Our natural home

The more I remove myself from nature and the more I increase my availability to the modern world, the more restless I become. I am no scientist and realize that I may be mistaken, but my experience is that feelings of insecurity, loneliness and depression to a large extent stem from the flattening of the world that occurs when we are alienated from nature. There is, of course, a lot to be said in favour of man-made environments and new technology, but our eyes, nose, ears, tongue, skin, brain, hands and feet were not created for choosing the road of least resistance.

Mother Nature is 4.54 billion years old, so it seems to me arrogant when we don’t listen to nature and instead blindly place our trust in human invention.

Erlinge Kagge, Philosophy for Polar Explorers

Sunday quote: Even in darkness

Deep in their roots, 
all flowers keep the light.

Theodore Roethke

Sing a joyful song

Birdsong brings relief
to my longing
I’m just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me!

Rumi

Sunday Quote: Teachings all round

All the colours of the mountain peaks,

all the echoes of the valleys

are the form and the voice of the Buddha

Dogen

Turn the pages

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow, happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

* * *
Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

Mary Oliver, A Settlement

Seasons

The first of May marks the start of Summer in the old Celtic way of dividing the seasons

The heart’s seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?

The soul, too, has its own hours of Winter and Spring.

Myrtle Reed 1874 – 1911, American author, poet, journalist, and philanthropist.