Green Grass

"A child said, What is the grass? Fetching it to me
with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is,
any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may
see and remark, and say, Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among the black folks as among the white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass

Rapture

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experience on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
- Joseph Campbell, excerpt from "The Power of Myth"