BLACK ELK SPEAKS

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