Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Nature’

Aug 23

Temple of Your Senses

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”― Walt Whitman

“Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”
– John O’Donohue

Peace
Joy
Light
Love
Ebb and flow
In and out
Sacred gift
Heart of wonder
Follow the path

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Aug 19

Trust the Water

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”― Alan Wilson Watts

“The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.”― Alan Wilson Watts

What’s mine to do?
What’s mine not to do?
To carry or leave by the wayside
To pay attention to or tune out
Awake in this moment
Listening
Not only for the answers
But for the questions too
Mostly for mere being, witnessing
Conscious of beauty beyond questions and answers, solving and performing
Trusting the water, buoyancy of presence
Harmonies of magnificence and glory

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”― Alan Wilson Watts

Aug 18

To Small Joys

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”― Pearl S. Buck

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”― Socrates

To small joys
Woven in each day
Before and within us
Beauty
Color
Awe
Wonder
Laughter
Kindness
Presence
Attention
To small joys
The fabric of a good days that make up a full imperfect unfolding life.

“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”― Martha Washington

Aug 16

Light, Color, Beauty of Things

“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.”― William Wordsworth

“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.”― William Wordsworth

Get out of your head
Into nature
Curiosity
Inquiry
Reflection
Being rather than doing
Nowhere to be but here
Fully present in the present
Into the light, color and beauty of things.

“Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”― William Wordsworth

Aug 14

Lens of Reverence

“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”― Jo Walton

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”― John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Embrace and grace
Woven
Thread
Sown
Knit
Stitched
Into each day
Beauty, light, wonder
Lens of reverence
Ordinary days transformed.

“Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.”― Thomas de Quincey

Aug 11

Butterfly Attention

“The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.”― William Edgar Stafford

“I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.”
― William Stafford

A butterfly dropped before me, arms length
Waking me out of a walking trance
Dancing, following, abiding
Then resting on the tip of a branch
Overseeing, witnessing, participating
To be the butterfly
Drop in ocean
Ocean in drop
Glance and gaze
Big beautiful guiding world all around
To understand and be understood.

“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”― Kabir

Aug 10

Amen, Bookends of this Day

“The Amen of nature is always a flower.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Amen by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

“When I forget that the whole world
is holy, even the tiny dark bugs
that slip through window screens
and flock and stick to kitchen lights,
even the charred black remains of forest,
even the river as it floods bright red,
even when my cheeks are tear-stained
and my body tightens with fear,
that is when a kind letter from a stranger
arrives in the mail, or the rabbit will stand
on his back legs to nibble on mint,
or the meadow will blaze with the day’s
last slant of sunlight and my heart opens
so wide that inside the fear rises praise.”

Amen
Hello and Good-bye, everything in between
Start and end this day
Amen
Bookends, woven through the story too
Praise, gratitude, joy
Amen
Curiosity, inquiry, attention
Fresh day
Possibilities and imagination
Beauty and light
Amen
Blooming in brilliant color
Awaiting for our senses to arrive
To join the celebration of the present moment
Amen

“Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing.” – Richard Rohr

Aug 2

2 Comments

Emerging Fullness

“When an incidental color or a random fragrance takes possession of our imagination, we can unexpectedly blossom into a new entity as it gives us wings and enlightens our horizon, just like canary birds that feel stimulated and start singing as soon as they sense the radiance of the sun through the reflection of the skylight.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.” – John O’Donohue

Captured by radiance
Stunned by beauty
Pollinating in sweetness
Rising yeast to warm bread
Work of waiting, gazing, reverence
Discipline of restoration
Ebb and flow, cup filled, emptied to be filled again
Unfolding life in ordinary days
Mother of presence
Thin spaces and places
Of joy, awe, wonder

“if you take time not as calendar product but as actually the parent or mother of presence, then you see that, in the world of spirit, time behaves differently” – John O’Donohue

Aug 1

Wild Things Gazing

“Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.”― John Muir

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry

Withing arms reach, embrace
Outside the door, cross the threshold
The ground before, walk it out
The wild things, the peace and grace
Forest green, woven in plain sight
Slowness to see required
Wonder and awe to enter
Unmined gold
Of nature, not man
Dig daily.

“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”― John Muir

Jul 24

Butterfly Dance

“Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.”— Rachel Naomi Remen

“THE OLD WISDOM

When the night wind makes the pine trees creak
And the pale clouds glide across the dark sky,
Go out my child, go out and seek
Your soul: The Eternal I.

For all the grasses rustling at your feet
And every flaming star that glitters high
Above you, close up and meet
In you: The Eternal I.

Yes, my child, go out into the world; walk slow
And silent, comprehending all, and by and by
Your soul, the Universe, will know
Itself: the Eternal I.”
― Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

Present
Awake
Attune
Conversation
Communion
Walk slow
Notice
Comprehend
Hope, joy, peace
Dancing with butterflies.

“The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.”― Joanna Macy

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »