An excerpt from a Richard Wagamese column published Jan. 27, 1989 in Windspeaker.
In the beginning, before time, the Creator called a meeting of the animal people. The Creator told the animal people of his plans to send a strange new creature to live among them. It was to be called Man, and he was to be their brother.
The Creator told the animal people that this new creation would inhabit every corner of the world. He would create marvelous things. And he would be born with questions.
Unlike animal people, Man would be born without knowledge of his spirit identity. So the Creator told the animal people that he was going to help man by sending him into the world with one especially marvelous gift. The gift of knowledge and truth.
With this gift, every Man would be called to find his individual spirit identity. But the Creator went on to explain that in order for this new creature to fully appreciate the wonder of this gift, he would have to search for it.
He wanted to hide the gift of knowledge and truth in such a place that man would have to earn it through hard searching. So he asked the animal people to make suggestions about where to place this marvelous gift.
The salmon said that he would take the gift and put it at the deepest part of the deepest ocean. The Creator replied that it was destined that someday Man should visit there.
The buffalo said that he would carry the gift to the very middle of the Great Plains. The Creator told buffalo that Man would someday cover the entire world and he would find it there too easily.
The eagle said that with his powerful wings he would fly it to the moon, but the Creator turned down the suggestion as well because Man would someday travel there too. One by one the animal people made suggestions. No one seemed able to come up with a remote enough place to hide the gift of knowledge and truth.
Finally, the little mole came forward. The mole lived within the earth and had lost the use of his eyes. But even though he couldn’t see, the mole had learned the ability to see with the vision of his heart. He had developed true spiritual insight.
The mole told the Creator that he knew the perfect place to hide the gift.
Put it inside them, he said, because then only the wisest and purest of heart will have the courage to look there…
Only the wisest and purest of heart will have the courage to look within themselves for the knowledge of life and living, wrote Richard Wagamese.
To read the full column, visit the back issue pdf, page 5: https://windspeaker.com/windspeaker-back-issues-1986-2015/windspeaker-j…