Is not the Sky a Father and the Earth a Mother
and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots
their children?
"My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.......
"Then i was standing on the highest mountain of them all,
and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world
and while I stood thre I saw more than I can tell, and understood
more than I saw;
For I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit
and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people
was one of many hoops that made one circle wide as daylight
and as a starlight
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree
to shelter all the children of One mother
and One father
And I saw it was holy "
Taken from
Black Elk Speaks, by John Neihardt
