Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
Interpretation
Every action we take should be intentional and mindful, treating life with reverence.
Black Elk's quote emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in our daily actions. By likening our steps on earth to prayers, he encourages us to approach life with a sense of spirituality and purpose, taking care to respect the world around us and live each moment with intention and gratitude.
In practice
In a speech about living a meaningful life.
I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. 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.
The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. 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. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me.
They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
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.
The problem is not with the faith, but with the faithful
Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him.
Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburdened crawl toward death.
If we look at the world with a love of life, the world will reveal its beauty to us.
Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases.
I don't want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself. I want to avoid becoming too styled and too 'done' and too generic. You see people as they go through their career, and they just become more and more like everyone else.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.