today as i listen to the cosmic hum, i see the peace pilgrimage as our unfolding collective journey moving from egocentrism to ecocentrism… listen with me to the sacred voice always calling us home…

“Then a Voice said: “Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you.” I was still on my bay horse, and once more I felt the riders of the west, the north, the east, the south, behind me, as before, and we were going east. I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens.

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I saw in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

Then as I stood there, two men were coming from the east, head first like arrows flying, and between them rose the daybreak star. They came and gave a herb to me and said: “With this on earth you shall undertake anything and do it.” It was the Daybreak-Star herb, the herb of understanding, and they told me to drop it on the earth. I saw it falling far, and when it struck Mother Earth it rooted and grew and flowered, four blossoms on one stem, a black, a white, a scarlet, and a yellow. The rays from these streamed upward to the heavens so that all creatures saw it and in no place was there darkness.”

Hehaka Sapa, Black Elk