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.
The Trees
The trees
Do you think of them as decoration?
Think again.
Here are maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
to pronounce a new year.
May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
advancement!
But I think
it would do us good if we could think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.
The trees, the trees, just holding on
to the old, holy ways.~ Mary Oliver
To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.
~ Mark Nepo
Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go.
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Patience from a Buddhist perspective is not a “wait and see” attitude, but rather one of “just be there”… Patience can also be based on not expecting anything. Think of patience as an act of being open to whatever comes your way. When you begin to solidify expectations, you get frustrated because they are not met in the way you had hoped… With no set idea of how something is supposed to be, it is hard to get stuck on things not happening in the time frame you desired. Instead, you are just being there, open to the possibilities of your life.
~ Lodro Rinzler, The Buddha Walks Into A Bar…
Whatever we are waiting for — peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance — it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and graceful heart.
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.
~ Morris West
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
~ Wendell Berry
The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.
In healing the scattered members come together.
In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.~ Wendell Berry, excerpt from What Are People For?: Essays
(you can read more here)
(you can read more 