I will be adding quotations, poems, stories, images and links I think AEOE members will like on a regular basis. Check back often! Please feel free to send in what inspires ~you~ and I'll post it! -Webmaster,

Some Quotations on Silence

“Silence is not a thing we make; it is something into which we enter.  It is always there... All we can make is noise.”
 - Mother Maribel

“Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.” - Edith Wharton, The Reef

“I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it.” - George Bernard Shaw
(Ha!)

“One of the greatest sounds of them all – and to me it is a sound – is utter, complete silence.” - André Kostelanetz, Pianist and Conductor

In the stillness of the mighty woods, man is made aware of the divine.
-- Richard St Barbe Baker

For tips on leading a silent hike, see Bryan Snyder’s “How to Walk Silently with Children” workshop resources from the Fall 2006 Southern Conference: http://aeoe.org/conference/fall/2006/southern-wrapup.html

“All men have the stars, but they do not mean the same things for different people.
For some, who are travelers, they are guides.  
For others, who are scholars, they are problems.
For my businessman, they were wealth...
For some they are no more than little lights in the sky.
But all these are silent.
You--you alone -- have the stars as no one else has them...  
I wonder whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each of us may find his own again...
...The stars, the desert, what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible...
And now, here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, in The Little Prince

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

~ William Henry Davies

(Found on the Simple Living Network September, 2006 On-Line Newsletter)

A human being is part of the whole, called by us "universe," limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons close to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all humanity and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

"Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense).
So let them all continue—the films, the books, the television programs, the zoos, the little half acre of ecological preserve in any community, the primary school lessons, the museum demonstrations, even [...] the 6:00 A.M. bird walks.
Let them continue and expand because we must have visceral contact in order to love.
We really must make room for nature in our hearts."

-- Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies

"Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it."

—Richard Louv, from "Last Child in the Woods," Algonquin Books, Spring 2005

Richard Louv was the keynote speaker at the Spring 2006 Conference in Malibu - hope you didn't miss it!!

"We can do no great things—only small things, with great love."

- Mother Teresa

(Discovered quoted in a Jan/Feb 2006 Orion Magazine article by David James Duncan - "No Great Things")

"If a child asked me a question that suggested even a faint awareness of the mystery behind the arrival of a migrant sandpiper on the beach of an August morning, I would be far more pleased than by the mere fact that he knew it was a sandpiper and not a plover. ... Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."

~ Rachel Carson, from A Sense of Wonder 

(Found in the Heron Dance email newsletter, A Pause for Beauty, #101)

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far-off farm,
I hold still and listen a long time.

My world turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?

~ Herman Hesse

(Found in the Heron Dance email newsletter, A Pause for Beauty, #101)

Note: This seems like a great thing to read before doing a writing assignment, or solo sit, magic spot, silent watch type activity!

 

 

Whatever the origins of our Earth-consciousness, we can explore and nurture it by intimate contact with nature herself:

Lie on grass, watch clouds. Caress white birches, embrace an oak, climb an apple tree. Go barefoot in dirt and dunes. Float naked in a lake. Stroll on a beach, be beaten about by surf. Sing and circle-dance with friends in the woods or on the beach.

Rejoice in rain, stand in storms, enjoy shoveling snow. Listen to crickets and crows, whistle back to songbirds, hoot softly back to an owl. Take a night walk in the woods. Watch high-flying geese, look into the curious eyes of a deer. Smell pines, eat wild berries. Make up songs about experiences like these.

--From Quaker Earthcare-Witness - Spiritual Nurturance article: "The Spiritual Dimension-Why We Care for the Earth"

For more resources for spirituality in nature, see our new Resources for Spiritual EE page!

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all...

- Emily Dickinson

"Emily Dickinson was right: hope is the thing with feathers.
What she didn't know was that it lives in an Arkansas swamp and has a big ivory bill."

- James Gorman, "Found in Arkansas: Hope on Wings," New York Times, May 3, 2005

Read more about the rediscovery of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker: NPR Radio Expeditions article, Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Rediscovered in Arkansas; Scientific American Article, "Extinct" Woodpecker Flies Back from the Beyond; and visit IvoryBill.org, the Nature Conservancy's Ivory Bill page, Cornell Ornithology's Ivory Bill page, and the online Cornell Bird Guide's Ivory Bill entry. More about birds in general in the AEOE Teaching Resources pages.

For all you "barbaric yawpers" out there! This makes me want to climb a mountain...

