As you develop spiritually, with increased sensitivity, you become more aware of God's creativity and ceaseless bounty. You value order, for you realize that this makes for harmony, and harmony is the keynote of the universe. You value time. Hours spent visiting someone are Love-filled hours. Above all, you value those most precious moments of the day when you withdraw from activity and experience contact with the Divine Fire of Love: source of all. When this is the most important thing in your life then you are indeed growing in being.
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
When we feel in us enough safety.
~ from CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES by Thich Nhat Hanh
The earth gives us life. The world around is beautiful and meant to be viewed with respect and wonder... The Sioux holy man, Black Elk, expressed it well when he said that any place you are is the center of the world. This beautiful creation is always speaking to us, it is just that we sometimes do not stop to look and listen. We forget to see as we were meant to see, not just through our eyes, but through the eye of the heart.
~ Joseph Bruchac in SOARING WITH RAVENS by Tim Fizharris
"The world is a sacred place and a sacred process," I told her, "and we're part of it."
“That's excellent -- simple and to the point. This is what was understood -- and is still understood among Leaver peoples. Wherever you were in the world, you found people who took it for granted that the world is a sacred place, and that we belong in that sacred place as much as any creature in the world." Smiling, she looked around the park, as if giving it a silent farewell. Then she included me in the smile as she said, "Maybe someday someone will find a way to say it that makes the ground tremble."
What a gift each morning to encounter some part of nature... It is a pure gift of beauty, of life. The sunrise can be a reminder of the day's gift because it comes unbidden. We don't produce it. The light is given. The world is reborn each morning, and we are given a whole new time of opportunity. Even if the difficulties are the same we had yesterday, we can tackle them in a new way. Primordial freshness is renewed each morning.
I often wonder what it would be like if we dared to love this life -- the fragile and the vulnerable, the endangered, daring to be humble before the magnitude of our beginnings, daring to learn our species into a stubborn and pliant wonder, until reverence shines in all that we do -- until we live an economics of reverence -- until it permeates education, development and health care, homes and relationship, arts and agriculture -- a reverence for life, for planetary, social and personal wholeness. This is our purpose now. May we do it well, with thoroughness and love.
~ from THROUGH THE MOONS OF AUGUST by Carolyn McDade
BLESSINGS be with you all in thi seed-dowing season! Just as seed germinates in the silent, fertile soil, may the seed of God's Word be nourished in the silence of your soul.
For some minutes my mind knows only a silent stillness within, a meditation without effort, a celebration of occasion. Slowly my vision focuses on a bird of red-streaked, chocolate-covered feathers and bright orange beak... I have been watching her a long while now without registering, labeling or defining her particular condensation of being, taking her as much for granted as she appears to take me. So beautiful. So natural. A bird in a tree.
When you see the world as part of yourself, you will take care of it. When you see yourself as part of the world, you will be cared for.
In the shining secret garden, the solitary sign of the crocus speaks once more through blackened snow. The poet's word has revived with the resurrected flower, echoing the refrain of the One Song.
