"You sense the pure joy from her. And it's nice to touch that. Because we're all so skeptical -- I know I am. But even the skeptics begin to believe in God just because she's so happy. And it's not like she's preaching. This woman is just joy and happiness, period. . . . The first time you meet her, you think she's not real, not normal. But in twenty years I've never seen her change. There's an exuberance about her relationship with God, her relationship with people. Just joy, happiness, love. It's what we're born to be, and wish we could be."
I was learning to live in Nature, shaping my life, my everyday activities in a direct way according to the weather, the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun and moon. I was once again becoming aware of Nature's all-powerful presence. If anyone had asked me, I would still have been unable to say what might be learned from Peter asleep among his animals on the prairie as I had seen him that first summer, but I was learning it. I was learning it slowly, painfully, in solitude and silence and out of my own experience.