Animals Are People Too! And, of course, Trees.

Animals are people, too. As are plants. And water. And soil. This is the fundamental insight at the heart of all eco-spiritual work. But to get that insight, we have to get with the big picture. To get that insight, we have to climb a tree.

– Clark Strand, Trees, Butterflies, and the Buddhist Moral Life

Wednesday of Hope – Unfailing Love

What gives me hope is that life unfailingly responds to the advances of love.

– Nipun Mehta

God Never Made an Ugly Landscape

God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.

– John Muir

Wednesday of Hope – Don’t Stop Dreaming

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

– Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

Plant Trees

Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books.

– A. Whitney Brown, Wall at bookstore – Chicago Botanic Gardens

Wednesday of Hope – the Winds Will Carry You

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.

–  C. JoyBell C.

The Primordial Sacrament

The created world is the primordial sacrament.

– Elizabeth Johnson

Wednesday of Hope – In a World Full of Peril

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Not Made in the Shade

Flowers are not made by singing “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade.  

– Rudyard Kipling

Wednesday of Hope – I Believe that People Are Good

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart

– Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Crew in hazmat suits cleaning up after oil spill