The forest is peaceful , why aren’t you?
You hold onto the things that are causing you confusion.
Let nature teach you. Hear the birdsong, then let go.
If you know nature, you’ll know the truth
If you know truth, You’ll know nature
Ajahn Chah
Mother Nature never moves in straight lines. She moves in curves and curlicues. Fact is, I love the many crooked trees that are growing everywhere. They look like they’ve fought for survival in a tough world. Like me. Like you. They grow both up and sideways, twisted and curved from battling the wind, the storms, or a gardener’s pruning shears.
Every time I see crooked roots and branches, I stop and pay attention. Static yet dynamic, fixed but moving every which way, such trees tell their life story. Their presence is a history book, just like ours. They grow upwards, yes, always up, but to the sides as well. “That’s me,” I acknowledge, as I move on.
In fact, maybe that’s all of us — reaching upward, trying to better ourselves and our conditions in many ways as we seek nourishment from above, but often forced to move to one side or another just to survive. We are shaped by our longings, by the facts of our lives, and by the force of the elements, including our own elemental desires.
Why do I think all this is so important? Because our efforts to succeed move us away from being who we truly are. In other words, let’s give up, just for today, insisting on how things OUGHT to be, and embrace how they really are. And how we are. That’s where real life is!
Patty de Llosa, Blogpost, Will We Ever Get It Straight?
Within each of us is the acorn, the soul seed, the germ of our unique genius and destiny. Our goal here is to uncover the acorn to reconnect with the inner angel.
.. Don’t go looking for what’s wrong with us, rather, … go in search of our genius
Elizabeth Lesser
Our soul – with its insistence on finding the still point from which it keeps rising – carries us through the seasons of our lives. This still point under all that keeps moving waits under every season we can imagine. It is the silent center that keeps us sane. We all have different names for this immovable ground, but I call it spirit.
Each passing year, we are asked to return to the ground of our spirit in order to go on. Each passing year, we are asked to listen like the seed for our crack of light in spring, to listen like the brook for our soft gurgle in summer, to listen like the leaf for our orange face in fall, to listen like the snow for a quiet place where we can powder down and rest
Mark Nepo
Was walking in the woods over the long weekend with an awareness of the Japanese term komorebi – the flickering of sunlight filtering through the leaves, ever changing. We can learn life lessons here:
When I am among the trees….
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees
There is a hard truth to be told:
before Spring becomes beautiful
it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck…
But in that muddy mess,
the conditions for rebirth are being created
Parker Palmer
Mindfulbalance 