nature
- nature
2
- nature 4
- nature 5
|
In
every outthrust headland,
in every curving beach,
in
every grain of sand
there is a story of the earth.
Rachel Carson
|
|
|
Nature
gives to every time and season some beauties of its
own;
and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the
grave, is a succession of changes so gentle and easy we
can scarcely mark their progress.
Charles
Dickens
|
|
|
Believe
one who has tried, you shall find a fuller satisfaction
in the woods than in the books. The trees and the rocks will
teach you that which you cannot hear from the masters.
St. Bernard
of Clairvaux
|
|
Spending time in nature can
be a wonderful source of inspiration. The natural
world has an energy to it that can put you in touch with the
deepest parts of
yourself. Thoreau spent two years alone in the woods so he
could commune
with nature and access the wisdom inside him. It was there
that he wrote some
of his most inspiring work--much of which contains timeless wisdom
that is
every bit as valid and true a century later. He discovered
that all his answers
lay inside him, just as yours lie inside you. Swim in the
ocean, climb a tree,
hike a mountain, or simply take a long walk in the woods. Do
whatever activity
calls to you that will draw you into the rhythm of nature and draw
out your natural instincts.
Cherie Carter-Scott
If
Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules
|
|
Nature
always takes her time. Great oaks don't become great
overnight. They also lose a lot of leaves, branches,
and bark
in the process of becoming great.
Andrew
Matthews
|
|
|
Nature
seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in
them.
Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and
indescribably
marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were,
into the very
essence of nature and away from the whole human world.
Carl Jung
|
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
|
|
I loved the
rain as a child. I loved the sound of it
on the leaves of
trees and roofs and window panes and
umbrellas and the feel of
it
on my face and bare legs. I loved the hiss of rubber tires
on
rainy streets and
the flip-flop of windshield wipers. I
loved the
smell
of wet grass and raincoats and the shaggy coats of
dogs.
A rainy day was a special day for me in a sense that
no
other kind
of day was--a day when the ordinariness of things
was suspended
with ragged skies drifting to the color of
pearl and
dark streets
turning to dark rivers of reflected
light and even
people transformed
somehow as the rain drew
them closer by giving
them something to
think about together,
to take common shelter
from, to complain of
and joke about
in ways that made them more
like friends than it
seemed to me
they were on ordinary sunny
days. But more than
anything,
I think, I loved rain for the
power it had to make indoors
seem snugger and safer and a place to
find refuge in from
everything
outdoors that was un-home,
unsafe. I loved rain
for making home
seem home more deeply.
Frederick
Buechner
|
|
There
is no trifling with nature; it is always true,
dignified, and just; it is
always in the right, and the
faults and errors belong to us. Nature defies
incompetence, but reveals its secrets to the
competent,
the truthful, and the pure.
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
|
|
There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in
the migration of the birds,
the ebb and flow of the tides, the
folded bud ready for the spring.
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated
refrains of nature—
the assurance that dawn comes after night,
and spring after the winter.
Rachel Carson
|
|
Spend
time in a flower garden. Stay there as long as you
wish, but make sure your visit is long enough to take in
the various charms that the world of blossoms and petals
provides. You can sit in a chair or on the grass,
lie down looking up at the flowers from below, or walk
around. However you choose to spend your time, be
aware that you are a guest in someone else's
home--nature's--so act accordingly.
If the
day is warm and sunny, savor the rays and imagine how the
flowers must feel at this very moment. Look closely
at the variety of blooms, at the different shapes and
colors, at the way the individual blossoms grow out of
their leafy sheaths. Now use your sense of smell to
take in the stunning array of fragrance, all of which can
be divinely overpowering.
Keep an
eye out for the various animal life that also lives in the
garden, the birds and squirrels, the insects that fly, the
ones that crawl. Notice how intently they go about
their business, how they move from place to place trying
not to notice you but in fact finding that task
difficult. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds
of the garden, the chirping and humming, and the movement
of the stems and leaves in the mild breeze.
Now see
if you can transcend your individual senses and feel the
presence of the garden inside you. Try to become
just another flower, at home in the garden as if you were
in your own house or place of worship.
Alan
Epstein
|
|
|
|
|
We
are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that
our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable
life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged
beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the
highest form of politics. . . . We believe that all living
things are spiritual beings. Spirits can be
expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A
blade of grass is an energy form manifested in
matter--grass matter. The spirit of the grass is
that unseen force which produces the species of grass, and
it is manifested to us in the form of real grass.
Mohawk
Nation |
We
have today to learn to get back into accord with the
wisdom of nature and realize again our kinship with the
animals and the water and the sea. To say that the
divinity informs all things is condemned as
pantheism. But pantheism is a misleading word.
It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the
world, but that is not the idea at all. The idea is
of an indefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as
power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of
all life and being.
Joseph
Campbell |
|
|
Nature has given to each
conscious
being every
power she possesses,
and
one of these abilities is
this: just as Nature
converts and
alters every
obstacle and
opposition,
and fits them into
their
predestined place, making
them a part of herself,
so too
the
rational person
is able to
finesse every
obstacle into an
opportunity, and to use
it for
whatever purpose
it may suit.
