one place most sacred

Acer macrophyllum (Big Leaf maple) leaves unfurling from the bud.

Looking east from the driveway. Morning sun through this year's snow...

Beautiful You Rise Upon the Horizon of Heaven

Beautiful you rise upon the horizon of heaven,
O living sun, you who have existed since the beginning of things...
The whole world is filled with your lovliness.
Your are the god Ra, and you have brought every land under your yoke,
Bound them in with the force of your love.
You are far away, yet your beams flood down upon the earth.
You shine upon the faces of men,
And no one is able to fathom the mystery of your coming.

Akhenaton, Egyptian, 14th century B.C.E.

Sunset in my backyard.

Lost
David Wagoner

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

Fire at an Open Space event in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island.

Fire – Judy Brown

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.

Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

Big leaf maple - Acer macrophyllum beginning to turn. Fall is approaching.

For All

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

~Gary Snyder

Foxglove seed heads...you can see the seeds inside! Digitalis purpurea

Help us to be the always
hopeful gardeners of the spirit
who knows that without
darkness nothing comes to
birth As without light
nothing flowers.

~May Sarton

Rigging from the Russian Tall Ship Pallada.

A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

~ Rumi