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my
gab and loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

- Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself,
found in the new edition of Earth My Likeness, The Nature Poems of Walt Whitman

(and I found it in the current issue of Heron Dance, a Pause for Beauty e-newsletter)

Nature inspires.
It stirs us, pushes us to question and find answers, teaches us to fly, draws us into its waters, invites us to climb. In nature we discover ourselves.
In nature we gain our mental, spiritual and physical health. Nature enhances life. We teach nature to our children, we restore nature for their children.
We preserve nature for its intrinsic value.

~ From the Ventana Wilderness Society homepage - VWS is our newest institutional member - see their listing, and others for California's Central Coast and beyond, on our California EE Provider pages

Haiku for February Second

Shady paradigm
The Groundhog sees its shadow
Winter: 12 more weeks

(by Maggie - I'm a big fan of haiku - even "bad" haiku! But if you want to see something really bad, check out the AEOE Calendar link for Ground Hog Day! There are even Ground Hog Day Carols!)

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling.
This is what is the matter with us:
we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars.
Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life
and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."

- D. H. Lawrence

(Found on http://www.ecopsych.com/insightrelease.html - about grants available for Ecopsychology Education - for more about this and other grants, see the AEOE Opportunities for Educators page. For more information about Project NatureConnect's Echopsychology courses and degrees, as well as other higher education and professional development programs, also see the AEOE General EE Resources page.)

Scientist or Child?
It can be said that inside all children there is a scientist observing, formulating, and testing theories. It can also be said that inside all scientists, there is a child playing with the world and making surprising discoveries with much the same wonder that babies have when first meeting the world. Mitch Cotter, a noted scientist who researches the properties of light says “You have to be testing, searching, looking. . . that is what stimulates mental neural development, and without it you don't get that development.
In our culture, play has a pejorative, puritanical connotation. I would say play is the highest form of work and it is also essential for human development.” Brian Swimme, noted cosmologist, says that the universe is best understood through play. “We tend to think of play as being just something children do, but when a Chinese philosopher was asked the meaning of civilization, he said that all of human education is about one thing, recapturing the mind of a child.”

This is from the website of the Institute for Play, from their "Playing to Learn" page. For more resources on play and games that can be used in environmental education, see our Games page in Resources for Environmental Education!

I haven't had much inspiration lately, but it is beginning to come back... here is a quote from an ex-president to help us never forget that the land, the earth of this country, our homeland, needs defending:

"If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of our technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."

- President Lyndon B. Johnson, upon signing The Wilderness Act of 1964

(I lifted this directly from Walkin' Jim Stolz' website - Walkin' Jim was our entertainment and inspiration at the 2000 Statewide AEOE conference at Thousand Pines. He recently had a kidney transplant, but still managed to hike a little this summer!)

Rustle the Leaf: "Cleaning up the environment, one punch line at a time!"
Click the comic below to see the enlarged version and past comics

Check back to the "Rustle the Leaf" page weekly for new comics. Go to the Rustle the Leaf website with past comics, lesson plans and other teaching resources.

I remembered this haiku (written by Hokushi in 1710) last night on my night hike, when the eclipsing moon glowed a red apparition behing thinning snow clouds, between the branches of a silhouetted pine... yet another magical moment in outdoor education.

"The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery. Ponder that for a while"

- from the new film, "What the Bleep do we Know?"

To be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward.
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in the common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

—Marge Piercy

From Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach

"I watched an Osprey fly overhead yesterday and knew there was no other place I would rather be. I hope you look up in awe."

- Becca Rodomsky (AEOE member) on the Appalachian Trail

"Past generations of people found beauty and a sense of wonder contemplating the night sky. Today's scientific knowledge further enhances and deepens that experience. And you can share in it by simply going out in the evening and looking up."

- Bill Arnett, on his website The Nine Planets
(which can be found, along with other astronomy resources, on our Teaching Resources pages)

"Remember,
the tree is older than you are
and you might find stories
in its branches."

From the Poem "Lemon Tree" by Jennifer Clement
In the collection
"The Tree Is Older Than You Are: A Bilingual Gathering of Poems & Stories from Mexico"
by Naomi Shihab Nye

See AEOE's diversity pages for more recommendations on multicultural children's books!

"Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.
You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
You don't have to know Einstein's Theory of Relativity to serve.
You need only a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

For more inspirational quotes related to service, see the 2004 Statewide Conference Resources page, Service Learning in the Outdoor School

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

- Albert Einstein

another world is
not only possible,
she is on her way.
on a quiet day,
i can hear her breathing.

