The beauty of the trees,
Your deepest roots are in nature. No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation.
In this universe, all activities, events, and entities are related. Indians believe that everything in the universe has value and instructs us in some aspect of life. Everything is alive and is making choices that determine the future, so the world is constantly creating itself. With the wisdom and time for reflection that old age provides, we may discover unsuspected relationships.
I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.
At night, I open the window
Teach me how to trust
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.
We have forgotten what rocks, plants and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: here and now.
The earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned. We are the tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. The Earth belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and all seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.
I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream.
Everyday we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
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