“Nobody started it,
nobody is going to stop it.
It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks I am going to listen.”
– Thomas Merton –
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
On a walk at the zoo last week, I crossed a boardwalk bridge and noticed an elegant white waterlily blooming on the river below. Water lilies look as if they’re floating on the surface of the water, but they’re held in place by stems that extend under the water to a rhizome buried in the mud below. It seemed like a symbol of calm and serenity. I thought of how each of us, like a water lily, can root ourselves in the unseen, peaceful flow of life deep in our souls so that what is seen of our lives is a beautiful bloom.
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others.”
– Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata” –
Curious about the word placid, I looked it up and found that it means “serenely free of disturbance.” That’s what “carry the calm” means to me: It’s possible to make our way through noise and haste with our souls serenely free of disturbance.
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
Think toward whatever leads to hope,
to beauty,
to peace,
to gracious love.
Then move in that direction.
– kh –
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“It is necessary for me to see the first point of light which begins to be dawn . . . I receive from the Eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word DAY, which is never the same. It is always in a totally new language.” – Thomas Merton
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“Be not blind, but open-eyed
to the great wonders of Nature,
familiar, everyday objects though they be to thee.”
– Orchot Tzaddikim –
– a 15th century Jewish ethical work –
“There is not a particle of life
which does not bear poetry within it.”
– Gustave Flaubert –
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“The art of art,
the glory of expression…
is simplicity.”
– Walt Whitman –
It’s the simple things that nourish me. My grandson’s smile. The laughter of friends. A pepper turning red on the vine. The dance of leaves in a breeze on a hot day. The sun shining red through a broad canna leaf. The scent of citronella leaves at the back door. The prickly center of a coneflower. Smooth, sweet coconut yogurt. The chirring of a wren as it guards its nest box. Simple, sacred gifts, each a wonder of art and glory, each an invitation to joy and peace.
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“The course of Nature is the art of God.”
– Edward Young –
Linger,
heart open,
intent on the smallest bit
of nature’s art—
a pebble,
a butterfly,
a bud,
raindrops;
let wonder widen,
dreams deepen,
hopes stretch and soar
up and out and into
the eternal mystery
that many call
God.
–KH
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
Here’s a riddle for you:
What’s so fragile that you can break it by just saying its name?
(The answer follows this next quote.)
“In a world of noise, confusion and conflict,
it is necessary that there is a place of inner silence and peace,
not the peace of mere relaxation
but the peace of inner clarity and love.”
– Thomas Merton –
The answer to the riddle is:
Silence.
Wishing you the inner silence of peace, clarity, and love.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand—to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.” – John Burroughs
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2021 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.