- Arundhati Roy
Porto Alegre, Brazil
January 27, 2003

From Yes! Magazine, Spring, 2004
(Free introductory one-year subscriptions for teachers are available - see www.yesmagazine.org)
See the AEOE Opportunites for Educators page for this and other offers!

"Man, Despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and many accomplishments, owes the fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." ~Anonymous~ (found on the homepage of LongBeachOrganic.org)   "Soil is as much of a nonrenewable resource as oil, maybe in some respects, more non-renewable. In the long run, soil is more important than oil." - Wes Jackson, in the essay "Natural Systems Agriculture" by Stephanie L. Graham, found on LongBeachOrganic.org For more resources on soil, composting and gardening, see the AEOE Teaching Resources page

LOST IN THE CHAPARRAL

by Steve Van Zandt

Have you ever been lost in the chaparral? Helplessly lost? Ankle deep, waist deep, shoulder deep? Pushing, bushwhacking, poked, gripped and held? Turning in circles, struggling through, straining to be loose?

Bend down! Bend down and touch, the light brown sandy soil. Bend down and crawl. Get close to twisted gray wooden stems. Down low the earth becomes a richer brown, almost black, beneath the fall of past year’s growth.

Now it crackles against the weight of palms and knees.

Bend down. Bend down beneath the tangled arms of woody shrub. Bend down and look up. Chamise, Buckthorn, Rabbitbrush are now the canopy, leaf green against deep blue. Bend down, it's cooler under these thin lines of shadow. Bend down and turn a slow gaze. In this world below the tangle, a passageway suddenly opens up. Then another, and another. Secret tunnels where stories are told. There! A rabbit found escape. Here! Coyote left tales of a previous meal.

Bend down and be silent. Bend down and be still. The heat and the buzzing insist on the required pace. Mimulus, bush poppy, Artemisia, patiently hold up their coaxing displays of yellow, orange, red and gold. Bend down and listen! There! Hear it? A sudden hush. Felt more than heard. Now a faint cry high above.

Bend down and breathe as white sage, black sage and yerba santa, drip scent into the heat of day.
Bend down and close your eyes.
Feel the thick aroma fall upon you and wrap around you in pulsing swirls. Bend down and remember. Smell a distant past. For here it is held, the land’s memory.

Bend down and be lost. Bend down and be helplessly lost. Have you ever been lost in the chaparral? Once, a long time ago, I was… and I've never returned.

 

* In writing this poem I relived my childhood memories of the Santa Monica Mountains. It was here that I first experienced coming to the top of a hill to hear that magical silent stillness that makes you say, as Byrd Baylor writes, “HERE I AM.” See you at the spring conference.

A Watershed Runs through you...

"When you see that it's the same water that falls as snow and rain,
rushes down nearby rivers,
passes your lips, brings back salmon -
this is when you know your watershed."

- Freeman House
from Yes! Magazine article,
quoted from "To Learn Things We Need To Know"
in Helping Nature Heal, ed. Richard Nilsen

For resources to help you learn and teach about and care for your watershed, see our "Teaching Resources" page!

"There are practically no vital alive people and we must address this. We should not address this problem with Zantac and Prozac, we need to address it with things that make for being healthy: Love, humor, wondering curiosity, passion, creativity, our relationship with nature, service, community and relaxation. These are the cornerstones of being healthy and they need to be as much a part of our education as geography and math and literature."

- Patch Adams (the real one) from an interview with the Oasis of Hope Hospital Health Ambassadors

(I think our field has much to offer the world in this respect! We are all about love, humor, wondering, curiosity, passion, creativity, our relationship with nature, service, community and relaxation! Come to one of our annual conferences for a healthy dose of all of the above! - webmaster)

~My Secret Fort~

Here I sit in my Secret Fort
trees to starboard, grass to port
A speckled sun comes shining through
a roof of leaves moist with dew
From outside, it's just a bush
but..give the secret door a push
and..inside, you'll find waiting there
a secret table, and secret chair
a place to sit, and watch the birds
or search my mind for secret words
and gaze out over secret pond
to snow capped mountains far beyond
read the paper, drink a cup
go and fill my senses up
Just make sure when all is done
my Secret Fort stays known to one!

-joey racano

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth
"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights up the
Whole
Sky.

-Hafiz

From "Inspiration" on Center for a New American Dream (http://www.newdream.org/) email newsletter for their action network, Step by Step

"Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization .
Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse, and the resulting artifacts are very diverse.
These differences in the end product are known as cultures.
The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth."

- Aldo Leopold

 

For information, inspiration and ideas on incorporating cultural diversity into your teaching, click here!

