”A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.”
—-Hal Borland
spirit
Morning Trip (250)
“I watch the running sheets of light raised on the creek’s surface. The sight has the appeal of the purely passive, like the racing of light under clouds on a field, the beautiful dream at the moment of being dreamed. The breeze is the merest puff, but you yourself sail headlong and breathless under the gale force of the spirit.”
–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Morning Trip (249)
“But if I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell.”
–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Morning Trip (241)
“The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character. We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence.”
–Charles Alexander (Ohiyesa) Eastman
Morning Trip (195)
“Oh, for a tongue to express the Wonders which the Thought reveals!
Oh, for some Word to comprehend the boundless idea!
Would that some Voice were sweet enough to sound the harmony of Life.
But Within, in that vast realm of thought where the Soul meets God, the Spirit knows.
I will listen for that Voice and It will tell me of Life, of Love and Unity.
Speak to me, Spirit.”
–Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind
Morning Trip (191)
“Here, surrounded by the products of nature, often I sit for hours, while my senses feast upon the spectacle of nature. Here the majestic sun is not concealed by any dirty roof made by human hands, here the blue sky is my sublime roof.
When in the evening I contemplate the sky in wonder and the host of luminous bodies continually revolving within their orbits, suns or earths by name, then my spirit rises beyond these constellations so many millions of miles away to the primeval source from which all creation flows and from which new creations shall flow eternally.
When, now and again, I endeavor to formulate my seething emotions in music – oh, then I find that I am terribly deceived; I throw my scrawled paper upon the ground and feel firmly convinced that never shall anyone born on this earth be able to express in sounds, words, colors or stone those heavenly images that hover before his excited imagination in his happiest hours . . . yes, it must come from above, that which strikes the heart; otherwise it’s nothing but notes, body without spirit, isn’t that so?
What is body without spirit? Earth or muck, isn’t it? The spirit must rise from the earth, in which for a time the divine spark is confined, and much like the field to which the ploughman entrusts precious seed, it must flower and bear many fruits, and, thus multiplied, rise again towards the source from which it has flown. For only by persistent toil of the faculties granted to them do created things revere the creator of infinite nature.”
–Ludwig van Beethoven
Morning Trip (132)
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
– Marcus Aurelius
Morning Trip (131)
“Abraham Joshua Heschel, a very interesting rabbi and mystic, said he didn’t pray for faith; he prayed for wonder. That is also my prayer. Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table; a tiny fleck of it stops time. My periodic table of the heart also has many other elements, still unidentified by science. One of them is unattainium. That’s the one that continues to drive us forward whether or not we expect to succeed.”
— Diane Ackerman Going on Faith: Writing as a Spiritual Quest
Elisa's Spot 