"Suppose the entire American Civil War that has permanently marked the land and scarred the character of the American people was a sacrifice by a secular Christian society to a god or gods that had not been honestly remembered until the war, gods of the land, gods honored who had been there for centuries before the combatants donned the blue and the gray.
"Suppose the gods in this 'new world' soil were saying: 'You may not land here; you cannot claim this land by labor alone, nor by law or treaty, nor even by expulsion of others and the rights of victors. To claim this land you shall pay for it with your own blood, and until you have paid you have not truly landed; you remain colonists, attached still in soul to another mother as refugees from her, rebels against her, secretly fawning upon her, and have not let this land bring forth its birth in freedom.'"--Pg.103, A Terrible Love of War
Suppose this is why Derrick Jensen has often said that we must ask the land what it wants. It has its own wants and desires that we must pay attention to before we act to help it. I don't know. I do know that Heraclitus once said: "The true nature of things loves to hide and to stay hidden."
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