The journey to the self is hard work, not so much because of its periodic intensity, but because it demands superhuman honesty and a lot of attention... But the unconscious had spoken:
Can you really walk what you talk?
Why are you afraid to live your passion?
Can you live from your heart and not be afraid of who you are?
Can you create out of your flesh rather than your intellect?
Live what you know! There are no obstacles that can't be overcome on this journey!
Wishing you each SPRING BLESSINGS, dear friends. Awakening from winter gestation, what joyu to hear bird song, to delight in budding bulbs and trees, to feel the gentle breezes of a new season, to smell the earth being turned over for seed planting. Let us pause often to nourish our souls in nature's beauty and new life emerging -- hope in these troubling times.
For all its silence, the sky has a language. Without any words the stars speak many things right into our hearts. They hand there so silent and radiant — and how one's breast swells at the thought of being able to attain the same purity. At times it seems as if their light is of little benefit. Yet is is by them that we measure hours, days, and years. By them — or at least by the star nearest to us, the sun — we have light and heart, and our existence depends on it.
Creation has been given to us as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into the human soul. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, crops, the flowering tree: all these things are transparent.
~ by Thomas Merton in "Horizons" thanks to Nancy Conley
For humankind, a growing gap between our inner selves and outer selves — an imbalance between how we live our lives and how we would like to live them — leaves the spirit thirsting for renewal. For many, renewal and re-creation come with time spent in the natural world. The human spirit and the open landscape are inextricably connected. In feeling the spirit of place, we reconnect with the spirit of self.
~ from BEFORE LIFE HURRIES ON by Sabra Field and J. Lingelbach
Gabriella did not move. She was enchanted. She closed her eyes a moment and felt the coolness of her eyelids and saw the green shadows dancing beneath them. She pursed her lips to taste the moisture of the mountain forest and knew for sure that she was not dreaming. When she opened her eyes, she saw the deer eating the coiled peel of the clementine. It was a moment she would long remember. She would remember it as the mysterious beginning of healing, the untranslatable language of God speaking in nature and stopping the world in a green moment.
A down feather as soft as an infant's curl floats earthward and brushes the granite rock by my side. It feels like a message from above, and I wonder what it is telling me. I pick up this angel-wisp and hold it to my cheek. I feel it as a caress, a gentle and loving touch, and I realize that this IS the message — one that transcends words, concepts, and thoughts. It touches my heart and a place of inner knowing. In that moment I am complete, thankful, and fully at peace.
~ from ENTERING THE SACRED MOUNTAIN by David A. Cooper
In the traditional way of life gardens were a ceremonial event for all, an opportunity to give to the Earth as well as to receive. The seeds of good food are also the seeds of good relationship, so caretaking the garden is symbolic of caretaking all beings ... an offering to all.
