Lost

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not Lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two branches are the same to Raven.
No two trees are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~ David Wagoner

Photo on Pinterest

Stillness Speaks

“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.

…When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.

….When you walk through a forest that has not been tamed and interfered with by man, you will see not only abundant life all around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees and decaying trunks, rotting leaves and decomposing matter at every step. Wherever you look, you will find death as well as life. Upon closer scrutiny, however, you will discover that the decomposing tree trunk and rotting leaves not only give birth to new life, but are full of life themselves. Microorganisms are at work. Molecules are rearranging themselves. So death isn’t to be found anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms.”

~Eckhart Tolle
STILLNESS SPEAKS
Photo at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/40743571605482937/

Scatter Seeds Of Love

Here amongst the forest
comes the call of worldly beings,
Saying much and many things
about a life of active ways.

Here amongst the forest stillness
I alone seek other means
To be of service
without harming
child or beast or plant or flower.

In prayer – blessing
never ceasing
sending Christ through love each day.

Scatter seeds of love your way.

Poem and photo by Anna Lin

Mother Earth ~ Our Grandmother

Today we surround ourselves with the Green Robe of the Mother Earth, our Grandmother. She is a greening thing, a Flowering Tree that sends up her shoots to shade and delight, to nurture and rest you. She is a stream of running water, a cup to drink, a cleansing bath to restore the body, a benediction to renew each moment.

Let her winds wrap you in gentle, powerful blankets. Let her voice soothe your thoughts and fears, the things of long ago that wound you still. Let her words and sounds comfort you until you hear only the voice of her prayer; the wind, the streams, the flowing rivers, the pounding sea, the rains and thunder, the song of birds, the cry of wolves, the whistle of hawk and eagle, the flutter of tiny moths, the droning ones, the silence.

Today, as you walk in her forest, her generous carpets of mulch and leaf, stone and clay, her beds of cedar and moss, remember to walk there in soft, in reverent, in mindful dance. Greet everything around you — and speak to the earth you touch.

Breathe deeply and slowly, letting all that harms you go.
Receive her gifts. Let the Holy Fire come up and bless you.
Step softly, and walk as if you had no place to go.

~  adapted from Djohariah Toor,  Songs from the Mountain