It isn’t the oceans which cut us off from the world — it’s the American way of looking at things.
~ Henry Miller
Life is life’s greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life’s scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest.
~Lloyd Biggle Jr.
Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.
Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.(from “Call me by My True Names – The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh”, Parallax Press, 2005.)
Continue reading “Walktober 2019: Finding beauty wherever you go”
[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen
Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
~ Barbara Brown Taylor
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
Continue reading “A Monday meander: How I spent my summer vacation”
Deep trust in life is not a feeling but a stance that you deliberately take. It is the attitude we call courage.
~ Br. David Steindl-Rast
Our experiences of embodiment may not always correspond with idealized images of holiness, but these preconceptions derive from masculine standards of perfection. Such paradigms have caused great harm, and they are no longer valid. I invite you to abandon your efforts to fix yourself and instead reclaim your innate beauty and worth as a luminous cell in the body of Mother Earth.
~ Mirabai Starr
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
~ Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.
~ Katherine Paterson
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
~ Herman Melville
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
~ William James
Continue reading “A meander: This and that and maybe another thing”
