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ethics and philosophy

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Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Ours is not the task
of fixing the entire world all at once,
but of stretching out
to mend the part of the world
that is within our reach.
Any small, calm thing that one soul can do
to help another soul,
to assist some portion of this poor suffering world,
will help immensely.
It is not given to us to know
which acts or by whom,
will cause the critical mass
to tip toward an enduring good.

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
(1945 to pres., writer and Jungian psychoanalyst)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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"One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The really striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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There are only two energies
at the core of the human experience:
love and fear.
Love grants freedom,
fear takes it away.
Love invites full expression,
Fear punishes it.

~Neale Donald Walsch
(1943 to pres., author, actor, screen writer)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

M Ljin

gardener

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I found an interesting one while looking through Faust today.
It is interesting that this is spoken by a devil, in the knowledge that Faust would reject it, giving it some ambiguity. Would you trust the demon?…

MEPHISTOPHELES: Good! This process does not need
Magic, gold, or medicine:
Go to the pastures, there begin
Straightway to hoe and dig with speed.
Keep your mind and self restrained
Within a narrow, humble sphere,
And by the simplest nurture be sustained.
Live with cattle as cattle live, nor think it ill
To fertilize yourself the land you till.
This is the best way, it is plain,
At eighty to grow young again.

FAUST: I am not used to that! I do not feel
Like stooping down to use a spade.
Such a narrow sphere has no appeal!

Judith Browning

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Maieshe...that is quite thought provoking, thank you

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters.

Amit Ray

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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We all are so deeply interconnected; we have no option but to love all. Be kind and do good for any one and that will be reflected. The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the Universe.

Amit Ray

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Understanding languages and other cultures builds bridges.
It is the fastest way to bring the world closer together and to Truth.
Through understanding, people will be able to see their similarities before differences.

-Suzy Kassem,
'Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem'

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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It’s scary to dwell in the heart
because it’s a place of mystery,
at least the feminine heart is.
It is a place where there is a great degree
of tolerance for ambiguity—
that the masculine paradigm conditions us
to believe is a problem to be solved.
The feminine heart space sees ambiguity
as a higher truth,
paradox as a vast space of truth.
This heart has the capacity,
because it is so vast,
to hold seemingly contradictory propositions.

~Mirabai Starr
(1961 to pres., author, philosopher, counselor,
teacher of contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Howard Zinn

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.

-Hermann Hesse

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority.
Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different.
Don't only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you.
This is how humanity will evolve to become better. This is how you can change the world. The language of the heart is mankind's main common language.

Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.... Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all.

Jon Kabat-Zinn,
Wherever You Go, There You Are - Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known. The particulars count.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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When a society, as Plato notes, abandons the common good, it always unleashes amoral lusts — violence, greed and sexual exploitation — and fosters [certain types of] magical thinking.

Chris Hedges
“Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge.
We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.
A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.

Chris Hedges,
"Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle"

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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We need movements rooted in love right now,
movements powered not by difference
and exclusion and punishment,
but by common ground, compassion,
humility, healthy boundaries,
patience and healing.

~Adrienne Maree Brown
(1978 to pres., writer and activist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives.

Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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"And then many things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth."

Ernesto Che Guevara

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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In a time of destruction,
create something.
A poem.
A parade.
A community.
A school.
A vow.
A moral principle.
One peaceful moment.

~Maxine Hong Kingston
(1940 to pres., author and activist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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THE WORK OF HAPPINESS
by May Sarton

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall —
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life’s span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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Find gratitude in your life story.
Wake up every morning and say to yourself,
“I made it here from where I started,
and I am so proud of that.”
When we do this,
we bless ourselves and feed ourselves
with the love required for us to flourish
and keep going no matter where we come from
or what we have been through.

~Cleo Wade
(1989 to pres., poet, author, artist, activist)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Patriotism based on the common good does not pander to divisiveness. It does not vilify diversity, equity, and inclusion. True patriots don’t fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. They aren’t homophobic or transphobic or sexist.

True patriots confirm the good that we have in common. They seek to strengthen and celebrate the “We” in “We the people"

Robert Reich

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

-Herman Hesse

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

M Ljin

gardener

Posts: 1159

Location: Zone 5

553

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I was thinking about this exactly the other day—the difference between fear and worry—and today while looking up medicinal herbs found this quote. I have found a useful, functioning sense of fear to be very beneficial. In my experience worry and anxiety come from an empty aversive feeling but love is required in order to transform them into “fear”, which lets us actually care and want to protect and nourish. Without the love, it is easier to shut down and shut away.

