What follows is a transcript of the words spoken by Melody Shapiro in “The Mother,” the second episode in our Of Souls+Water film series with Forge Motion Pictures and New Belgium Brewing. “We just let Melody talk,” says director Skip Armstrong. “These are purely her words, her thoughts.” And they’re as beautiful as the sandstone and still waters that inspired them.

I feel like a speck when I’m sitting there, enveloped by this landscape. By the walls. They swallow you up. In their beauty. In their vastness. There’s a comfort in that. It feels like I’m experiencing the universe.

I still have dreams. Dreams are being able to stay in the flow of life. To be able to move through the challenges that will always be thrown at us. Not to shut down. To stay open to possibilities. Dreams are being able to nurture life, the unfolding of life, without hindering, controlling or exploiting.

It’s amazing to bring a life into this world. It’s scary. It’s joyful. It’s terrifying. It’s beautiful. It’s all of those things.

I think we all have the mother inside of us. I think it’s an energy more than an entity, and it has to do with the ability to love and nurture and protect life as a whole in all its forms.

When I was a little girl, I used to try to contemplate the meaning of life, and I would stay awake half the night thinking about infinity and the universe and ‘what is it?’ and ‘how can it go on forever and ever?’ and ‘what’s beyond it?’ And I would just become so enraptured – literally enraptured – with that idea. And I could never come up with a meaning or an answer. It would just make me feel very, very tiny, and there was a comfort in that. I can’t explain why.

What are the questions I’ve asked myself, that I’ve tried to find an answer to? What is death? What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Why is this all here?

I’m apprehensive, and I’m curious. And, it’s mysterious. I don’t know what it’s going to be, and I won’t find out until I’m there.

I don’t think we can understand it. It puts me in touch with the mystery of life. And death. And I don’t feel there are answers to everything in our lifetime. And there don’t have to be. It’s just wonderful being in the mystery.