“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”-Herman Hesse
“Let me seek then, the gift of silence and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into a prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer…”-Thomas Merton
When I Am Among the Trees (by Mary Oliver)
“When I am among the trees,especially the willows and the honey locust,equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,they give off such hints of gladness.I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,in which I have goodness, and discernment,and never hurry through the worldbut walk slowly, and bow often.Around me the trees stir in their leavesand call out, “Stay awhile.”The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,“and you too have comeinto the world to do this, to go easy, to be filledwith light, and to shine.”
-Mary Oliver
“You are comprised of: 84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells. You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix and small enough to be carried by a sperm. You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing. You are not living on Earth. You are Earth.”– Aubrey Marcus
“Nature is not matter only. She is also spirit.”– Carl Jung
“When you truly love any acre, any being, any waterway, you love them all and realize you’re intimately connected. You can’t change everything, but you can love it all.”
-Kitty O’Meara (from 4/26/21 blog post “Ordinary Things of Conspicuous Value” – The Daily Round
“Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.”
-Rumi
“…The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien
“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”
-Virginia Woolf
“A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows. She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Spring has dawned, infusing us all with new beginnings…
FOR A NEW BEGINNING (by John O’Donohue)“In out-of-the-way places of the heart,Where your thoughts never think to wander,This beginning has been quietly forming,Waiting until you were ready to emerge.For a long time it has watched your desire,Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,Noticing how you willed yourself on,Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.It watched you play with the seduction of safetyAnd the gray promises that sameness whispered,Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,Wondered would you always live like this.Then the delight, when your courage kindled,And out you stepped onto new ground,Your eyes young again with energy and dream,A path of plenitude opening before you.Though your destination is not yet clearYou can trust the promise of this opening;Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginningThat is at one with your life’s desire.Awaken your spirit to adventure;Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”-John O’DonohueFrom ‘To Bless the Space Between Us’
“we walkhand in handthe wind whippingaround us likea kind of magicshimmering off the branchesthe trees laced with snow,tiny dancers spring from the groundlike dust, tossedhere and there onthe wind …spinningtwirlingswayingto a song that onlythey can hearoh but how romanticdid they appearAnd yeshow it moved me …To each side of us,shimmering towers of whiterose reaching for the skyas if grasping for the hemof heaven itselfAnd herein this mystic place,time seemed to slowand the cold couldnot touch our soulnor pierce our heartsOur hearts, which walkedbetween the towers of iceand beat as one, unscathedby icy spells or bewitchedby the beauty of this enchantingforest, drifted away on a sea ofmesmerizing romantic possibilitiesin our very own winter wonderland”
-Michael Traveler, “Winter Wonderland”
“When you live guided by intuitionrather than thought,your life dances like writing on water,fresh and untraceable.”-Mooji