Marcus Aurelius
|
|
Take
long walks in stormy weather or through deep snow in the field
and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with
brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
Henry David Thoreau |
|
|
nature
- nature
2
- nature 4
- nature 5
|
|
|
There's
nothing like a walk in
the forest to clear my mind and
get
my spirit to calm down and
slow down. Any time I get
away
from the masses of people and find
a quiet, solitary
spot in nature,
be it in the middle of the desert,
in the
forest, on a beach, or
even along a lonely country road,
I
feel myself being refreshed,
revived, renewed. It's
a wonderful feeling that I don't search
out nearly enough.
tom
walsh
|
|
|
|
We
ought for our own good to have access to nature and knowledge
of it. To my mind, it is monstrous that any child should
grow up without
some acquaintance with nature, and above all I would say without
an
opportunity for intimate knowledge of some individual plants and
animals.
J.B.S. Haldane |
|
Teach
the children. We don't matter so much, but the children do.
Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the
taste of
sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors,
mallow,
sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky
ones--inkberry,
lambs-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic
ones--rosemary,
oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as
they go
to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the
possibility
of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them
in the
stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this
green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then
the silent, beautiful blossoms.
Mary Oliver
Upstream |
|
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron
feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry |
|
|
|
|
From
the spiritual side: |
|
|
|
I do not know when it was, nor where it was, nor
how young I may have been,
but I can recall. . . a sudden feeling of happiness at hearing the
voice of the pines.
Frank Bolles
|
|
We
need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it.
We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there.
Edward
Abbey
|
|
If
you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little
things that
hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and
beyond
measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek
quite simply,
as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor:
then everything
will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory
for you,
not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but
in your inmost
consciousness, waking and cognizance.
Rainer
Maria Rilke
|
|
|
|
|
|
For the Infinite has sowed his name in the
heavens in burning stars,
but on the earth he has sowed his name in tender flowers.
Jean Paul Richter |
|
God, we thank you for this
earth, our homes; for the wide sky and
the blessed sun, for the salt sea and the running water, for the
everlasting
hills and the never resting winds, for trees and the common grass
underfoot.
We thank you for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds,
and see
the splendor of the summer fields, and taste of the autumn fruits,
and rejoice
in the feel of the snow, and smell the breath of the spring.
Grant us a heart
wide open to all this beauty; and save our souls from being so
blind that we
pass unseeing when even the common thorn bush is aflame with your
glory.
Walter Rauschenbusch |
|
Creation
was given to people as a clean window through which
the light of God could shine into people’s souls.
Sun and moon,
night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these
things were transparent.
They spoke to people not of themselves
but only of Him who made them.
Nature was symbolic.
But the
progressive degradation of humans led them further and further
from this truth.
Nature became opaque.
Thomas Merton
|
|
|
|
Nature
is school-mistress, the soul the pupil;
and whatever one has taught or the other learned
has come from God--the Teacher of the teacher.
Tertullian |
|
With nature's help, humankind can set into creation
all that
is necessary
and life sustaining. Everything in nature, the
sum
total of heaven and of earth,
becomes a temple
and an altar for the service of God.
Hildegard of Bingen |
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
|
Nature's
intent is neither food, nor drink, nor clothing, nor comfort,
nor anything else in which God is left out. Whether you like
it or not,
whether you know it or not, secretly nature seeks, hunts, tries to
ferret out the track on which God may be found.
Meister
Eckhart |
|
Go outside, to the fields, enjoy nature and the
sunshine,
go out and try to recapture happiness in yourself and in
God.
Think of all the
beauty that’s still left in and around you and be happy!
Anne Frank
|
|
I, a
city dweller, have a summer place on a cedar-crested bluff
overlooking a lovely bay down by the sea. The salt
breezes off the mighty ocean sweep cares away; the soft
sunlight falling on the grass teaches me the quiet repose
of earth; the unhurried sounds of the natural world, so
different in quality from strident city noises, quiet me
as a mother soothes her troubled child; and at night when
the stars come out, blossoming one by one in the infinite
meadows of heaven, and a hush falls over land and sea, I
can hear the friendly voice of Mother Nature, which is the
voice of God, saying: "My child, this is
life. Take time to live it."
Norman
Vincent Peale |
|
nature
- nature
2
- nature 4
- nature 5
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
Every
formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to
God.
Maria Mitchell |
|
Those
who understand
nature
walk with God.
Edgar
Cayce |
|
We need the tonic of wilderness, to wade
sometimes in marshes were the bittern and the meadow-hen
lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the
whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary
fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly
close to the ground.
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn
all things, we require that all things be mysterious and
unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because they are
unfathomable.
We can never have enough of nature. We must be
refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and
titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the
wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the
thundercloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and
produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits
transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we
never wander.
Henry
David Thoreau |
|
|
Dear
God, we give thanks for places of simplicity and peace. Let
us
find such a place within ourselves. We give thanks for
places
of refuge
and beauty. Let us find such a
place within ourselves.
We give thanks
for places of nature's truth and freedom, of joy,
inspiration and
renewal,
places where all creatures may find
acceptance and
belonging. Let us
search for these places: in
the world, in ourselves and in
others. Let us
restore them. Let
us strengthen and protect them and let us
create them.
May we mend this outer world according to the truth
of our
inner life
and may our
souls be shaped and nourished
by nature's eternal
wisdom. Amen.
Leunig
|
|
|
|