“To learn wisdom it is best to turn to the simplest things. Take grass for instance. Grasses cover much of the earth. They never depart from the earth, never seek to rise above themselves, or surpass themselves, but go on being grasses from one epoch to the next. The grass is low, the grass is simple, the grass is humble. And yet I tell you, of all things in your world, nothing surpasses the power of a single blade of grass.
“You have made a grave miscalculation in supposing that you could surpass the wisdom of this world, that you could feed yourself and fill your bellies better through your own efforts than the world could feed you from her belly and her breast. And you have been foolish to suppose that there was any goal higher than the grasses and the flowers of the field. Were you not given beauty? Were you not given meaning? Were you not given all the wealth and the riches that the world contains? For all your efforts, you have not taken anything from the world: the sum of all that is remains the same. You have only stolen from yourselves.
“When you tremble before a grass blade and know that you have failed where it has succeeded, then you will be ready at last to learn wisdom. That learning will come slowly and mostly as the result of distress. But eventually the plants will tell you what they know and you have forgotten. That knowledge has been entrusted to their care.”