Humans think they are smarter....

Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)

...listen to silence...

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
-Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

(Oscar and I could have been great friends. This quote conveys my exact feelings on death - that it is nothing to be afraid of, it is something to look forward to.)

ANSWERS

In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back..

–Charlie Brown

Evolution of Consciousness

There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I'll tell you a secret

Music Pink & Blue II ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

"I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed."

- Achilles to Briseis, the virginal Trojan priestess
~from Wolfgang Peterson's "Troy"

Miracles

Miracles don't happen overnight.
Sometimes they take the whole weekend.

...sense of time...

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.

-Bonnie Friedman, author (b. 1958)

Not every man really lives

“Every man dies, not every man really lives.”

William Ross Wallace

(LOTR - Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn)

the hour of living

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic

who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
-Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)

....life and wealth and power that enslave men....

It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power. -Buddha (c. 563-483 BCE)

Life's most urgent question

Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others? -Martin Luther King, Jr , civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it. -Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321)

These two quotes though uttered almost 700 years apart have the same impact as if uttered just today. They are very important statements - there are so many living beings in need on this planet. Think of ways you can help besides giving money. Perhaps volunteer at a local senior center, an animal rescue group, a children's literacy group, Habitat for Humanity, a hospital - I could go on and on the list is endless in ways to help others. All able bodied persons on this Earth should strive to help others in any way they can, when they can and as much as they can. We all will be better for it and giving of ourselves is one way to be lifted up from our own problems as well - it FEELS GOOD to help others!!

BFN,
Ani

Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)

The Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life
and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still
water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am
free. - by Wendell Berry

BFN ~ Ani

there is only the dance

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving.

--T.S. Eliot

your place in the family of things

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
marc franz, tiger

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountain and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver - The Wild Geese