Natural beauty

I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society.  I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man’s spiritual growth.

~ Rachel Carson

An enchanted life

An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person.  Enchantment may be a state of rapture and ecstasy in which the soul comes to the foreground, and the literal concerns of survival and daily preoccupation at least momentarily fade into the background.

~ Thomas Moore

Mindfulness

(Red-tailed hawk on a snowy day.)

Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course.  Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool.  All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things.  You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still.

~ Ajahn Chah

Finding peace in the living room

(A stream of sunlight.  December 2009.)

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace.  You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden, or even your bathtub.

~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Treat it with care

(Sun catcher on a rainy day in December.)

Your body is precious.  It is our vehicle for awakening.  Treat it with care.

~ Buddha

Daily life

(Yesterday’s rainbow.)

There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Winterberry

(American winterberry, a holly.)

Red ‘rings’ inwardly with a determined and powerful intensity.  It glows in itself, maturely, and does not distribute its vigor aimlessly…

~ Vassily Kandinsky

Magnolia blossom

(Magnolia blossom.)

Happiness consists not in having, but of being, not of possessing, but of enjoying.  It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself.

~ Norman Vincent Peale

Sunflowers

Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas; they are in your own backyard, if you but dig for them.

~ Russell H. Conwell

I think I’m going to forever associate sunflowers with my mother’s illness and death.  Not in a bad way, but in a way I can’t fully explain just yet.  Perhaps I’ll never be able to explain it completely other than to say that somehow sunflowers brought a measure of beauty, peace, light, and comfort into my life at a time when I most needed those things.  Some of my sunflower photos even served as expressions of my feelings —  feelings I couldn’t put into words — on my blogs.

I was going through my collection of sunflower pictures when I came across this one, in a possibly-rejects file (the “possibly-rejects” are those photos I couldn’t make a decision about in regards to saving or deleting).  I don’t know why I didn’t like it at the time or why I suddenly see something in it now that I didn’t then, but I’m glad I saved it.  It was, for me, worth another look.

Exits and entrances

Every exit is . . .  an entrance somewhere else.

~ Tom Stoppard