Tag: Nature

What if I knew I would never see it again?

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Exploring nature with your child is largely a matter of becoming receptive to what lies all around you. It is learning again to use your eyes, ears, nostrils, and finger tips, opening up the disused channels of sensory impression. For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?

Rachel Carson, Ecologist , The Sense of Wonder.

Sunday Quote: Every end is a beginning

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Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn;

that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning,

and under every deep a lower deep opens

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every morning a new day is created

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A simple poem, suggested by the sky at dawn this morning. Even as the days shorten, and darkness seems to encroach more, the light at dawn is beautiful. There are moments of light and strength, even at those times when we seem to struggle.

Every morning the world is created…

If it is in your nature to be happy..

And if your spirit  carries within it

the thorn that is heavier than lead….

there is still somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted –

each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly, every morning,

whether or not you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not you have ever dared to pray.

Mary Oliver

Nourishing ourselves: Being happy in the way things are

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Blessed are the man and woman who have grown beyond their greed and have put an end to their hatred and no longer nourish illusions.

But they delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night.

They are like trees planted near flowing rivers which bear fruit when they are ready.

Their leaves will not fall or wither.

Everything they do will succeed. 

Psalm 1. Translation by Stephen Mitchell

Accepting whatever comes next….

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Now are the rough things smooth, and the smooth things stand in flickering slats, facing the slow tarnish of sun-fall.

Summer is over, or nearly.

And therefore the green is not green anymore but yellow, beige, russet, rust; all the darknesses are beginning to settle in.

And therefore why pray to permanence, why not pray to impermanence, to change, to – whatever comes next.

Willingness is next to godliness.

Mary Oliver, prose-poem

Widening our love of life

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We prepare to die by pushing ourselves to love less narrowly.

In that sense, readying ourselves for death

is really an ever-widening entry into life.

Ron Rolheiser.