All posts by Joyce

The Peace of Wild Things

“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.

Rocks Under Water, Avalanche Creek

And I feel above me the dry-blind stars

waiting with their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

-Wendell Berry

Moon & Star Glow

Dreaming the Future

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”

-Victor Hugo

Grass Sculpture, Fall, Yard

“My dream is of a place and time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

-Abraham Lincoln

Pasture View, Fall, Grasses, Light

“Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.”

-Khalil Gabran

Bells at Five Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

-Harriet Tubman

Sunset, Fall, 2007, Tree, American Camp

 

 

 

Equality

 

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”

-Audre Lorde

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”

-Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.”

-Joss Whedon

“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”

-Gloria Steinem

“If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

– John F. Kennedy

“To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?”

[To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)]”

-Mahatma Gandhi

“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”

-Plato, The Republic

 

One of Degree, Not of Kind

“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

-Charles Darwin

big-bear-on-the-hill-looking-back-fall

Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for both. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear’s days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain…”
– John Muir

big-bear-sept-fall

Understanding the Language of Nature

Forest Stump, Trail of the Cedars

The language that nature uses, how do we touch it, know it?  It surely exists on a plane that some access readily, but most humans aren’t close enough to understand.

I love this time lapse video showing the loveliness of mushrooms sprouting from the forest floor, their umbrellas unfurling majestically.  It speaks to me, but the language is clearer, louder when I’m the forest itself, listening…. listening.

 

Sacred Water

“Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium.

There is no life without water.”

-Albert Szent-Gyorgyl

The Preserve, Water Drop, Tree Trunk

Sacred water, this precious gift holds our very existence.

Sweet life itself is not possible without water.

“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans;

in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.”

-Kahlil Gibran

I stand with the Standing Rock Sioux