Quotations
"Poets and artists have long walked along the border of their cultures, with their antennae alert to what’s in the air and underground, with their eyes open to the light and dark. Poetry, myth, prayer attempt to translate, to bring across into words, the soul’s journey to wholeness. They do not offer easy answers but a language which travels and comes home, a speech of heart and truth, ecstatic or sorrowful. This soul-language of windows and mirrors, a language of light and dark, a language of fire and water, radiance and depth, a language that somehow (I’m never quite sure how) always includes silence."
"We had no churches, no religious organizations, so sabbath day, no holidays, and yet we worshiped. Sometimes the whole tribe would assemble and sing and pray; sometimes a smaller number, perhaps only two or three. The songs had a few words, but were not formal. The singer would occasionally put in such words as he wished instead of the usual tone sound. Sometimes we prayed in silence; sometimes each prayed aloud; sometimes an aged person prayed for all of us. At other times one would rise and speak to us of our duties to each other and to Usen. Our services were short."
"In the autumn I gathered all my sorrows and buried them in my garden. And when April returned and spring came to wed the earth, there grew in my garden beautiful flowers unlike all other flowers. And my neighbors came to behold them, and they all said to me, "when autumn comes again, at seeding time, will you not give the seeds of these flowers that we may have them in our gardens?"