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Posts tagged ‘Nature’

Feb 16

Joy Hunt

“It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.”― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea

“To everyone out there
trying to keep going,
Don’t look too far ahead,
this day is all you need to
partake in, right now.
Take it one step at a time,
remembering to find the sunlight
and the beauty in each moment.
Cast out the darkness and
celebrate the light that is
always present when you
open your eyes and your heart.
Cherish this day as a gift
not given to everyone.” – C.E. Coombes

To remain in this day
Partake, receive, steep
To be here
Fully present in now
On the hunt for joy, ease, delight on the path
Gratitude, grief, grace
Woven together in the tapestry of this day

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Feb 15

Encounter and Awe

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Christopher McCandless

Soft snow falling
Invitation to the woods
To cut fresh trails
Put down the week
Re-enter the world
Slow dance with nature
Conversation with quiet
The power of wonder and beauty
At your feet
Simple, accessible, overflowing
From doing to being
From activity to encounter
To be made new again, daily
Invite, seek, engage with peace, joy, delight
Start with in first, then spill over into the world

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”― Albert Einstein

Feb 12

Listening and Long Thoughts

“Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.” – Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Narrow years and luxurious years, months, days, moments.
How to spend time?
Squander, invest, speed, savor.
Ease in intensity.
Rest, pause, awe, wonder to direct time, attention, reverence.
Rooting in connection, creation, patience.
Long thoughts that lead to incomparable joy.
Sustenance for the journey.
Making, building, creating with intention, resolve, right action.
Walking in love.

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do. ”― Hermann Hesse

Feb 10

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Sunshine and Hope

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”― Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex

Rest, sunshine and beauty
To restore, bind and heal
To overcome the chaos
To not accept things as they are
To chart the path back to humanity
The journey forward in love, compassion, kindness
Offer hope, peace, joy
Improve the world
One act at a time, right where you are
Defy and define the darkness
Cast light.

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”― Anne Frank

Feb 3

Ever-Ness

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.”― George Eliot

“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor.
With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats.
I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them.
Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness.
Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity.
May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.
May I stay forever in the stream.
May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.”– Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

Upstream where the river is but a trickle
Fertile soil readied for planting
Beauty ever present
What will I plant, nurture, feed today?
Paying rapt attention to what is mine to hold
Tiny but useful
In the flow of life everchanging
Longing, wishing, waiting, abiding, tending, pursuing
Planting trees we’ll never see
Sense of ever-ness overflowing

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion–a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.”― George Eliot, Middlemarch

Feb 2

Space to Choose

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”― Viktor E. Frankl

“For Equilibrium, a Blessing:

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of God.”
― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Resistance to release
Reaction to reflection
Speed to slow
Busy to still points
Chaos to calm
Clamor to listening
Answers to questions
Doing to being
Production to savoring
Griping to gratitude
Transaction to relationship
Rest to restoration
Reverence, wonder, awe to root joy
Space to choose well.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”― Viktor E. Frankl

Jan 28

Commas, Semi-Colons, Periods

“Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice”― Pico Iyer

“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, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

In the story you write each day
How you think about things, others, circumstances, past, present, future
Approaches, entrances, exits, starts, in-betweens, stalls, detours, distractions
Autopilot, rushed, reacting, myopic
Fixed or growth mindset
Scatter commas, semi-colons and periods throughout to gentle drift, margins, white space, sweet music, connection, grounding, joy, delight, beauty
To change and shift the narrative, broaden the view
Choose, guide, guard, open, expand, awe, invite, wonder
You have your pen, write
Slow. Attention. Stillness.
Listen. Reflect. Respond.

“A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.”― Pico Iyer

Jan 26

Prayer of Presence

“God’s love isn’t based on me. It’s simply placed on me. And it’s the place from which I should live . . . loved.”― Lysa TerKeurst, Uninvited

“Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul.
Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers.
Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life.
Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost.
Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigor to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty.
Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

The gift of pause, time, attention
Soft whispers and echoes
Still small voice
Prayer of presence, beauty, love
Write your prayer of today.

“The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.” – Martha Beck

Jan 19

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Daily Bread of Attention

“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Skies ablaze with color and hue
Flowers in bloom
A song that moves you to dance
A long embrace
Smiles to laughter
A text or call to say “hi”
Daily bread of attention and gratitude
Overflowing, abundant, enough, imperfect
From what’s missing or what was to what is
Finding nourishment on the ground we stand
To change our view and be changed
To love well today.

“People are not hurdles on the road to God. They are the road.”—Martin Buber, Between Man and Man

Jan 17

To Be Where We Are

“No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

To be where we are
Standing in the red X and knowing it
Sacred ground
Time standing still and moving swiftly
Pay attention
Tune in
Savor and steep
Gratitude, awe, wonder, delight don’t require perfect circumstances or smooth sailing
Consent to be fully where you are right now
God is sitting next to you in the dailyness
Awaiting your hello, gaze, embrace, trust
Lean in.

“Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

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