They say in the Grass singing: The universe is, and all there is is inside
that house of houses.
Well, is the universe then a person? We speak as
if to a person, saying "Heya!" to a stone, saying to the sun
rising, "Heya! Holy! I greet you!" We cry out as if to a person
when alone in the wilderness we cry, "Bless me as I bless you, help
me in my weakness!" Whom do we greet? Whom do we bless? Who
helps?
Maybe in all things there is one person, one
spirit whom we greet in the rock and the sun and trust in all things to
bless and help. Maybe the oneness of the universe manifests that one
spirit and the oneness of each being of the many kinds is a sign or symbol
of that one person. Maybe so. People who say it is so call that person
the self of all selves or the other of all others, the one eternal, the
god. The lazyminded may say that inside the rock a spirit lives, inside
the sun a fiery person lives, but these say that in the universe the god
lives as a human lives in a house or a coyote in the wilderness, having
made it, keeping it in order. These people believe. They are not
lazyminded.
Some other people are better at thinking than at
believing, and they wonder and ask who it is that we greet, that we bless,
that we ask for blessings. Is it the rock itself, the sun itself, all
things in themselves? Maybe so. After all, we live in this house which
makes itself and keeps itself. Why should a soul be afraid in its own
house? There are no strangers. The walls are life, the doors are death; we
go in and out at our work.
I think it is one another whom we greet, and
bless, and help. It is one another whom we eat. We are gatherer and
gathered. Building and unbuilding, we make and are unmade; giving birth
and killing, we take hands and let go. Thinking human people and other
animals, the plants, the rocks and stars, all the beings that think or are
thought, that are seen or see, that hold or are held, all of us are beings
of the Nine Houses of Being, dancing the same dance. It is with my voice
that the blue rock speaks, and the word I speak is the name of the blue
rock. It is with my voice that the universe speaks, and the word I hear it
speak when I listen is myself. Being is praise. I do not know what there
is to believe.
So I think that, frightened, I will trust; weak, I
will bless; suffering, I will live. I think it is this way: having asked
for help, I will be silent, listening. I will serve no person, and lock no
door. So I think I will live in the Valley as best I can, and so die here,
coming in the open door.
- Always Coming Home, Ursula LeGuin