"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 soil was soothing,
strengthening, cleansing, and healing."
Chief
Luther Standing Bear Oglala Sioux
He
talked for hours. Childhood memories rose before me. I could almost hear the
sound of the preacher's voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the
hillside; there was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my
grandfather's good natured contempt of some church folk and their doings; his
insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of the
preacher's right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness as he spoke
of these things just before he died; these recollections welled up from the
past. They made me swallow hard.
Big
Book pg. 10
I
saw my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on a different
footing. His roots grasped a new soil.
Big
Book pgs. 11 & 12
Creator help us to feel the strength of the earth.