Thank You!
A Blade of Grass
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
The Universe is Your Echo
“How you vibrate is what the universe echoes back to you in every moment.”
-Panache
The Poor, The Poets and Monks
“I stand before you tonight to represent the people who do not count: The poor, the poets, and monks. As long as there are people who are trying to realize the divine in themselves, there shall be hope in the world.”
—Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton distills the experience of being human in this life. He was a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.
As a writer, poet, activist and continual student of comparative religion, he wrote timeless words that continue to resonate and teach. The quote above is from the closing he gave to an interfaith conference in Calcutta in 1968. Thomas Merton transitioned from this life a few days after he spoke these words.
I Notice
At 3am I feel these words spilling out,
Soft moonlight on the newly fallen snow.
I notice these moments with you, they do not fly by. Lingering in them, I feel the sweetness.
Stitched together time, a history together.
Little big moments of a life shared.
There are many riches: the fire in the hearth, your warmth and sincerity, the kindnesses each day, music, books, Little Bear, watching the snow fall, the leaves turn, the summer unfold, the new earth awaken in spring, feeling you with me, loving you.
This is our life, savored and noticed. I am overwhelmed by the beauty of our days together…
Trees are Temples & Forests are Cathedrals
“When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, …and the doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?”
– Seneca
“Going to the woods is going home.”
-John Muir
“My roots are in the depths of the woods.”
– Galle
To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev
Listening & Watching
“To lie under a tree listening to the murmur of the water, and watching the clouds float across the sky is by no means a waster of time.”
-John Lubbock
A Magical Event
“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?”
– J. B. Priestley
Freedom, Books, Flowers and the Moon
“With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy”
-Gertrude Stein
Indeed. Small and large wonders around us when noticed and absorbed in their fullness can create happiness. There are thousands of other wonders but freedom, books, flowers and the moon are a really good start…..
Ask Yourself
“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
-Rachel Carson
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
~Gilbert Keith Chesterton
