It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.
Louise ErdrichRead
...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as humble as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the search for personal purpose and the beauty that one can create in the world.
In this quote, Louise Erdrich expresses a deep contemplation about the nature of purpose and beauty in life, comparing her own humble existence to that of a spider. She questions what meaningful and elegant contributions she can make to the world, prompting readers to reflect on their own lives and the beauty they can create, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
In practice
In a personal development workshop, this quote can inspire attendees to reflect on their contributions to the world.
It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.
It was just enough to sit there without words.
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.
The world tips away when we look into our children's faces.
Her mind was present because she was always gone. Her hands were filled because they grasped the meaning of empty. Life was simple. Her husband returned and she served him with indifferent patience this time. When he asked what had happened to her heat for him, she gestured to the west. The sun was setting. The sky was a body of fire.
All of our actions have in their doing the seed of their undoing. ... That in her creation of her children there should be the unspeakable promise of their death, for by their birth she had created mortal beings.
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.
When people are not in the moment, they're not there to know that they're not there.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
For all works and things, which are either commanded or forbidden by God and thus have been instituted by the supreme Majesty, are 'musts.' Nevertheless, no one should be dragged to them or away from them by the hair, for I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club.
There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.
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