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins
(From "Inversnaid")

(Enjoy Winter, and see the AEOE Teaching Resources Page for lessons on weather, water and wetlands!)

"Have you ever considered that the cereal you eat is brought to you each morning by the wind, or that the glass of clear, cold, clean water drawn from your faucet may have been purified for you by the wetland or perhaps the root system of an entire forest? Trees in your front yard work to trap dust, dirt, and harmful gases from the air you breathe. The bright fire of oak logs you light to keep warm on cold nights and the medicine you take to ease the pain of an ailment come to you from Nature's warehouse of services. Natural ecosystems perform fundamental life-support services upon which human civilization depends"

- From the Ecosystem Services Fact Sheet on the Communicating Ecosystem Services website. Find this website and many, many, MANY more useful links on the resources pages, both general and teaching resources.

haiku for the solstice

under the trappings
of Christmas lurks the solstice--
long night & dark trees

- Dennis Fritzinger
(Warrior Poet)

Green Breaths

Come, we need to crouch down and
skid thru these plant stalks,
these bits of papery things

with life held inside, hidden green
in this leaf browned world,
creep past skeletonizing frogs,

those singers who leaped thru
sunbeams and set out pebbles
of bliss to welcome the sun,

down, bend down further,
till we're nose to the roots
pushing thru soil,

till we can feel their strength,
some the width of a single hair
that cling together in bunches and

others taproots the size
of a carrot plunging straight down
to tree root cities underground,

we need to navigate our way thru
these hungry thrusting mouths
drinking water and nutrients

from the bodies of decay,
we need to squish our way
thru winter's mud to attend

this miracle of rebirth that
is happening below sight, below sound,
till the days lengthen and the first

green shoots tipple out of the soil,
wave small snouts upward as if
unused to the air, to this

new felt lightness and light,
this pouring of life from above,
all this miraculousness

that we pave over with concrete
and foundation slabs
and pour poisons on to kill

what we don't understand,
and then we wonder why
we have trouble breathing.

© Zen Oleary
December 8, 2003

Happy Thanksgiving, AEOE!

Day Feast

The invite
written on scraps of clouds
and torn framents of oak leaves,
on the skins of oranges now hard
that never ripened or fell from the tree,
inscribed in the cells of my skin,
branded in bone marrow,
this invite says
come and leap into the feast,
the cosmic happening called now,
stay for the many nows
strung together that make this day,

have I lost my invite yet again,
I've done so many times before
on other life lit mornings,
tossed it tumbled unread
into the wastebasket all
crayon marked with worry,
or crumpled it in mindless haste
and flung it to the to do pile
that climbs higher each day,

Aha! the invite’s found, come as you are
to the ongoing celebration, it reads,
no need to study endless maps,
just skydive in anywhere,
dance, whirl, foot stomp,
sing wildly offkey or not at all,
lizard dance on sunlit trails,
heart drum to the wingbeats
of hummingbirds,
give a great panther’s roar
that tosses unwary frogs
off their lily pads,
trampoline a resounding yes
higher and higher
to this pulsating never ending
feast called life.

© Zen Oleary
April 30, 2003
(another of the Warrior Poets)

Taken from Sierra Nature Notes - new link added to the Teaching Resources page:

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it.
He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it.
He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.
- N. Scott Momaday

"[Children] should not be asked to become warriors or worriers. Children have much more important work to do... Watch ants. Grow flowers. Dance between the raindrops. Before we shake children to their core with visions of doom let's give them something to hold onto for life -– a deep knowledge of a living planet that will be circling the sun for billions of years. It is adults who must be warriors, not children." – Mike Weilbacher, E Magazine, 1994

Perhaps it is a bit premature for this poem... but spring, and healing, will come.
I think this next spring in Southern California will be a glorious one for wildflowers. Don't forget to appreciate the healing... (and send me your own stories and poems of healing after the fires (photos too!) - I'd like to post them either here or on the Fire Stories page!)

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”

– Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

“If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it.
And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it,
whether it’s a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (god forbid) your job.
It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else:
if it’s what makes your heart sing,
if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime,
then focus on it.
Because for sure, it’s wild,
and if it’s wild, it’ll mean you’re still free.
No matter where you are.”

–Rick Bass, Wild to the Heart, 1987

For Mitch and Denise
(Two amazing outdoor educators who met at an AEOE conference, and got married on October 12, 2003 in Arcata!)

