love is the strongest force

” I traveled far above the earth for a different perspective. It is possible to travel this way without the complications of NASA. This beloved planet we call home was covered with an elastic web of light. I watched in awe as it shimmered, stretched, dimmed and shined, shaped by the collective effort of all life within it. Dissonance attracted more dissonance. Harmony attracted harmony. I saw revolutions, droughts, famines and the births of new nations. The most humble kindnesses made the brightest lights. Nothing was wasted.

I understood love to be the very gravity holding each leaf, each cell, this earthy star together.  I believe love is the strongest force in this world, though it doesn’t often appear to be so at the ragged end of this century.

And its appearance in places of drought from lovelessness is always startling.

Being in love can make the connections between all life apparent—whereas lovelessness emphasizes the absence of relativity.”

Joy Harjo

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the river beneath the river

Wherever the land is dry and hard you can be the water. . .

Or you could be the blade disking the earth’s green

Or you could be the auquia,

the ditch that carries water from river to fields;

Or you could be the just engineer mapping dams that must be taken down,

And those which would serve the venerable all,

instead of only the very few,

Or you could be a battered vessel for carrying water by hand;

Or you could be the one who stores the water, protects it, blesses it or pours it;

Or you could be the tired ground that receives it;

Or you could be the scorched seed that drinks it;

Or you could be the vine green-growing overland in all wild audacity.

If there is an ancient secret to caring for and mending the significant lacerations to this Oh-My-Dear-God-Beautiful Earth we’ve been given, by soul’s light it might be just a four word prayer from Creator to humanity;

” Please, just start anywhere.”

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By Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This was posted by Dr. E. on The Moderate Voice

http://themoderatevoice.com/author/clarissa/

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always the river

I sat there and forgot and forgot until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. . . Eventually the watcher joined the river and then there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.”
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Norman Maclean

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the earth is happy here

The Earth is happy here

the Gleam remains

Beauty is here,

the Spirit of the place

I touch the Faith

which nothing can destroy.

The Earth, the living

church of

Ancient Joy.

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John Masefield

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learning from the trees

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A tree stands in beauty from year to year and keeps its grace and dignity. Its secrets are at its center and it tells nothing of people and their passing events. We learn when we watch a tree. It constantly prunes itself, continually sheds any excess. When it is growing in a difficult place it sends down deep roots to grapple for a firm footing. Every leaf is unique and beautiful – but they also serve to remove toxic poisons from the atmosphere, and send out a clean fragrance to shade us from heat. To sit beneath a tree, or to lie on the earth beneath an oak is the essence of pleasure. But to see the topmost leaves that no human hand has ever touched is to see a common miracle – a miracle with a message that says to get a firm footing in everything that is good and stand tall with our eye on the sky.~ It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.

~BLACK ELK

“A Cherokee Feast of Days” by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

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