nearly blind. Most of the time he sat in the sun and remembered his life as he had lived it.

He remembered the time of his childhood, when his people had traveled with their tipis to hunt bison and called the months of the year by their Indian names. He remembered the bad years when the white soldiers had come to take the land, which belonged to no one and to everyone. He remembered fighting in great battles between the soldiers and the Sioux, led by his cousin Crazy Horse. And he also remembered the other times when he was able to warn his people and keep them safe, because he saw the coming dangers in his dreams. When Black Elk was a boy, he had seen his greatest vision, in which he was given something very special to do. But in all the many years that had passed, Black Elk did not feel that he had done his work yet. He was still waiting.

A writer named John Neihardt came to visit Black Elk and to hear his stories of the Ghost Dance of long ago. Even though Neihardt had not told Black Elk ahead of time about his visit, the old man was waiting in front of his cabin when he arrived. After a time of silence, Black Elk said, As I sit here, I can feel in this man beside me a strong desire to know the things of the Other World. He has been sent to learn what I know, and I will teach him.

Black Elk put around John Neihardts neck a sacred ornament, the Morning Star, which he and his father, also a holy man, had used in ceremonies of the Indian tradition. It was a leather star, with a strip of buffalo hide and an eagle feather hanging from the center. The Morning Star would help the white man see wisdom, Black Elk told him. The eagle feather would help his thoughts to rise as high as the eagle flies, and the buffalo hide would bring all good things of the earth to him. Finally, the old man began to talk of his spirit vision of the Six Grandfathers, the Powers of the World, who had given him the gifts to save his people.

John Neihardt came back to live with Black Elk the next spring, to listen to his stories and write them down in a book. When the book was published, the visions of Black Elk were shared with the world. The spiritual beliefs and ceremonies and religion of the Plains Indians were preserved and passed on to new generations of Indian people.