I was nine or ten when my mother gave me permission to plant and tend my first garden. She was a gardener too. In addition to ten children, my mother raised several lavish beds of exquisite purple and gold irises. I’ve associated irises with her ever since, and so they’ve always been my favorite flower.

When I was twenty-three, I felt myself skating over the surface of my life. So focused on who I was, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was. Beauties would pass me by. I would find my mind in tomorrow already, not noticing today.

Thomas King poses those questions after sharing a completely different kind of creation story than Genesis, a Native American story involving mud and rain and animals and humans and deities, all engaged in the messy process of co-creating a world of balance and connection and ongoing, meaningful relationships which are fraught with conflict.

I believe there is only one power, one shaping urge, but I also believe that it infuses everything the glistening track of the snail along with the gleaming eye of the fawn, the grain in the oak, the froth on the creek, the coiled proteins in my blood and in yours, the mind that strings together these words and the mind that reads them.