Quote

You want to know how to be like indians? Live close to the earth. Get rid of some of your things. Help each other. Talk to the creator. Be quiet more. Listen to the earth instead of building things on it all the time.

Kent Nerburn

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Kent Nerburn
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: July 3
Author
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Kent Michael Nerburn
Earth
Quiet
Live
Close
Things
Listen
Time
Instead
Like
Building
Talk
Help
Indians
Helping
Creator

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We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.
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Until you have a son of your own... you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son.
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We are born male. We must learn to be men.
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In a perfect world perhaps we would all see more clearly. But this is not a perfect world, and it is enough to hope that each of us will share our talents, and find the balance between greed and benevolence that will allow us to live and thrive and help the world around us grow.
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In times past there were rituals of passage that conducted a boy into manhood, where other men passed along the wisdom and responsibilities that needed to be shared. But today we have no rituals. We are not conducted into manhood we simply find ourselves there.
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Great joys make us love the world. Great sadnesses make us understand the world.
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You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn't even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother - you can't own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her?
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This is not to say that becoming a father automatically makes you a good father. Fatherhood, like marriage, is a constant struggle against your limitations and self-interests. But the urge to be a perfect father is there, because your child is a perfect gift.
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We must find a way to replace yearning for what life has withheld from us with gratitude for what we have been given.
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The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it's various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God.
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Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.
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Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this life.
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It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
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Our actions in this world, and our ability to rise above the limits of our own self-interest, live on far beyond us and play their humble part in shaping a world of spirituality and peace.
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My fatherhood made me understand my parents and to honor them more for the love they gave. My sonhood was revealed to me in its own perfection and I understood the reason the Chinese so value filiality, the responsibility of the son to honor the parents.
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Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons from coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you.
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Do not grieve. Misfortune will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.
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Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.
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Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.
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Our life is a work of art. We must seek always to be its artist.
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