From an interview by Derrick Jensen with Thomas Berry:
“How does the wind speak to us? A biting wind on a winter’s day tells the person of harshness and the challenge of existence. It wants to make a person strong. And the softness of a summer breeze tells us of the compassionate dimension of the universe.
“People say,’Oh, that’s poetic. That’s romantic’. But that’s the most scientific thing there is. If someone says to me, ‘I don’t hear the voice of the wind,’ I say, ‘You better learn.’
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackbackdamn straight… this is great… I love Berry… hes been a huge inspiration for bioregional animism. His stuff speaks so much of this way of relating…
It was the wind that gave them life. It is the wind that
comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When
this ceases to blow we die. In the skin at the tips of
our fingers we see the train of the wind, it shows us
where the wind blew when our ancestors were c r e a t e d.
IT WAS THE WIND,
NAVAJO, 19th CENTURY
The Creation of the People
Dine (Navajo), Southwest United States
Late in the autumn the people heard the distant sound of a great
voice calling from the east. They listened and waited, and soon
heard the voice nearer and louder than before. Once more they
listened and heard it louder still, very near. A moment later four
mysterious beings appeared. These were White Body, Blue Body, Yellow
Body and Black Body.
The gods told the people that they would come back in twelve days.
On the morning of the Twelfth Day the people washed themselves well.
Then the women dried their skin with yellow cornmeal, the men with
white cornmeal. Soon they heard the distant call, shouted four
times, of the approaching gods. When the gods appeared, Blue Body
and Black Body each carried sacred buckskin. White Body carried two
ears of corn, one yellow and one white.
The gods laid one buckskin on the ground with the head to the west,
and on this they placed the two ears of corn with their tips to the
east. Over the corn they spread the other buckskin with its head to
the east. Under the white ear they put the feather of a white eagle;
under the yellow ear the feather of a yellow eagle. Then they told
the people to stand back and allow the wind to enter. Between the
skins the white wind blew from the east and the yellow wind from the
west. While the wind was blowing, eight gods called the Mirage
People came and walked around the objects on the ground four times.
As they walked, the eagle feathers, whose tips stuck out from the
buckskins, were seen to move. When the Mirage People finished their
walk, the upper buckskin was lifted. The ears of corn had
disappeared; a man and a woman lay in their place.
The white ear of corn had become the man, the yellow ear had become
a woman: First Man and First Woman. It was the wind that gave them
life, and it is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives
us life. When this ceases to blow, we die.”
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