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I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.

Black Elk

Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
BLACK ELK

Earth Prayer Steps
Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
BLACK ELK

Children Country Heart Native
He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real.
BLACK ELK

Compared Everything Know Prepared World
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.
BLACK ELK

Circles Country Native Power
It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.
BLACK ELK

Darkness Lost Men Vision
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I 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.
BLACK ELK

Circles Country Inspirational Native
Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
BLACK ELK

Country Honesty Inspirational Native True
And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me.
BLACK ELK

Color Flames Rainbow
I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.
BLACK ELK

Dead Except Lying People Saws
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
BLACK ELK

Circles Country Native People
Everything tries to be round.
BLACK ELK

Education Statistics Trying
Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.
BLACK ELK

Different Garden Men Prayer Spirit Way
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation’s hoop I thrust it in the earth.
BLACK ELK

Earth Red Sticks
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.
BLACK ELK

Children Daylight Flowering Hoops Shelter
Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
BLACK ELK

Circle Community Earth Live Together
If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
BLACK ELK

Country Everything Foolish Native

I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.

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I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.

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Popular Authors

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