How Happy Flowers Are!

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars ... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers -- happy for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

--Osho

They tell us that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable -- soul-less. I think that is something that we know exactly nothing about.

--John Muir

We have much to hope from the flowers.

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Earth laughs in flowers.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The temple bell stops

but I still hear the sound

coming out of the flowers.

--Basho

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.

--Henry Ward Beecher

Stars of earth, these golden flowers; emblems of our own great resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

--Ninon de Lenclos

Petals of the peach blossom

unfolding in the spring breeze,

sweeping aside all doubts

amid the distractions of

leaves and branches.

--Dogen

Patapsco State Park

Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?...


And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
--William Shakespeare, As You Like It

"I learn by going where I have to go"

"The Waking"

--a poem by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.


We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.


Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

"What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?"

"Often rebuked, yet always back returning"

--a poem by Emily Bronte

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

Today, I will not seek the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,

And not in paths of high morality,

And not among the half-distinguished faces,

The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:

It vexes me to choose another guide:

Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;

Where the wild wind blows on the mountain-side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?

More glory, and more grief, than I can tell:

The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling

Can center both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

Can We Learn How to Live?

I must be drawn to Wendell Berry these days, because I discovered a poem he has written that speaks to me as I enter the year of my 50th birthday:





The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he's alive
forever, this instant, and may be.

Not that the birds in these photos are all wrens, but redwing blackbirds and sparrows sing too, perhaps more regularly and, thus, less surprisingly than wrens.

It's easy to give up and die. I do it every day--actually, many times each day. But living? I haven't even begun to learn how to do that!

The song of the sparrow is so amazing, so stirring, so memorable. If I could only put one tenth of the living into my many years that the sparrow puts into its minute-long song!

(The poem by Wendell Berry is from Given: New Poems, copyright 2005 by Wendell Berry, published by Shoemaker & Hoard.)

In the deep midwinter ...

... we look to the spring with longing. Here is a poem by Wendell Berry that speaks to me of this midwinter anticipation:



Can I see the buds that are swelling
in the woods on the slopes
on the far side of the valley? I can't,
of course, nor can I see
the twinleafs and anemones
that are blooming over there
bright-scattered above the dead
leaves. But the swelling buds
and little blossoms make
a new softness in the light
that is visible all the way here.
The trees, the hills that were stark
in the old cold become now
tender, and the light changes.

I think Mr. Berry got it just right!

(These are photos from Victoria Glade, a small preserve maintained by The Nature Conservancy, outside of St. Louis, Missouri. The poem by Wendell Berry is from Given: New Poems, copyright 2005 by Wendell Berry, published by Shoemaker Hoard.)

Blessings and Prayers for Pets

Have you seen the movie Marley and Me yet? If you have, or if you've read the book, you realize that at the end of the film there's a very touching graveside ceremony where the Grogans bid farewell to their longtime companion. It's a wonderful scene, with the three children each reading something they wrote and putting something into the grave with their beloved pet.

As the Grogans realized, and as we who have mourned the death of a companion animal know, the passing of a pet is not an event to be ignored or trivialized. A memorial ceremony is a sacred event, whether for dogs or cats or even lizards and snakes, because the love we have for our pets is itself sacred.

Here are a few prayers that you might use for a pet memorial:

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.

Every single creature is full of God

and is a book about God.

Every creature is a word of God.

--Meister Eckhart

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

--William Penn

The grave itself is but a

covered bridge

Leading from light to light,

through a brief darkness.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am the self abiding

in the heart of all creatures;

I am their beginning,

their middle and their end.

Know that my brilliance,

flaming in the sun,

in the moon, and in fire,

illumines this whole universe.

--Bhagavad-Gita

There is not a beast on earth, nor fowl that flieth on two wings, but they are a people like unto you, and to God they shall return.
--The Koran

We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
--Black Elk

For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upwards and the spirit of animals goes downwards to the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?
--Ecclesiastes 3:19-22

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

as a seal upon your arm;

for love is strong as death,

passion fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

a raging flame.

Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can floods drown it.

--Song of Songs 8:6-7

Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
--Canon Henry Scott-Holland

For more quotations as well as descriptions of memorial and blessing ceremonies, you may find the following book useful: We Thank You, God, for These: Blessings and Prayers for Family Pets.