Trinity Sight Quotes

“In the place Calliope had bled, a trail of corn sprouted behind her. She picked the two tallest corn shoots then sat beside two large, smooth stone metates for grinding. From within her husk rebozo, she pulled a mano, shucked the corn, laid it on the altar, and with the mano in both hands, she began moving with the weight of her whole body, the strength of her shoulders and back pressing down through her arms, back and forth, shearing, until the corn became a fine yellow powder.
The Ancients sang her on as she worked. When the Earth has had enough, she will shake her troubles off. She will shake her troublemakers off. She scooped this and mashed it into the butter of her hands. Rolled it into a ball, flattened it again. Shaped and shaped until the corn grew into a child, who sprang from the stone of her hands, laughing.
For she was finished, and sank into the earth, solid, hardened, at peace. And as her corn-made child ran from the mound to the grass below, the spirits intoned. The Earth has all the power she needs.
When she decides to use her power, you will know.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“A shock of light. Unbelievable light. Blood orange swallowing the Albuquerque evening. A pulling in, taking back, reclaiming something stolen. Halfway home from her Saturday-morning lecture, Calliope Santiago drove across the river toward West Mesa and the Sleeping Sisters, ancient cinder-cone volcanoes in the distance marking the stretch of desert where she lived. Only now she could see no farther than two feet ahead of her from the blinding light, the splotches in her eyes bursting like bulbs in an antique camera. She blinked, not sure what she was seeing. She meant to cover her eyes. Meant to shield her sight.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“The rocks pummeled her belly. Something rose in her throat and when she tried to speak, from her mouth she dislodged a rock. She was made of rocks. She couldn’t move from the fossilized casing she’d once called her body.
Heat crackled nearby. A conversation wove through the fire. A child’s sweaty body curled at her lap, chest rhythms of breathing, up and down, pressing against her.
'I didn’t want to believe it was happening again.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“What a petty child she’d been, thinking herself so high and intellectual, a crab who’d escaped the bucket—only to find herself in the fisherman’s mouth.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“Miracles happen every day, her mother had said, if you know where to look, if you know HOW to look. Not through the microscope, mija. Through the kaleidoscope of your heart.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“The white man’s bible is only one end-of-the-world myth.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“How have you done it? Reconciled your people’s beliefs with your scientific knowledge?”

“There’s not really a chasm, they’re part of the same story.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“...better to accept a mystery than an explanation with no logic.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“We are ruled by the laws of nature,” Chance had said when the car had broken down and neither he nor Calliope could fix it. “Only, I’m afraid try as we might, we don’t always know those laws, though in our human arrogance we think we do.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“Look, believe whatever you want. I’m not asking you to believe. You’ve seen the Suuke. You’ve seen the landscape utterly changed. You’ve seen a forest burst from nowhere, overnight. You’ve seen volcanic ash disappear when your books tell you it should have lingered. Yet you don’t believe anything you’ve seen. Science is about more than what the Western world tells you is true. It’s about finding answers for what we see around us. Well, I’m saying let’s find answers.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“So you fought hard to survive, and you have. And you've made do. You can't fault yourself for making your happiness where you are. That's what we do. All we can ever hope to do.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight