We Launch from the Sea

"Flying Fish"

A poem by Carl Sandburg

I have lived in many half-worlds myself … and so I know you.

I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel.

I leaned so … and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now … and then under the water and out again … a fish … a bird … a fin thing … a wing thing.

Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing … I have lived in many half worlds myself … and so I know you.

Prayer for Beauty

"I pray thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within."

--Socrates

Emerson, Truth, and Beauty

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?"

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Message of Our Times

Let the Angel Trumpets herald the message:

"Equal rights for all!"

It's well past time....

The Four Limitless Meditations

May all beings have happiness
And the causes of happiness.

May all be free of sorrow

And the causes of sorrow.

May all never be separate from the sacred happiness

That is sorrowless.

May all leave attachment to dear ones and aversion to others

And live believing in the equalness of all that lives.

Metta Prayer

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings awaken to the light

of their true nature.

May all beings be free.

Putting People in Nature

"When out with his camera the photographer must feel whether he wishes figures in his landscape or not. He must say to himself, 'This view wants a figure exactly there, and it must be a light figure or a gray figure or a black figure.' For the life of him he may not be able to say why he wants a figure there. It is sufficient for him to know that its addition will make his photograph more satisfactory. If he has patience and waits long enough the figure will come. Then his friends will say, 'What a lucky snapshot; how well that figure comes there; an artist could not have put it in a better place.'"

--Frank Sutcliffe