WOLVES, FOR LIFE

Wolves mate for life
People try to
being not as advanced
as wolves
it's harder for us


The main things wolves are up against, when they pair up:
Loss of wildness
The fear people have
and traps


The main things people are up against, when they pair up:
Loss of wildness
The fear people have
and traps


We
are now part of
the new pack
made by this marriage

And as the bride and groom's
wolf-friends
we wish them

Full moons
for howling

Tongue-wet frolics
both in snow and warm berry season

A good den,
for holing up

And to be able to look at
each other
with deep fierce eyes

that do not blink


And while their feast days
won't be marked with
the raw ligaments of caribou
or elk

they will pass
with joy
and sustenance


We gather

bride's tribe
groom's pack

on one such feast day
now

and for them
we howl
from the best,
most wolf-like
part of our selves
and
our souls.

- Mark L. Williams (another of the Warrior Poets!)

TO SAVE OR TO SAVOR? “ If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” – E. B. White

(photo-Maggie)

speaking out

that's our role, our niche, our power--
to speak for river, mouse & flower;
to say the truth that must be heard
with every deed and every word.

to draw the drawing, dance the dance,
although the world may look askance;
the different drummer that we hear
to follow faithful without fear.

to howl with coyote and wolf
to some looks dumb--to us it's proof
our animal nature we can reach
without the benefit of speech.

the smallest thing--the tiniest clam--
yet has a forest-sized I AM;
and honoring that tiny voice
for eco-warriors is no choice.

we MUST do what we have to do--
there's no way out, i tell you true--
and yet my friends, i have to say,
would not want it another way.

the Mission beckons; we must go--
there's things to do, new things to know;
and always, since we are not quitters,
to boldly speak up for the critters,

for that's our role, our niche, our power--
to speak for mountain, snail, & flower;
to say the truth that must be heard,
in every deed and every word.

- Dennis Fritzinger
(another of the "Warrior Poets" - a constant source of inspiration for me)

Some of you may know that I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Don't worry! It was very early and the "best" kind, but I've gone through a bit, 2 surgeries, radiation, considering mastectomy instead... I joined an online poetry group (Warrior Poets, a Yahoo! Group) and that helped immensely! This poem was written to me by a wonderful intuitive poet on the group, and I'd like to share it - the last stanza, especially, speaks to the naturalist in all of us... what we do truly is a gift unto the giver. I am thankful. - MW

The Breast in All of Us

In the wild, sometimes animals lose a body part
the other animals look, sniff,
move away...or stay.
they're not crazy like the human species

How sensual the cat, stretching, leaping,
licking, sleeping,
no one notices tiny bud breast tips
her grace commands respect
in the arch of her back
the saunter of her hips

there was that myth of the Amazons,
cutting off a breast to improve their marksmanship...
cancer survivor Amazons trade their parts for life,
for life!
the whole body a wounded choke of disbelief
pain forms a green arrow of compassion
of understanding,
empathic knowing
an arrow of grace
an arrow of love
that reads the pain in the strangers' face
and shoots language
that
never misses
the heart.

millions of women sleep-walk through life, wasting their breath,
reading magazines in the grocery lines, yelling at their children,
watching talk show television, reading romance novels, smoking,
talking trash...

but a shaman seeks the wilderness,
where the wind braids her hair,
and children hold her hands,
where her words are candles,
her eyes swim with stars,
her smile, the crescent moon,
her hug,
a great, nurturing
sun.

- Sayyeda Claire Costello Barry 5/03

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

- Rumi

The Invitation
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare
to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know
if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams,
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own
sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have
become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine your own:
if you can dance with the wildness and let the ecstasy
fill you to the finger and toes without cautioning us
to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint others to be true to
yourself: if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and
not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful
and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see the beauty even when it
is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life
from Its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure,
yours and mine, and still stand on the edge
of the lake and shout to the silver
of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live,
or how much money you have. I want to know
if you can get up after the night of grief and
despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are,
or how you came to be here,
I want to know if you will stand in
the center of the fire with me and not
shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or
with whom you have studied. I want to know
what sustains you from the inside when
all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments."

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to manifest the glory of god that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; its in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Nelson Mandela Inaugural Speech, 1994
Spoken From Marianne Williamson's Return to Love

I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my going and comings. - John Burroughs

To learn is to change. Education is a process that changes the learner. - George Leonard

I do not think that the measure of a civilization is how tall its building of concrete are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man. - Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of 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 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 boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. - Rachel Carson

Sleeping In The Forest
by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
Into something better.

I found it in my “Soul Flares” newsletter, which is an offshoot of “Heron Dance” which I’ve gotten lots of inspiring quotes from previously!

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those who sang best.

—John James Audubon

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