Category Archives: Photography

Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing, Trees

Become Whole Again

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“Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings…The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water… You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ”

-Carl Jung

“Only when I walked into the forest did the world become whole again.”

-Lars Muhl

Flowers, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

Sunflowers are Angels Sometimes

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“I don’t know
if the sunflowers
are angels always,
but surely sometimes.
Who, even in heaven,
wouldn’t want to wear,
for awhile,
such a seed-face
and brave spine,
a coat of leaves
with so many pockets—
and who wouldn’t want
to stand, for a summer day,
in the hot fields,
in the lonely country
of the wild-haired corn?
This much I know,
when I see the bright
stars of their faces,
when I’m strolling nearby,
I grow soft in my speech,
and soft in my thoughts,
and I remember how everything will be everything else,
by and by.”

-Mary Oliver, from “By the Wild-Haired Corn”, Long Life : Essays and Other Writings

Photography, Sweet Breathing

Joy of Inner Belonging

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JOURNEY OF THE SOUL (John O’Donohue)

“One of the qualities that you can develop, particularly in your older years, is a sense of great compassion for yourself. When you visit the wounds within the temple of memory, you should not blame yourself for making bad mistakes that you greatly regret. Sometimes you have grown unexpectedly through these mistakes. Frequently, in a journey of the soul, the most precious moments are the mistakes. They have brought you to a place that you would otherwise have always avoided. You should bring a compassionate mindfulness to your mistakes and wounds. Endeavor to inhabit the rhythm you were in at that time. If you visit this configuration of your soul with forgiveness in your heart, it will fall into place itself. When you forgive yourself, the inner wounds begin to heal. You come in out of the exile of hurt into the joy of inner belonging.”

-John O’Donohue

 

Fall, Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

The Earth Remembered Me

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I cannot get enough of Mary Oliver right now… her words are buoying me, reminding me of the earth’s deep sustenance and peace.

The earth does remember me and my heart is full of gratitude.  I am deeply embedded in her peaceful embrace today with the rain sweetly softening and nourishing…

Softening and nourishing and sweetening everything including me.

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times’
into something better.”
-Mary Oliver