Bicycles and trolleys

A Saturday ride with the kids.

Around the world–even in some of the countries most troubled by poverty or civil war or pollution–many thoughtful people are making a deep, concerted search for a way to live in harmony with each other and the earth. Their efforts, which rarely reach the headlines, are among the most important events occurring today. Sometimes these people call themselves peace workers, at other times environmentalists, but most of the time they work in humble anonymity. They are simply quiet people changing the world by changing themselves.

~ Eknath Easwaran, Your Life is Your Message: Finding Harmony With Yourself, Others, and the Earth

People say that modern life has grown so complicated, so busy, so crowded that we have to hurry even to survive. We need not accept that idea. It is quite possible to live in the midst of a highly developed technological society and keep an easy, relaxed pace while doing a lot of hard work. We have a choice.

~ Eknath Easwaran, Passage Meditation: Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart into Daily Life

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A Monday meander: How I spent my summer vacation

An early morning walk.

The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest.  But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don’t know how to rest.  We may even come back more tired than before we left.

~ Thich Nhat Hahn

A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it.

~ Marcelene Cox

Sifting

Lightning in a bottle.

It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.

~ George Harrison

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?

~ Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters

What would you create?

Around the pond at Breezy Acres (in northeast Ohio, last week).

That’s the trouble with people. their root problem.  Life runs alongside them, unseen.  Right here, right next.  Creating the soil.  Cycling water.  Trading in nutrients.  Making weather.  Building atmosphere  Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count.

… If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.

~ when the trees speak in The Overstory by Richard Powers

A nearing the end of the year ramble

Christmas tree decorations and reflections (with some bokeh thrown in for good measure).

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes.

~ Clarice Lispector

Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Easing in

Light when the power goes out.

You wake from dreams of doom and – for a moment – you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.

~ Dag Hammarskjöld

A Monday meander: Rainy days and hurricanes

A rainy day moment.

Here is a moment of extravagant beauty: I drink its liquid from the shells of my hands and almost all of it runs sparkling through my fingers: but beauty is like that, it is a fraction of a second, quickness of a flash and then immediately it escapes.

~ Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life