CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: Honoring the Environment as a Life Quality

Saturday

Honoring the Environment as a Life Quality

Quotes on Nature...then...a Song of Sustainability

i

seek to know
why

after all I have done
to hurt her
does the Mother continue
to embrace me
~Charlie Mehrhoff

Imagine a place on Earth so awesome,
So vast so pure,
We can hardly breathe its air.
Imagine the Earth alive with morning,
Shimmering white nights,
No end of sky,
No end of sea.
~Carole Forman, "Antarctica"

Too much industry
too much eats
too much beer
too much cigarettes

Too much philosophy
too many thought forms
not enough rooms--
not enough trees
~Allen Ginsberg

Wherever you are is home
And the earth is paradise
wherever you set your feet is holy land...
You don't live off it like a parasite.
You live in it, and it in you,
Or you don't survive.
And that is the only worship of god there is.
~Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole

I'm going to leave a heart in the earth
so it may grow and flower
a heart that throbs with longing
that adores everything green
that will be strength and nourishment for birds
that will be the sap of plants and mountains.
~Rosario Murillo

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain.
~Joyce Fossen

THINK FAST

(a Song of Sustainability)

It started a long time ago with plastic forks and knives,

Soon evolution brought us silicone-implanted wives.

Now infomercials sell us perfect souls in flawless lives…

And we’re so wise we interact with nuclear beehives.

CHORUS:

What do we do? Think fast. You have so much power.

What do we do? Think fast. Don’t waste our finest hour.

No one else in history could see the things we’re finding all the time...

And no one in our family tree held keys like yours and mine.

We have a new religion of invented wants and needs,

Inspiring a market of our bottled lusts and greeds.

We tithe at shopping malls, ignore the suffering ego breeds…

Tomorrow’s just within our grasp, our children are the seeds.

CHORUS:

What do we do? Think fast. You have so much power.

What do we do? Think fast. Don’t waste our finest hour.

No one else is history could see the things we’re finding all the time…

And no one in our family tree held keys like yours and mine.

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.