There is a quiet place I know where nature sings to me the music of the mountains and the forest and the sea. It is not far away, and yet it sometimes seems a place removed from daily life, a distant dream of time and space. I have been lost in city streets, in traffic fast and loud, where sirens scream and nature’s voice is drowned out by the crowd. And so I go to seek that place where I become a part of nature’s song–that quiet place I’ve found within my heart.
How terribly the rice suffers under the pestle! But it emerges polished, as white as cotton. The same process tempers the human spirit: Hard trials shape us into polished diamonds.
~ from A PRISON DIARY by Ho Chi Minh in AFTER SORROW by Lady Borton
