The Dance

I’ve started ignoring the prompts and just doing my own thing. It’s nice to know the prompts are there when I need them to give myself a jump start. I spent the day doing school work and then went to a play this evening. I decided to work on a haiku on the ride home.

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Gratitude List:
1. Sitting under a pear tree on a golden spring morning, sun sparkling through the thousand new leaves
2. As I walked down the road in the morning, a young red-shouldered hawk called my name, then leapt from the branch and circled in blue sky above me three times before wheeling out over the valley and up the far ridge
3. Gifted young actors and singers and dancers–the show miraculously went on during a power outage in a lobby lit by emergency lights
4. Breakthroughs–breaking out of mental blocks
5. Always there are new things to learn
May we walk in Beauty!

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Earth Day Words:
“The world is, in truth, a holy place.” —Teilhard de Chardin

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“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” —Henry David Thoreau

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“You are your own cartographer now.” —Ralph Blum

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“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke

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“Every creature is a word of God.” ―Meister Eckhart

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“The forest for me is a temple, a cathedral of tree canopies and dancing light.” ―Dr. Jane Goodall

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“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.” ―The Onceler (Dr. Seuss)

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“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” ―Rachel Carson

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William Stafford: “I place my feet with care in such a world.”

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“A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.” ―John Sawhill

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Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ―Rachel Carson

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“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year…the alienation from the sources of our strength.” ―Rachel Carson

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“Few words are so revealing of Western sexual prejudice as the word Goddess, in contrast to the word God. Modern connotations differ vastly from those of the ancients, to whom the Goddess was a full-fledged cosmic parent figure who created the universe and its laws, ruler of Nature, Fate, Time, Eternity, Truth, Wisdom, Justice, Love, Birth, Death, Etc.” ―Barbara G. Walker

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“Our vitality is inextricably bound up with creativity. Like a tree whose expression is fruit, giving our gifts is what keeps life pushing through our veins. It’s what keeps us feeling alive. As anyone who has strayed too far from their creativity knows, without it every corner of one’s life can fall prey to a terrible greying spread. As Kahlil Gibran writes about trees in an orchard, “They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.” —by Toko-pa Turner

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“Come under the wing of the Spirit. All of you beneath a threatening sky, working in fields far from home, turn and come now, come under the wing of the Spirit. The protection of the sacred will shelter you. The strength of the holy will surround you. When the time comes, trust your own instincts, and come under the wing of the Spirit. There you can ride out the next storm. There you can renew your energy for the next call to prayer. These are the days for which we were made. This is the moment for miracles. When you hear a distant bell, come under the wing of the Spirit.” —Steven Charleston

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That goldfinch out there.
Really—he’s like a little nugget of sunfire.
How can he shine so?
He must be lit from within.
—Moonbat

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““What can a tree teach us about self-worth? How it grows only so big as its mothersoil can provide for, how it draws nutrients from her, but then expresses itself in leaves and fruits. How it kindly emits oxygen and purifies the air. How it offers itself as shelter, how it shades, how it sometimes lives to be ancient or not, but always offers its body back to the soil which grew it. How it becomes a nurse log upon which a whole new ecosystem can grow. Reciprocity is the only practice which can heal the alienation we feel from The Family of Things.” —Toko-pa Turner

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“You are your own cartographer now.” —Ralph Blum