It Is The Imagination That Gives Shape

It Is The Imagination That Gives Shape To The Universe.

The Land Retains An Identity Of Its Own, Still Deeper And More Subtle Than We Can Know. Our Obligation Toward It Then Becomes Simple: To Approach With An Uncalculating Mind, With An Attitude Of Regard...be Alert For Its Openings, For That Moment When Something Sacred Reveals Itself Within The Mundane, And You Know The Land Knows You Are There.

The Land Gets Inside Of Us; And We Must Decide One Way Or Another What This Means, What We Will Do About It.

Conversations Are Efforts Toward Good Relations. They Are An Elementary Form Of Reciprocity. They Are The Exercise Of Our Love For Each Other. They Are The Enemies Of Our Loneliness, Our Doubt, Our Anxiety, Our Tendencies To Abdicate. To Continue To Be In Good Conversation Over Our Enormous And Terrifying Problems Is To Be Calling Out To Each Other In The Night. If We Attend With Imagination And Devotion To Our Conversations, We Will Find What We Need; And Someone Among Us Will Act—it Does Not Matter Whom—and We Will Survive.

What Does It Mean To Grow Rich? Is It To Have Red-blooded Adventures And To Make A ‘fortune,’ Which Is What Brought The Whalers And Other Entrepreneurs North? Or Is It, Rather, To Have A Good Family Life And To Be Imbued With A Far-reaching And Intimate Knowledge Of One’s Homeland, Which Is What The Tununirmiut Told The Whalers At Pond’s Bay Wealth Was? Is It To Retain A Capacity For Awe And Astonishment In Our Lives, To Continue To Hunger After What Is Genuine And Worthy? Is It To Live At Moral Peace With The Universe?