I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself. I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows. If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me – S-A-A-O! – then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free. ~ Peter Matthiessen (The Snow Leopard)
O star of wonder, star of night Star with royal beauty bright Westward leading, still proceeding Guide us to thy perfect light ♫ (We Three Kings of Orient Are) ♫
Are you looking for answers, to questions under the stars? If along the way you are growing weary, You can rest with me until a brighter day It’s okay ~ Dave Matthews ♫ (Where Are You Going) ♫
There’s the wind And the rain And the mercy of the fallen Who say, “Hey, it’s not my place To know what’s right” There’s the weak And the strong And the many stars that guide us We have some of them inside us ~ Dar Williams ♫ (Mercy of the Fallen) ♫
biggest, brightest full moon of 2008 12.12.08 ~ Groton, Connecticut
Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon the hill, And memories hard to bear at noon, By moonlight harder still, Form in the shadows of the trees, – Things that you could not spare And live, or so you thought, yet these All gone, and you still there, A man no longer what he was, Not yet the thing he planned… ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (Wine from These Grapes)
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. ~ Albert Einstein (The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God in Everything)
The metaphoric mind includes rationality, linearity, and logic – for it created them. But like some children, the rational mind often seems embarrassed by the presence of its parents. ~ Bob Samples (The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness)
One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places… For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. ~ James Baldwin (Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures)
“Bouquet of Chrysanthemums” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
We return thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and squash, which give us life. We return thanks to the bushes and trees, which provide us with fruit. We return thanks to the wind, which, moving the air, has banished diseases. We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given to us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to our grandfather He-no, that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles, and has given to us his rain. We return thanks to the sun, that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficient eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodied all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of his children. ~ 19th-Century Iroquois Prayer (The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to Celebrations, Holidays & Special Occasions)
summer 2008 ~ Center Street, Provincetown, Massachusetts
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Circles)
“Roses Fancy Still Life” by Robert Scott Duncanson
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same. ~ Walt Whitman (Miracles)
