“If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through.”—Black Elk, from the Preface to Black Elk Speaks

  We’re sitting in an Irish pub on Crescent Street in downtown Montreal having a pint after a long walk around town. It is the perfect way to bid adieu to the day. 

  The two men sitting with me are retired university professors and I am not trying to play coy with them but I know that nothing I can say will change their minds. The reality is the things that I am trying to say here at the Cafe—with a special emphasis on the word ‘trying,’ are not exactly ‘of this world.’ Again, I am not trying to be coy or ‘New Agey,’ it is just that things of the spirit, things of the ‘other world,’ however you wish to term it—and I simply prefer saying Life—cannot be explained or defended with reason. 

  That is where our conversation inevitably reaches an impasse, and it annoys reasonable ‘educated’ people to no end that I am not inclined to debate or argue with them about things that cannot be debated or argued. 

  “They just are,” I repeatedly say. 

  “But that’s not enough!” They protest. 

  For me, the Cafe is following in the steps of a great many people, individuals I like to refer to as Giants of the Human Spirit. Nietzsche, Spengler, Faure, Bergson, Miller, Joyce, Proust, Hesse, Campbell, plus countless Zen masters—how many am I leaving out! Every one of them to my thinking devoted their lives to singing something that we all cry out for. 

  “This is not my song!” I insist. “I am just rephrasing what others before me sang. Different words, different melodies, same song! And to me this song is all around us today, if we only open our ears and our hearts to it!”

  Life!