The experience of the enormity we falteringly label "divine" is unconditional love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion ~ the sense of presence, of simply being, when investigated brings one toward the experience of the Beloved. At times the heart bursts into flame, the mind kind and clear. But usually it is just a simple spaciousness and ease that lets thoughts float in mercy and awareness and recognizes the evolutionary struggle in everyone they meet.
~ from EMBRACING THE BELOVED by Stephen and Ondrea Levine
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of
my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking
walks, — who has a genius, so to speak, for sauntering:
which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who
roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked
charity, under pretence of going á la Sainte Terre," to the
Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a
Sainter-Terrer," a Saunterer, — a Holy Lander...
Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods,
if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it
happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily,
without getting there in spirit... The thought of some work
will run in my head, and I am not where my body is — I
am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses…
...So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever... shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.
All that is ripest and fairest in the wilderness is preserved and transmitted to us in the strain of the wood thrush. This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination. It lifts and exhilarates me. It is inspiring. It is a medicative draught to my soul.
Suddenly an influx of light, though it was late, filled my room. I looked out and saw that the pond was already calm and full of hope as on a summer evening, though the ice was dissolved but yesterday. There seemed to be some intelligence in the pond which responded to the unseen serenity in a distant horizon.
If we do not keep pace with our companions, perhaps it is because we hear a different drummer. Let us step to the music we hear, however measured or far away.
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, a stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by biologists and antiquarians chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit — not a fossil earth but a living earth.
What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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