“There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
– A.J. Muste –
(but often attributed to Gandhi)
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week – hollyhock:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
This week’s quote contains a word we don’t hear much anymore: partake. But it’s a rich little word, a mashup of two that we use all the time: part and take. Like a puzzle, they’ve been rearranged. They mean take part. If you “take part,” you’re a “part taker.” You partake. Or as we say more often, using a related word, you participate. In the following quote, Milton is stretching out his hand and inviting us to come along. “Partake.” It’s an invitation.
“In those vernal seasons of the year,
when the air is calm and pleasant,
it were an injury and sullenness against Nature
not to go out and see her riches,
and partake
in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”
– John Milton, Of Education –
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week – a creek I passed on a hike in Norway:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all;
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in:
to bind up the nation’s wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan,
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves,
and with all nations.”
– Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address, 1865 –
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week – celebrating the summer solstice in Norway:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“[G]ive us a heart for simple things:
love, laughter, bread, wine and dreams;
fill us with green growing hope!”
– Barry Rose –
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“[T]he sky actually begins at the earth . . .
We breathe it deep within us.”
– Diane Ackerman –
Take a breath of sky today!
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week – a tree casts its shadow in the Japanese Garden at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, Nashville:
Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
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“The sun is shining – the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flowers are growing – the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic – being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me – the Magic is in me. . . . It’s in every one of us.” –Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week – from a walk at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens:
Shadow of the Week – Can you see the heart?
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“Better keep yourself clean and bright:
You are the window
through which you must see the world.”
– George Bernard Shaw –
And sometimes you are the window through which others see the world.
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week – from earlier this spring:
Shadow of the Week – late afternoon in my kitchen:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“Begin at once to live,
and count each separate day as a separate life.”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca –
I often find bits of wisdom tucked away in novels. Recently I was reading the novel Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan and found this: “She had made a choice and then she had made another and another after that. Taken together, the small choices anyone made added up to a life.”
May you choose peace daily. Nurture it, cultivate loving-kindness, carry the calm, and that will be your life.
Nature of the week – poplar leaf after a rainstorm:
Shadow of the Week – a tree shadow spills into the street:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“. . . feel the stars and the infinite
high and clear above you.
Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
– Vincent van Gogh –
Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Have an enchanting Mother’s Day!
Nature of the week – high and clear:
Shadow of the Week – from a dragonfly garden ornament:
Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
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Did you ever find yourself unable to enjoy a lovely moment, because you don’t deserve it? Or because too many people in the world can’t enjoy such moments, so you believe you have no right to enjoy them either? Sounds a bit warped, but some of us have thought that way. Yet a lovely moment is a gift, and to willfully ignore it is to be ungrateful.
“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”
– Richard Bach –
Enjoy some lovely moments this week. Let them nurture your peace and cultivate your loving-kindness. Carry the calm.
Nature of the week – my Japanese maple, red in the springtime. Notice the shadows of leaf on leaf and the “winged” seeds:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.