Happy New Year!

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

~Crowfoot - Blackfoot warior and orator

This world

This world is the abode of God,
and God truly lives in the world.

~Guru Angad

To see the greatness of a mountain

To see the greatness of a mountain, one must keep one's distance;
To understand its form, one must move around it;
To experience its moods, one must see it at sunrise and sunset,
At noon and at midnight, in sun and in rain,
In snow and in storm, in summer and in winter
And in all the other seasons
He who can see the mountain like this comes near to the life of the mountain.

Mountains grow and decay, they breathe and pulsate with life.
They attract and collect invisible energies from their surroundings
The forces of the air, of the water, of electricity and magnetism;
They create winds, clouds, thunderstorms, rains, waterfalls
And rivers. They fill their surroundings with active life and give shelter and food to innumerable beings.

Such is the greatness of mighty mountains.

~ Lama Govinda

I am the one

I am the one whose praise echoes on
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

~Hildegard of Bingen

Do you think Atum is invisible?

Do you think Atum is invisible?
Don't say that!
Nothing is more visible than Atum.
He created all things so that through them
you could see him.
This is Atum's Great Heart -
that he manifests in everything.

~The Hermetica

Heart, originally uploaded by Łєєм šιмρѕоη™.

One Leaf

One leaf left on a branch
and not a sound of sadness
or despair. One leaf left
on a branch and no unhappiness.
One leaf left all by itself
in the air and it does not speak
of loneliness or death.
One leaf and it spends itself
in swaying mildly in the breeze.

~David Ignatow

Sometimes

Sometimes
I go about pitying myself
While I am carried by
The wind
Across the sky.

~Chippewa Song

Do not feel insecure

So do not feel insecure or afraid - we are all held firmly in the infinite mind of the All, and there is naught to hurt us or for us to fear. There is no power outside of the All to affect us. So we may rest calm and secure. There is a world of comfort and security in this realization when once attained. Then "calm and peaceful do we sleep, rocked in the cradle of the deep" - resting safely in the bosom of the Ocena of Infinite Mind with is the All.

~The Kybalion

It must be

It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole.

Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, - means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it; - one as much as the other. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is a day of change

Ice mountain melted
ages ago
and made this ridge,
this place of changes.

Now we are rooted in it,
we of the old ones,
we of the new ones from afar,
oat grass meadow, Douglas fir thicket,
we are rooted in the ridge of changes in the time of changes.

The winds carry strange smells, this is a day of change.

Great ones above and below, bless us!
O shining One above, feed us with your light!
O soft ones, sky darkeners, wash us with your raindrops!
O powers above us, bless us with your gifts,
for we reach up to you,
branching wood and sap.

O Earthmother from whom we grow,
sandy gravel into whom our roots branch wood and sap deep down,
bless us in our night-sleep, in our death and decay.

Bless us, dark earth as we give back
that which we have received
as we make a forest of blessing a ridge of blessings
for the future to grow upon.

~Chinook Psalter

Kali be with us.

Kali, be with us.
Violence, destruction, receive our homage.
Help us to bring darkness into the light,
To lift out the pain, the anger,
Where it can be seen for what it is -
The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love.
Within the act of creation,
Crude power that forges a balance
Between hate and love.

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Bear the roots in mind,
You, the dark one, Kali,
Awesome power.

~May Sarton

Be like a tree

Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause.
Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward,
bend to the winds of heaven, and learn tranquility.

~Dedication to Richard St Barbe Baker

Nature

Nature creates all beings without erring: this is its straightness.
It is calm and still: this is its foursquareness.
It tolerates all creatures equally: this is its greatness.
Therefore it attains what is right for all without artifice or special intentions.
Man achieves the height of wisdom when all that he does is as self evident as what nature does.

~I Ching

I will so trust

I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

God delights

God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future... "you will not remember," he seems to say, "and you will not expect."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson