I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way.

He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken.

We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.' Tagoona asked, 'What is a problem?' and the white man said, 'Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.' Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, 'I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.

When he had first come to the village,it was the future that loomed huge.So much to plan.So much to learn. Then it was the present that had consumed him-each day with all its chores and never enough hours to do them.

What a shame that Christianity had come here!If the white man had not intruded where he was not wanted, where he did not belong, even now protected by the mountains and the river,the village would have remained a last stronghold of a culture which was almost gone.Mark tried to say that no village,no culture can remain static. "I have often thought that if this lively and magnificent land belongs to anyone,it's to the birds and the fish.They were here long before the first Indian and when the last man is gone from the Earth,it will be theirs again.

For me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world." "And that, my lord?" "Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die.

How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?

I ain't much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I'm an agnostic. I don't know." "There's a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows how much - only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.