Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
~ Confucious
When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.
~ John Lennon
When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.Let grief be your sister, she will whether or not.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.In the glare of your mind, be modest
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.Live with the beetle, and the wind.
~ Mary Oliver
In the beginning was the dream. In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened. Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed. Everything had its beginning in possibility. Every single thing is somehow the expression and incarnation of a thought. If a thing had never been thought, it could never be. If we take Nature as the great artist of longing then all presences in the world have emerged from her mind and imagination. We are children of the earth’s dreaming.
~ John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes Continue reading “In the morning”
When we awaken to the call of Beauty, we become aware of new ways of being in the world. We were created to be creators. At its deepest heart, creativity is meant to serve and evoke beauty. When this desire and capacity come alive, new wells spring up in parched ground; difficulty becomes invitation, and rather than striving against the grain of our nature, we fall into rhythm with its deepest urgency and passion.
~ John O’Donohue, Beauty
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge
To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Continue reading “A Monday meander: The light and shadows of early July”
To slow down is to be taken into the soul of things.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
~ Pico Iyer
