How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids, its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures… To see our world as a space traveler might see it… how utterly rich and wild it would seem… Yet some among us have the nerve… to whine about the limitations of our earthbound fate and yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky. We are none of us good enough for the sweet earth we have, and yet we dream of heaven. ~ Edward Abbey (Photo by Will Davidson)

Photo by Max Doyle

Just like a sunbeam can’t separate itself from the sun, and a wave can’t separate itself from the ocean, we can’t separate ourselves from one another.
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
~
Marianne Williamson

Let the kindness and the raw, aching beauty of the universe shatter you over and over again. Find peace in the knowledge that your whole is composed of the sum of all of your beautifully broken pieces. Because breaking is becoming. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc (Photo by Peter Beard)

Photo by Peter Beard

The earth is speaking to us, but we can’t hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses.
Then maybe, the earth will touch us.
The stars will whisper…
~
Jerry Spinelli

I hear the wind blow, and I feel that it was worth being born just to hear the wind blow. ~ Fernando Pessoa (Photo by Zanita Morgan)

Soon it got dusk, a grapey dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries. I stuck my head out the window and took deep breaths of the fragrant air. It was the most beautiful of all moments. ~ Jack Kerouac

Photo by Will Davidson

Breathing, looking, walking,
she felt nothing but desire.
The sound of the sea told her she must love; the darkness of evening – the same;
the mountains – the same…
~
Anton Chekhov

Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is. ~ William Stafford (Photo by Will Davidson)

Photo by Cameron Krone

I glanced at her and took my glasses off – they were still singing…
Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched.
‘I am your own way of looking at things,’ she said. ‘When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.’
And I took her hand.
~
William Stafford

It’s all I have to bring today… This, and my heart beside. This, and my heart, and all the fields. And all the meadows wide… ~ Emily Dickensen (Photo Tierney Gearon)