Fear and anxiety are closely linked, but quite different.
Fear is focused, anxiety is diffuse.
Fear is health promoting and protective: it keeps us from jumping off cliffs.
Anxiety can destroy health and increase our vulnerability: it shortens our breath, narrows our blood vessels, and interferes with the functioning of the immune system.
Fear is useful energy; it calls to our courage.
Anxiety is useless; it promotes feelings of insecurity, helplessness, weakness.

-Susun Weed

https://botanical.com/site/column_susun/susun_anxiety.htm

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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Maieshe Ljin wrote:I was thinking about this exactly the other day—the difference between fear and worry—and today while looking up medicinal herbs found this quote. I have found a useful, functioning sense of fear to be very beneficial. In my experience worry and anxiety come from an empty aversive feeling but love is required in order to transform them into “fear”, which lets us actually care and want to protect and nourish. Without the love, it is easier to shut down and shut away.

Fear and anxiety are closely linked, but quite different.
Fear is focused, anxiety is diffuse.
Fear is health promoting and protective: it keeps us from jumping off cliffs.
Anxiety can destroy health and increase our vulnerability: it shortens our breath, narrows our blood vessels, and interferes with the functioning of the immune system.
Fear is useful energy; it calls to our courage.
Anxiety is useless; it promotes feelings of insecurity, helplessness, weakness.

-Susun Weed

https://botanical.com/site/column_susun/susun_anxiety.htm

What an important distinction!
I don't think I've heard it explained so clearly before.
thank you💜

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

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too much here to quote...Heather Cox Richardson, a favorite US historian is writing about today's history, Juneteenth.....
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-18-2025-wednesday

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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A blessing is a form of grace;
it is invisible.
Grace is the permanent climate
of divine kindness.
There are no limits to it...
For one who believes in it,
a blessing can signal the start
of a journey of transformation.
It belongs to the same realm as the inner life—
its effect becomes only indirectly visible
in the changed quality of one's experience.
Where before gravity and deadness had prevailed,
there is now a new sense of animation and lightness.
Where there was grief,
a new sense of presence comes alive.
In the wall of blindness
a window of vision opens.

~John O'Donohue
(1958 to 2008, Irish poet, author,
priest, and Hegelian philosopher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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People usually consider walking on water
or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk
either on water or in thin air,
but to walk on earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle
which we don’t even recognize:
a blue sky,
white clouds,
green leaves,
the curious eyes of a child —
our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Our minds as well as our bodies have the need of the out-of-doors.
Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.

Edwin Way Teale

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible, is music."

~ Aldous Huxley ~

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Sit and be still
Until in the time
Of no rain you hear
Beneath the dry wind’s
Commotion in the trees
The sound of flowing
Water among the rocks
A stream unheard before
And you are where
Breathing is prayer.

Wendell Berry

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.

Mary Oliver

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, and fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.

Chris Hedges
'Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle'

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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“The root of joy is gratefulness… It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. Everything is a gift. Any place is sacred ground, for it can become a place of encounter with the divine Presence.”

Brother David Steindl-Rast.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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Notice everything.
Appreciate everything, including the ordinary.
That’s how to click in with joyfulness or cheerfulness.
Curiosity encourages cheering up.
So does simply remembering to do something different.
We are so locked into this sense of burden—
Big Deal Joy and Big Deal Unhappiness—
that it’s sometimes helpful just to change the pattern.
Anything out of the ordinary will help,
and tonglen is definitely something different.
This practice is about repatterning ourselves,
changing the basic pattern and unpatterning ourselves together.
You can also just go to the window and look at the sky.
You can splash cold water on your face,
you can sing in the shower, you can go jogging—
anything that’s against your usual pattern.
That’s how things start to lighten up.

~Pema Chodron
(1936 to pres., Buddhist Teacher)

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

Posts: 9712

Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

2908

posted 3 months ago

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THE MORNING WALK
There are a lot of words meaning thanks.
Some you can only whisper.
Others you can only sing.
The pewee whistles instead.
The snake turns in circles, the beaver slaps his tail on the surface of the pond.
The deer in the pinewoods stamps his hoof.
Goldfinches shine as they float through the air.
A person, sometimes, will hum a little Mahler.
Or put arms around old oak tree.
Or take out lovely pencil and notebook to find a few touching, kissing words.

Mary Oliver

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

I am not young enough to know everything. - Oscar Wilde This tiny ad thinks it knows more than Oscar:

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