Everywhere is the center of the world. Everything is sacred.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the idea that every place holds significance and value, and that everything in life has its own sacredness.
Black Elk's quote suggests that no matter where one finds themselves, they can perceive it as important and central to their own experience. It highlights the interconnectedness of all things and the idea that we should recognize and honor the sacredness in our surroundings and in every moment, something that can deepen our appreciation of life.
In practice
In a speech about environmental awareness, one might use the quote to emphasize the importance of appreciating nature.
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 impossibility of outraging nature is the greatest anguish man can know.
If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But, they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them weeds and murder them at every opportunity
Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.
Wars are fought for the benefit of oligarchs, triumphs bought with the blood of peons.
A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy.
To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.
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