Hope is radical openness for surprise—for the unimaginable. If that is the attitude with which we look, listen, and open all our senses, we enter into a meaningful relationship with whatever Life offers us at a given moment.
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
Red Canna Indica Flower – photo by Kvvinto, bigstockphoto.com
Sacredness is the radiant expansion of the heart, the devotion to life that rises in contemplation of the inexhaustible mystery that is unity in diversity, the One manifesting through the whole of creation.
~ Eleanor O’Hanlon
Sunset, Siquijor, Philippines – photo by smithore, bigstockphoto.com
We all have encounters with the sacred, we just have to cultivate the eye that can perceive them. We have to see what’s already here, interwoven with what we claim is human and mundane. We have to take inventory of the magic that conspires to love us in and through our ordinary lives.
~ Meggan Watterson
Pagoda Landscape, Bagan, Myanmar – photio by smithore, bigstockphoto.com
Mountains and oceans have whole worlds of innumerable wondrous features. We should understand that it is not only our distant surroundings that are like this, but even what is right here, even a single drop of water.
~ Dōgen
Stream in Sweden – photo by Bluejava, bigstockphoto.com
There is no mystery in this association of woods and otherworlds, for as anyone who has walked the woods knows, they are places of correspondence, of call and answer. Visual affinities of color, relief and texture abound. A fallen branch echoes the deltoid form of a streambed into which it has come to rest. Chrome yellow autumn elm leaves find their color rhyme in the eye-ring of the blackbird. Different aspects of the forest link unexpectedly with each other, and so it is that within the stories, different times and worlds can be joined.
~ Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places
Redwood Forest, Sequoia National Park, CA – photo by nstanev, bigstockphoto.com
We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. I believe we have an obligation to fight for life on Earth-not just for ourselves.
~ Carl Sagan
Full Moon over Yosemite – photo by RodPhotography, bigstockphoto.com
Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.
~ L.R. Knost
Thimbleberry Blooms in the Forest – photo by kvd design, bigstockphoto.com
We are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye. There is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us. Ubuntu speaks about the fact that you can’t exist in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world… It is to say, ‘My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life.
~ Desmond Tutu
Sandstone Rock, Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa – pho
Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible.
~ Rumi
Elf Garden, July 2013 – photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
…when we place our emphasis and consciousness on the soul of the world, we’re embracing the world as something sacred, as something that has its own essence, its own purpose and destiny that might very well be different, bigger, and more mysterious than anything we suspect or anything we could understand.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Old Trees on the shore of Biogradsko Jezero Lake, Montenegro – photo by Alexander Nikiforov, bigstockphoto.com
Quantum science suggests the existence of many possible futures for each moment of our lives. Each future lies in a state of rest until it is awakened by choices made in the present.
~ Gregg Braden
Sejalandsfoss Waterfall, Iceland with Rainbows – photo by Kotenko, bigstockphoto.com
Being “for” expands your heart. Being “against” contracts it. Feel this. The energy you radiate from your chest is a thousand times more powerful than the opinion you hold in your head…
~ Fred LaMotte
Water Lily – photo by silver-john, bigstockphoto.com
Choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy. It is courageously believing that there is still hope, even when things get hard.
~ Morgan Harper Nichols
Sunrise, Lake Minnewanka, Banff National Park, Canada – bigstockphoto.com
I want to redefine Darwinian theory. It is not the survival of the fittest. It’s the extension of generosity of surplus to other members in the ecological community to build biodiversity. So it’s not the individual that survives, it’s the community that cooperates that survives.
~ Paul Stamets
Russula Mushroom in Jungle, Costa Rica – phoito by Kevin Wells Photography, bigstockphoto.com
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
~ Marian Wright Edelman
Sunrise at Old Mans Cave Gorge – photo by Larry Knupp, bigstockphoto.com
