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      "text": "In the universe of power, all transactions proceed in more directions than one.",
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      "text": "It is the loss of harmony, an inner-world imbalance, that reveals itself in physical or psychological ailment. It also plays itself out in social ailments, war, dictatorship, elitism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. This chain of action-consequence ensues because balance and harmony are fundamental laws of the cosmos. Disorder brings about a series of adjustments whose purpose is to reestablish harmony.",
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      "text": "The true nature of being is magical and that the proper duty of the creatures, the land, and human beings is to live in harmony with what is.",
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      "text": "The nature of the cosmos, of the human, the creaturely, and the supernatural universe is like water. It takes numerous forms; it evaporates and it gathers. Survival and continuance are contingent on its presence. Whether it is in a cup, a jar, or an underground river, it nourishes life. And whether the ritual traditions are in ceremony, myth, or novel, they nourish the people. They give meaning. They give life.",
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      "text": "While lovelessness is not usually named by sociologists as an aspect of alienation, it may be the primary factor. For without relationships with significant others, meaning, self-esteem, a sense of belonging expressed in the establishment of norms and experienced as a sense of power cannot exist.",
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      "text": "Reconciling the opposites of life and death, of celebration and grief, of laughter and rage is no simple task, yet it is one worthy of our best understanding and our best effort. If, in all these centuries of death, we have continued to endure, we must celebrate that fact and the fact of our vitality in the face of what seemed, to many, inevitable extinction. For however painful and futile our struggle becomes, we have but to look outside at the birds, the deer, and the seasons to understand that change does not mean destruction, that life, however painful and even elusive it is at times, contains much joy and hilarity, pleasure and beauty for those who live within its requirements with grace.",
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      "text": "Literature must, of necessity, express and articulate the deepest perceptions, relationships, and attitudes of a culture, whether it does so deliberately or accidentally.",
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      "text": "In the ancient bardic tradition the bards sang only of love and death. Certainly these twin themes encompass the whole of human experience. Loving, celebrating, and joining are the source of life, but they necessarily occur against a background of potential extinction. Thus, these themes become the spindle and loom of the poets’ weavings, for from the interplay of connection and disconnection come our most significant understandings of ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our tradition, our past.",
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