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Quote by Billy-Ray Belcourt

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Coexistence: Stories

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Billy-Ray Belcourt

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“It was a short walk from the bridge to the waterfall, and I heard it long before I actually saw it, a loud, roaring sound that reverberated like rolling thunder. We passed under an outcropping of rock, and then there it was on the other side. Quixotic Falls. It took my breath away. The waterfall was so tall, I had to crane my neck to see the top of it. Shimmers of a rainbow reflected in the mist and sunlight, and the air was cool and damp. It felt good in the humidity of the afternoon. I closed my eyes, and enjoyed the mist that clung to my skin, coagulating into droplets. We walked along the underside of it, and the sunlight hit the falling water like it was glimmers of glass. The tunnel between the rock face and the waterfall was smooth and rounded from thousands of years of erosion. Vines crawled across the rocks--- morning glories and four o'clocks and honeysuckles. The waterfall poured down into a small watering hole that then slowly wormed its way into a larger river down the mountain. I knew this place would feel whimsical. Surrounding the swimming hole, the bright pink heather and stark white yarrow mixed with coneflowers and black-eyed Susans.”

“Light brings greater knowledge. Knowledge brings greater understanding. And twelve people discussing something rationally and reasonably, questioning each other, trying to get it right, guarantees greater knowledge and greater understanding... Some say that last Thursday was a sad day for American democracy, but I felt as I did when Watergate came to light, and Nixon resigned. For me it was the act that was sad, that one person was that corrupt and those around him that corruptible. For me, that it came to light and led to consequences is the triumph.”

“To be a light on a hill we must be a people on our knees. We become a light when we realize that we are not, and that any such light is imparted to us by the great God before whom we kneel. And as a gathered nation bowed on bended knee the darkness is exiled, the hill is ascended and its peak seized, the beacon is reignited in a burst of eternal light, and the people residing in the darkness of distant lands catch a glimpse of its ascending glory. And in the spectacle of hope ablaze, the people of distant lands now stand bathed in a light radiating out of a nation that bent its knee before a mighty God and climbed a hill with an inextinguishable torch.”