The world is new every morning, this is the gift of the divine, and all are born anew to each day. 
The Baal Shem Tov

We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?

- Wendell Berry

From the Treesisters

The New Song

by W. S. Merwin

For some time I thought there was time
and that there would always be time
for what I had a mind to do
and what I could imagine
going back to and finding it
as I had found it the first time
but by this time I do not know
what I thought when I thought back then
there is no time yet it grows less
there is the sound of rain at night
arriving unknown in the leaves
once without before or after
then I hear the thrush waking
at daybreak singing the new song.

"If you are depressed you are living in the past.

 If you are anxious you are living in the future.

 If you are at peace you are living in the present."

 -Lao Tzu

Klee said, "Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view."

Silentium - Poem by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev

Be silent, hide away and let
your thoughts and longings rise and set
in the deep places of your heart.
Let dreams move silentlly as stars,
in wonder more than you can tell.
Let them fulfill you - and be still.

Sunday mandala

A band of blue jays
squawking - the wren flees and peeks -
Sunday peace returns.

And now we enter,
winter holiday season
games and food, oh my!

In Praise of the Earth

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth.
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.
 

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.
 

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.
 

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.
 

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.
 

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.
 

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.
 

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.
 

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.
 

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.
 

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.
 

- John O'Donohue 

From To Bless the Space Between Us