Today's
Quotation:
We
are all flowers in the Great Spirit's garden. We share a common
root,
and the root is Mother Earth. The garden is beautiful
because
it has different colors in it, and those colors
represent different
traditions and cultural backgrounds.
Grandfather
David Monongye (Hopi)
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Today's
Meditation:
Using
the image of flowers as a metaphor for our diversity
as
people is very fitting. Flowers are very beautiful,
and much of what makes them so is the way that their
contrasts stand out so strongly. We don't tend to judge flowers so harshly for not being a particular color or
for
having a distinct shape (although as human beings we
do
have the tendency to like or dislike particular flowers, as
opposed to just accepting them for what they are).
The
garden of life is beautiful. The garden of humans is
also beautiful-- we have all shapes, sizes, colors, and
behaviors to see every day of our lives. We have
beautiful faces and unique faces that have a beauty all
their own, if we but choose to notice it and accept
it. Our garden is also blessed with sound, and the
voices that we hear are as varied as the faces themselves,
and our garden is also blessed by a rich diversity in
artistic and logical expression.
We
have been blessed with a richer garden than we ever could
have dreamed up for ourselves, and this blessing is
something that we unfortunately tend to take for
granted. Can you walk by the most beautiful garden in
the world without taking a good look at the riches that it
holds? I didn't think so-- I know that I couldn't do
so. Most of us, though, don't recognize the beauty of
the garden of people of which we are a part, for we've seen
it so often that we don't notice it any more.
How
poor we are, in the midst of great riches, if we don't see
and understand the wealth that is all around us, all the
time.
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