Growing clouds

How to Grow Clouds

It takes a lot of work:  it is necessary to weed very carefully, to toss out muck and small stones by hand, to kneel on the earth, bend over, dig about in the soil, water profusely, collect caterpillars, exterminate aphids, loosen the ground and serve the earth; when your back hurts from all this and you straighten up and look at the sky, you will have the prettiest clouds.

~ Karel Capek

Appearances

Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.

~ Maya Angelou

The absolute and marvelous

If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal.  He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams.

~ Edward Abbey

green earth

The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Prospective, retrospective

Morning prospective:  imagination.
Evening retrospective: memory.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All things flow

No single thing abides; but all things flow.

~ Lucretius (c. 99-55 B.C.E., Roman Poet)

The love of wilderness

… the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.  Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us — if only we were worthy of it…  No, wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.  A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

~ Edward Abbey (1927-1929), American writer

The destination

From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stage of one’s journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination.

~ Shimon Peres

Rest like a giant tree

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind.  To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all.

~ The Buddha

Ceaseless search

To seek the living manifestation of spiritual and ethical values themselves, regardless of the label they come under, is to discover unexpected kinship…  In this view, faith is no longer a matter of an allegiance to a specific community or identity, but a ceaseless search for the beautiful ways to realize the human potential in every given age and place.

~ Mohja Kahf