Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible. —Rumi

  

 

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If you look at zero you see nothing; but look through it
and you will see the world


—Robert Kaplan

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From the earliest times, it was understood that the visible world implied the existence of an invisible world, where everything was infused with the supernatural and the felt sense of the sacred. Thomas Yellowtail expressed: ‘A man’s attitude toward the nature around him, and the animals in nature, is of special importance, because as we respect our created world, so also do we show respect for the real world that we cannot see.’ Through the traditional wisdom of American Indians we learn that there are ways of knowing that are obtained through the earth that allow human beings to listen and learn directly from the Great Spirit.


—Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
Parabola Magazine
Fall 2017 Issue: “The Sacred” 

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Names belong to things, but zero belongs to nothing. It counts the totality of what isn’t there. By this reasoning it must be everywhere with regard to this and that: with regard, for instance, to the number of humming-birds in that bowl with seven — or now six — apples. Then what does zero name?


—Robert Kaplan

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Could I live like this? I ask myself

and I know, somehow, I must.

More and more my life is peeling paint,

straight horizons.

More and more my name dissolves in the air,

salt, something invisible I taste,

and forget.


—Naomi Shihab Nye
At Otto’s Place, excerpt 

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