Cherokee prayer to respect and honor nature

"Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hand respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise, so that I may know the things you have taught my people, the lessons you have hidden in every rock and leaf." -Cherokee prayer, early 1800s

Li Po

You ask me why I live on Green Mountain ?
I smile in silence and the quiet mind.
Peach petals blow on mountain streams
To earths and skies beyond Humankind

Happy New Year

Text of this ecard written by Heather Havey, as a prayer for you all:
May we experience delight, joy, astonishment, mystery, & beauty, for these fill hearts with peace. these are gifts & examples of nature - God as form.

May we experience love & care -
these are gifts & examples of essence - God as formless.

Earth is a mirror of God; so are you.

May we listen to rivers, thank oceans, learn from animals, play with dogs, swim with fishes, serve birds, behold wilderness, feel wind, plant trees, grow food, watch life grow, replace lawn with wildflower & garden habitats, honor organic, choose no poison, build bat & bee homes, encounter willdness, remember the miracles & beauty of all forms, & enjoy the silence that designs & guides it all.
All life is sacred, including you.
~ Lalita (Heather Havey)
© 2004-2009 Peace Through Kindness

Wendell Berry

Like the water of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.
We enter,willing to die,
into the common
wealth of its joy.
-Wendell Berry

Some of his most awesome books:
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
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

"I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows where the rarest wildflowers are blooming, and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will."

-Wendell Berry, from II, Sabbaths 1999, in "Given"


Some of his most awesome books:
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
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

Wendell Berry

"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

~ 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

"White-Eyes" by Mary Oliver

White-Eyes

by Mary Oliver

In winter

all the singing is in

the tops of the trees

where the wind-bird

with its white eyes

shoves and pushes

among the branches.

Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,

but he's restless—

he has an idea,

and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings

as long as he stays awake.

But his big, round music, after all,

is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.

In the pine-crown

he makes his nest,

he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,

I only imagine his glittering beak

tucked in a white wing

while the clouds—

which he has summoned

from the north—

which he has taught

to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall

into the world below

like stars, or the feathers

of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,

that is asleep now, and silent—

that has turned itself

into snow.

Source: Why I Wake Early: New Poems

From a book about Irish monasticism, some Celtic nature poetry:

I have a bothy in the wood--
none knows it save the Lord, my God;
one wall an ash, the other hazel,
and a great fern makes the door.

The doorposts are made of heather,
the lintel of honeysuckle;
and wild forest all around
yields mast for well-fed swine.

This size my hut: the smallest thing,
homestead amid well-trod paths;
a woman (but blackbird clothed and seeming)
warbles sweetly from its gable.

This little sweet humble place
holds tenure of the teeming woods;
maybe you will come to see?--
but alone I like quite happy.

Original Face:
Flowers in spring
Cuckoos in summer
Moon in autumn
Snow in winter
serene and cool

- Zen Master Dogen, 1247, translated by Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi

The Happy Virus

I caught the happy virus last night

When I was out singing beneath the stars.

It is remarkably contagious -

So kiss me.

~ Hafiz

"Song of the Sky Loom"

"Song of the Sky Loom"

O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky,
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you the gifts that you love.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the sky!

-from the Tewa Pueblo people,

quoted on p.93 in Margot Anand's The Art of Everyday Ecstasy

"See how trees are completely themselves. Unlike humans, they have not split themselves in two. They do not live through mental images of themselves, so they do not need to be concerned with trying to protect and enhance those images. All things in nature are not only one with themselves but also one with the totality. They haven't removed themselves from the fabric of the whole by claiming a separate existence: 'me' and the rest of the universe. The contemplation of nature can fee you of that 'me,' the great troublemaker."
~Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

"Have you ever noticed
a tree standing naked against the sky,
How beautiful it is?
All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness
There is a poem, there is a song.
Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring.
When the spring comes,
it again fills the tree with
The music of many leaves,
Which in due season fall and are blown away.
And this is the way of life."

From Darkness to Light: Poems and Parables (The Collected Works of Krishnamurti) by Krishnamurti

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

"Be proud of love. that the Nature is giving to you, the Divine is giving to you, the People are giving to you.". . . SRI SRI...

~ Jai Gurudev

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.

- St. Augustine

Prakriti (Nature) immediately becomes a friend of those who are befriended by Bhagavan (God).

-Swami Chidananda

Car Stevens: Morning Has Broken (lovely video!)

10.03.08 The Avowal

THE AVOWAL

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
-Denise Levertov

Buy This Book: Oblique Prayers By Denise Levertov

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