A chilly Saturday in spring

Rooted on the dunes. (Cape Henlopen, Delaware.)

We have little needs and we have deeper needs.

We have fallen into the mistake of living from our little needs til we have almost lost our deeper needs in a kind of madness. Let us prepare now for the death of our present little life and the re-emergence in a bigger life in touch with the moving cosmos. It is a question practically of relationship. We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relationship to the cosmos and the universe. The way is through daily ritual and re-awakening. We must once more practice the rituals of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath and the last. To these rituals we must return or we must evolve them to suit our needs. For the truth is we are perishing for the lack of fulfillment of our greater needs. We are cut off from the great sources of our inward nourishment and renewal, sources which flow eternally in the universe.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

~ D. H. Lawrence

10. A sunrise walk in the woods

Morning on the dock.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

~ Wendell Berry, Excerpted from his poem “Given” 

A Monday meander

Flowers on the mystery tree.

Beauty is the harvest of presence, the evanescent moment of seeing or hearing on the outside what already lives far inside us; the eyes, the ears or the imagination suddenly become a bridge between the here and the there, between then and now, between the inside and the outside; beauty is the conversation between what we think is happening outside in the world and what is just about to occur far inside us.

~ David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Autumn gold

At sunrise this morning.

There is a universal reality in ourselves that aligns us with a universal reality that is everywhere.

~ B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on Life

If we were having coffee: Quiet week edition

Foggy, dewy morning in the meadow.

Part of doing something is listening.  We are listening.  To the sun.  To the stars.  To the wind.

~ Madeleine L’Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet

It’s the little things

In the clover

You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.

~ Andy Warhol

The morning was dressed in fog and dew

Morning has broken

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree.

~ W. S. Merwin