It’s hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.
~ Jeanette Winterson
Gifts
The markets of the world are flowing with goods and services produced by the interplay of sun and earth, air and water, and the inexhaustible imagination and energy of human beings. Whenever you touch an object made or conveyed by humans, you are touched by all the people who have reached their hands to make this possible for you. Daily use is daily communion.
~ Arthur P. Moor
Many a time have I merely closed my eyes at the end of yet another troublesome day and soaked my bruised psyche in wild water, rivers remembered and rivers imagined. Rivers course through my dreams, rivers cold and fast, rivers well-known and rivers nameless, rivers that seem like ribbons of blue water twisting through wide valleys, narrow rivers folded in layers of darkening shadows, rivers that have eroded down deep into the mountain’s belly, sculpted the land, peeled back the planet’s history exposing the texture of time itself.
~ Harry Middleton
(Terraces.)
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
If you subscribe to Bountiful Healing, you have probably noticed the occasional flurry of activity regarding new posts that turn out to be old posts. A while back I switched most of my posts to private for a variety of reasons. I’m slowly bringing them back as public posts which is what causes you to get the email notification of a new (old) post.
My apologies if the notifications become too much. I’ve been limiting them to a few at a time and not too many each week so hopefully it won’t be too much of a bother.
(Looking into the eye of a horse.)
A lovely horse is always an experience… It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.
~ Beryl Markham
There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.
~ Derrick Jensen
(Painted Mines. Colorado.)
I have a friend who feels sometimes that the world is hostile to human life — he says it chills us and kills us. But how could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions — gravity and a livable temperature range between freezing and boiling — have given us fluids and flesh. The trees we climb and the ground we walk on have given us five fingers and toes. The ‘place’ (from the root plat, broad, spreading, flat) gave us far-seeing eyes, the streams and breezes gave us versatile tongues and whorly ears. The land gave us a stride, and the lake a dive. The amazement gave us our kind of mind. We should be thankful for that, and take nature’s stricter lessons with some grace.
~ Gary Snyder
(Sitting on the edge of the world.)
We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
~ Nicholas Sparks
I took this photo when we were at the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado (altitude of 14,115 feet). We were, in some spots, above the clouds that day. I’m not sure what the couple in the photo could see from there as I didn’t walk down that far (and it was quite a distance from where I stood to take the photo). Perhaps they were just enjoying the bird’s eye view of the clouds and/or each other’s company.
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
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
Bountiful Healing 