The Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant. He will put me in a place where I shall be better off than in this world.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the belief that ignorance is not a reason for suffering and that there is a higher purpose or place for individuals beyond this life.
Red Cloud's quote emphasizes the idea that ignorance should not lead to suffering, suggesting that the Great Spirit (or a higher power) understands our limitations and will provide us with a better place or state of being than what we experience in our current world. It underscores a philosophy of compassion and the belief in a benevolent guiding force that accommodates human flaws and seeks to offer improvement or redemption.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might say, 'As Red Cloud reminds us, the Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant.'
I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.
When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.
We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country. . . to seek for gold in the far west . . . Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. . . . His presence here is . . . an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be allowed for corn?
Look at me. I was a warrior on this land where the sun rises, now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first surrounded on this land - the red people with bows and arrows. The Great Father says he is good and kind to us. I can't see it.
In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
The Catechism was not written to please you. It will not make life easy for you, because it demands of you a new life.
If... we choose death rather than true life, God does not take away the power that He gave us. And not only does He not take it away, but He reminds us of it again and again. From the dawn till the dusk of life? For, indeed, no one can come to Christ, as He Himself said in the Gospels, unless the Father draws him (cf. Jn. 6:44).
Money is a miraculous thing. It is your personal energy reduced to a portable form and endowed with power you yourself do not possess. It can go where you cannot go; speak languages you cannot speak; lift burdens you cannot touch with your fingers; save lives with which you cannot deal directly.
Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will ultimately lead to the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that all the works of humankind will be reintegrated in the work of God, and that each of us, no matter how sinful, will ultimately be saved.
Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.