Built to move

Man sometimes thinks like a tree - but he was built to move.
- Buckminster Fuller

The grand show

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere;
the dew is never all dried at once;
a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.

- John Muir

On the road

Fuzzy heads

Self

Our individual self finds its most complete realization within our family self, our community self, our species self, our earthly self, and eventually our universe self.

- Thomas Berry

In the woods

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and
remember what peace there may be in silence.

Each step

Every step that we take upon you should be done in a sacred manner;
each step should be as a prayer.
Black Elk - prayer to Mother Earth

Sorbet of roses

Recipe for Rose and Chardonnay Sorbet

2 cups (gently packed) organic rose petals
1 cup sugar
3 cups cold water
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
I cup Chardonnay wine

Process the rose petals with 1 cup of water and the sugar in a blender or food processor for about 30 seconds. Add remaining 2 cups water, the lemon juice and 1 cup wine and process for about 10 seconds.
Pour the liquid through a fine sieve.
Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.

Universe

The whole universe is enhanced with the same breath,
rocks, trees, grass, earth, all animals, and men.

- Hopi saying

Beauty

"Beauty itself is the language to which we have no key;
it is the mute cipher, the cryptogram, the uncracked, unbroken code."

- Annie Dillard

Rainbow at dinner

The river's wild and noble sights, such as those in parlors never dream of.
- H.D. Thoreau

Where the wood drake rests

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

A good life

For my mother, Peggy Perkins Lersch
April 23, 1915 - May 8, 2008

Who well lives, long lives;
for this age of ours should not be numbered
by years, days, and hours.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas - 1578

The biggest heart

"The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around in it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. …There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest mammal who ever lived, we know nearly nothing. Nothing is known of the mating habits, the travel patterns, diet, social life, language, social structure, diseases, spirituality, wars, stories, despairs, and arts of the blue whale. But we know this: the animals with the largest heart in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles."

- Brian Doyle

Freedom, spontaneity and love

"Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of the unnumbered seeds perish and are lost because men are not prepared to receive them. For such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere, except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love."

- Thomas Merton