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 blessing. 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 these is to believe.