OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
How True Is This?
I came across this quote and wondered, “How true is this for me? Do I want it to be true for me? What am I willing to do to make it not be so?”
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
– Wilbur Rees
Nature’s Equilibrium
Nature is evenly balanced. We cannot disturb her equilibrium, for we know that the law of Cause and Effect is the unerring and inexorable law of nature; but we do fail to find our own equilibrium as nations and as individuals, because we have not yet learned that the same law works as inexorably in human life and in society as in nature – that what we sow, we must inevitably reap.
– Sidney Bremer, Spirit of Apollo
Uncontrollable Nature
Nature just, “is.” It cannot be controlled. People can mess around with it. They can interfere with it. They can pollute it. They can damage it. They can degrade it. But they can never really control. it. The sun will rise every day. The sun will set every day. Those mountains will be there whether you look at them or not. Nature is there, even when you don’t ask it to be. It doesn’t demand anything from you. It just is, and all you have to do is experience and appreciate it.
– JoAnn Valenti
Finding Beauty
Beauty is before me.
Beauty is behind me.
Beauty is below me.
Beauty is above me.
I walk in beauty.
– Navajo Prayer
Getting Perspective
I’ve learned to time things so that I am driving with a beautiful sunset off to the west as I drive home. It calms me. It gives me perspective. I think, “There is a hideous traffic jam in front of me. There are trucks on either side of me. This is a mess and I can’t believe any good will ever come of it. But look at that phenomenal sunset! Look at those clouds. Look at the reflection on the mountains. Look at how it makes the snow sparkle on the mountains.” It puts things in context.
JoAnn Valenti
Are We Going Out or Going In?
It was not like taking the veil, no solemn abjuration of the world, I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay till sundown for going out I found that I was really going in.
– John Muir
Weekly Photo Challenge: One Shot, Two Ways
There was a song that sprang to mind when I saw this challenge. It was popular in the sixties, and sung by Judy Collins.
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, but still somehow
It’s clouds illusions I recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all.
Isn’t that the truth of it? What or whom we think we know, no matter how well we’ve studied and investigated, we find out we are only at the beginning of discovery. And more is of the ephemeral nature of clouds than we have any idea!
Celebrating Nature through the Lens
From the time I first picked up a camera, I have celebrated nature through my lens. And nature has responded by teaching me some extraordinary lessons.
– Dewitt Jones
Come Into the Light
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
– William Wordsworth
Nature Is Our Teacher
Nature is [our] teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to [our] search,
unseals [the] eye, illumes {the] mind,
and purifies [the] heart;
an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds
of [nature’s] existence.
– Alfred Billings Street
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