Thank you to my friend, Alex, for first sharing these quotes.
So powerful and needed in these times. ― Molly
What the Student of Nature Learns ―
To Feel Beauty
Kinship with all creatures of the
earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird
world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them.
And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends
that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people
liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth…
the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and
away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to
be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly
into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
This concept of life and its relations was humanizing
and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and
mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all
things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.
Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us
in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its
books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that
shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what
only the student of nature learns, and that was to feel beauty. We never railed
at the storms, the furious winds, and the biting
frosts and snows. To do so intensified human futility, so whatever came we
adjusted ourselves, by more effort and energy if necessary, but without
complaint.
…the old Lakota was
wise. He knew that a man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that
lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for
humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.
― Luther Standing Bear,
Oglala
Lakota Chief
1868-1939
No comments:
Post a Comment