Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love.
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky in THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN
How shall the mighty river
reach the tiny seed?
See it rise silently
to the sun's yearning,
sail from a winter's cloud
flake after silent flake
piling up layer upon layer
until the thaw of spring
to meet the seedling's need.
Make tender, my heart:
release through gentleness
Thine own tremendous power
hid in the snowflake's art.
