Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful  

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon  

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again  

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower  

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer, at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere,

in any language,

a word billowing enough for the pleasure  

that fills you,

as the sun reaches out,

as it warms you  

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too turned from this world--  

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?      

-Mary Oliver
The Sun

Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?

― Walt Disney

‘Her aura is made of poetry, roses and galaxies.’

THE SILENT SOUND OF THE ROOTS ///

We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal ///

Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard - or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.

- Gretchen Rubin

*m a g i c ***e v e r y w h e r e *

There's a flame of magic inside every stone and every flower, every bird that sings and every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees and the hills and the river and the rocks, in the sea and the stars and the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars.

― Kate Forsyth, The Puzzle Ring

WOMANLY WILD

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don't need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

- Audrey Hepburn

P A L M S (on the) H O R I Z O N

Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one 'dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.

- Paulo Coelho

t r e e ~ t a l k

There's an ancient conversation between the tree and the sea.

P E A C E K E E P E R S ^ ^ ^

We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.” 
― Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees  

C r O o K e D \\ Ways

“My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. 

I told them this story: 
In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.”

― Tom Waits

OUTWARD & (inward) Q U I E T

“There are quiet places also in the mind,” he said, meditatively. “But we build bandstand and factories on them. Deliberately—to put a stop to the quietness. We don’t like the quietness. All the thoughts, all the preoccupation in my head—round and round continually.” He made a circular motion with his hands. “And the jazz bands, the music hall songs, the boys shouting the news. What’s it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost it isn’t there. Ah, but it is, it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night, sometimes—not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep—the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits, all the fragments of it we’ve been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like this outward quiet of grass and trees.”

– Aldous Huxley

MAHOGANY & DIAMONDS = p r o t e c t i o n

M A H O G A N Y  &  D I A M O N D S  

EMBODIES THE ESSENCE OF GUIDANCE AND PROTECTION

MIND/BODY BENEFITS: Strong connection to earth energy – good for drawing strength from earth. Enhances intuition.

HEALING PROPERTIES: Tea, made from the bark of mahogany, helps reduces fevers and helps ease diarrhea. The tea made from seeds is used to soothe toothaches. Mahogany fruit can be used as an energy drink that is believed to increase blood circulation and lower cholesterol. It is also believed to improve a man’s sexual vitality. Mahogany seeds are antibacterial and antimicrobial.

^ C E L E S T I A L ^ S Y M P H O N I E S ^

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

B A J A N G L E (((your way))) F R E E

'And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.'  -William Shakespeare

ROOT (to) RISE

‘If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.’
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

^ ^ ^ L I S T E N ^ ^ ^

"TO PRAY IS NOT TO ASK, TO PRAY IS TO LISTEN." - EUGENE PETERSON

Go to the forest,

allow the music of the wild,

the wisdom of the trees...

....to fill your silence.