The Nature of Things
Sleep,
natures's rest,
divine tranquility,
That brings peace
to the mind
~ Ovid
Pay attention and fall in love with a planet.
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn
that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower,
the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
... be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.
Kahlil Gibran
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon;
to me those have always been
the two most beautiful words
in the English language.
Henry James
Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her:
powerless to separate ourselves from her,
and powerless to penetrate beyond her.
Without asking, or warning,
she snatches us up into her circling dance,
and whirls us on until we are tired,
and drop from her arms. Goethe
God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees,
and in the flowers and clouds and stars. Martin Luther
I value nature hugely as a declaration of holy intervention. Mary Oliver
The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty
or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience.
Henryk Skolimowski
I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird
or the rising of the sun on a misty morning.
There they are, and they are beautiful.
Pete Hamill
Nature can be trusted
to work her own miracle
in the heart of any man
whose daily task
keeps him alone among her sights, sounds, and silences.
Gene Stratton Porter
And forget not
that the earth delights
to feel your bare feet
and the winds long
to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran
A person who cares about the earth will resonate with its purity.
Sally Fox
I did however used to think,
you know, in the woods walking,
and as a kid playing the the woods,
that there was a kind of immanence there -
that woods, and places of that order,
had a sense, a kind of presence, that you could feel;
that there was something peculiarly, physically present,
a feeling of place almost conscious ... like God.
It evoked that.
Robert Creely and the Genius of the American Common Place
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915
Sometimes I come across a tree which seems like Buddha or Jesus:
loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation,
giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings,
health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves for the soil, asking nothing in return,
in total harmony with the wind and the rain.
How much can I learn from a tree?
The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra,
the tree is my poem and my prayer.
Satish Kumar, editor Resurgence magazine, though this quotation is likely from one of his books
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