Wendell Berry

"What I stand for is what I stand on."

~ Wendell Berry

Some of his most awesome books:
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide
The Mad Farmer Poems
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Thich Nhat Hanh

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community -- a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living.This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness.
Only when there is stillness in movement can
the spiritual rhythm appear which pervades
heaven and earth.
-Ts'ai-ken T'an

-p168 quoted by Margot Anand, The Art of Everyday Ecstasy

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

Ryokan,
Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan

Flowers in the sky.
Flowers on Earth.
Lotuses bloom as Buddha's eyelids.
Lotuses bloom in man's heart.
Holding gracefully a lotus in his hand,
the bodhisattva brings forth a universe of art.
In the meadows of the sky, stars have sprung up.
The smiling, fresh moon is already up.
The jade-colored trunk of a coconut tree
reaches across the late-night sky.

My mind, traveling in utmost emptiness,
catches suchness on its way home.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh

"The Earth" by Rabindranath Tagore

Take me,
O Earth, again to that thy wholeness where
Life sprouts and buds and blossoms every day
In a hundred thousand ways, where songs are sung
To a hundred million tunes, and dances throb
To beats of innumerable symphonies...

Will not my joy of soul add just a shade
Of greenness to thy lovely woods? a spark
Of brightness to thy morning rays?...Will not
The forest, in a hundred years from now,
Carry my heart-throb in the tender folds
Of its green foliage?...

And will not the men
And women who will live in far-off times
Find something of me in them? Shall not I
Appear upon their faces as the light
Of smile? as youthful freshness in their limbs?
As sudden gladness in their sweet spring days?
As the soft glow of love in warm young hearts?...

I have not had enough. There yet remains
A mystery unsolved, a wonder still
Unguessed. I am, Earth-Mother, in thy arms
A child that looks astonished at thy face.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

Good People,

Most royal greening verdancy,
rooted in the sun,
you shine with radiant light.

In this circle of earthly existence
you shine
so finely,
it surpasses understanding.

God hugs you.
You are encircled
by the arms
of the mystery of God.

~Saint Hildegard of Bingen,
Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen (New Age Mystics)

"So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.”

—Baha'u'llah (1817-1892); Iranian philosopher
The Pen of Glory: Selected Works of Baha'u'llah

Like a beautiful white dove,
That rises from the middle of the waters
And comes to shake its wings out over the earth,
The Holy Spirit emanates from the Infinite ocean
of the Divine perfections and comes
to beat Her wings out over clear souls
To distill in them the balm of love. — Curé d'Ars

Unity, Love

"The unity that binds us all together, that makes this earth a
family, and all men brothers and the sons of God, is love."
~ Thomas Wolfe

09.12.08 - O Earth, when will we hear you sing?

O Earth! O Earth! When will we hear you sing,
Arising from our grassy hills?
And say: "The dark is gone, and Day
Laughs like a bridegroom in His tent, the lovely sun!
His tent the sun! His tent the smiling sky!"

How long we wait, with minds as dim as ponds,
While stars swim slowly homeward in the waters
of our west?
O Earth! When will we hear you sing?

How long we listened to your silence in our vineyards,
And heard no bird stir in the rising barley.
The stars go home behind the shaggy trees;
Our minds are grey as rivers.

O Earth, when will you wake in the green wheat,
And all our oaks and Trappist cedars sing:
"Bright land! Lift up your leafy gates!
You Abbey steeple, sing with bells,
For look, our Sun rejoices like a dancer
On the rim of our hills!"

In the blue west, the moon is uttered like the word,
"Farewell."

-Thomas Merton,
quoted in When The Trees Say Nothing, p.76

into something better

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver
© Mary Oliver