Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
When we look deeply at a flower, we can see the whole cosmos contained in it.
It’s not like you have to empty your mind and then you can listen to the flowers. If you try to listen to the voice of flowers, you naturally start emptying your mind. For me, ikebana is a practice of the mind.
We’re impermanent as ripples in a lake and bubbles in a river. But our true nature is the water that pours down.
Nature teaches us simplicity and contentment, because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy.
My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.
In the scenery of spring, nothing is better, nothing worse. The flowering branches are; some long, some short.
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace–only that it meets us where we are but doesn’t leave us where it found us.
There are moments when the veil seemsalmost to lift and we understand whatthe earth is meant to mean to us….then the Word is within us, and the Book is put away.” With “the Book put away and the Word within us.
Our task is to take this Earth so deeply and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.