Tag: Nature

Starting over

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IMG_1935

In the Christian liturgical tradition today is the last day of the year, with Advent starting this evening,  marking the start of a New Year. It is as good a time as any other to make this change, and certainly less commercial and not as hyped than the 31st of December. One way or the other,  there are themes in nature and in different cultures at this time of the year and as winter approaches – letting go, slowing down, taking stock, welcoming change, seeking more light in the dark corners of our hearts:

For last year’s words
belong to last year’s language
and next year’s words
await another voice.

And to make an end
is to make a beginning.

T.S. Eliot

Sunday Quote: Joy

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The music in our heart

When I am silent,

I fall into that place where everything is music.

Rumi

Persistent practice

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tree blown

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the  light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs – all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Jane Hirshfield, Optimism

Sunday quote: the sound of nature

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river allondon

The deepest words of the wise …teach us

the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows

or the sound of the water when it is flowing

Antonio Machado, Spanish poet, 1875 – 1939

Reading the world

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File:Male House Sparrow (2).jpg

The storm which arrived in Ireland and England yesterday and overnight helps us to be more aware of the world of nature and its power. However, it is always there, even in its smallest, quietest  elements:

Reading the world
As if it were a book
Written before words —

That sparrow perched
On the withered stalk
In the garden — isn’t
The bird itself
A song to the beloved

Even before it sings?

Gregory Orr, American Poet, 1947 –

photo Linda Tenner

Letting time be

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File:Old pine tree.jpg

Once in a while
I just let time wear on,
leaning against a
solitary pine
standing speechless…
as does the whole universe!
Ah, who can share
this solitude with me?

Ryokan (1758 – 1831)