“
Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
Around us, life bursts with miracles--a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“
More recently, books, especially paperbacks, have been printed in massive and inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning.
”
”
Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2))
“
-You know how to call me
although such a noise now
would only confuse the air
Neither of us can forget
the steps we danced
the words you stretched
to call me out of dust
Yes I long for you
not just as a leaf for weather
or vase for hands
but with a narrow human longing
that makes a man refuse
any fields but his own
I wait for you at an
unexpected place in your journey
like the rusted key
or the feather you do not pick up.-
-I WILL NEVER FIND THE FACES
FOR ALL GOODBYES I'VE MADE.-
For Anyone Dressed in Marble
The miracle we all are waiting for
is waiting till the Parthenon falls down
and House of Birthdays is a house no more
and fathers are unpoisoned by renown.
The medals and the records of abuse
can't help us on our pilgrimage to lust,
but like whips certain perverts never use,
compel our flesh in paralysing trust.
I see an orphan, lawless and serene,
standing in a corner of the sky,
body something like bodies that have been,
but not the scar of naming in his eye.
Bred close to the ovens, he's burnt inside.
Light, wind, cold, dark -- they use him like a bride.
I Had It for a Moment
I had it for a moment
I knew why I must thank you
I saw powerful governing men in black suits
I saw them undressed
in the arms of young mistresses
the men more naked than the naked women
the men crying quietly
No that is not it
I'm losing why I must thank you
which means I'm left with pure longing
How old are you
Do you like your thighs
I had it for a moment
I had a reason for letting the picture
of your mouth destroy my conversation
Something on the radio
the end of a Mexican song
I saw the musicians getting paid
they are not even surprised
they knew it was only a job
Now I've lost it completely
A lot of people think you are beautiful
How do I feel about that
I have no feeling about that
I had a wonderful reason for not merely
courting you
It was tied up with the newspapers
I saw secret arrangements in high offices
I saw men who loved their worldliness
even though they had looked through
big electric telescopes
they still thought their worldliness was serious
not just a hobby a taste a harmless affectation
they thought the cosmos listened
I was suddenly fearful
one of their obscure regulations
could separate us
I was ready to beg for mercy
Now I'm getting into humiliation
I've lost why I began this
I wanted to talk about your eyes
I know nothing about your eyes
and you've noticed how little I know
I want you somewhere safe
far from high offices
I'll study you later
So many people want to cry quietly beside you
”
”
Leonard Cohen (Flowers for Hitler)
“
What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence
“
[T]he flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.
The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self,
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life)
“
May you realise who the "cosmos flowers" in your life are and learn to love, appreciate and notice them more often.
”
”
Jennifer Rossouw
“
Earth is a flower in the Garden of Cosmos! And therefore, a flower on Earth is a flower within the flower!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
What can you say about pain?
Words can trace only the shadow of the thing itself. The reality of hard, sharp physical pain is like nothing else, and it is beyond language. The world is too much with us, day and night, but when we hurt, when we really hurt, the world melts and fades and becomes a ghost, a dim memory, a silly unimportant thing. Whatever ideals, dreams, loves, fears, and thoughts we might have had become ultimately unimportant. We are alone with our pain, it is the only force in the cosmos, the only thing of substance, the only thing that matters, and if the pain is bad enough and lasts long enough, if it is the sort of agony that goes on and on, then all the things that are our humanity melt before it and the proud sophisticated computer that is the human brain becomes capable of but a single thought:
Make it stop, make it STOP! (from The Glass Flower)
”
”
George R.R. Martin (Dreamsongs, Volume II)
“
When a person dies, they cross over from the realm of freedom to the realm of slavery. Life is freedom, and dying is a gradual denial of freedom. Consciousness first weakens and then disappears. The life-processes – respiration, the metabolism, the circulation – continue for some time, but an irrevocable move has been made towards slavery; consciousness, the flame of freedom, has died out.
The stars have disappeared from the night sky; the Milky Way has vanished; the sun has gone out; Venus, Mars and Jupiter have been extinguished; millions of leaves have died; the wind and the oceans have faded away; flowers have lost their colour and fragrance; bread has vanished; water has vanished; even the air itself, the sometimes cool, sometimes sultry air, has vanished. The universe inside a person has ceased to exist. This universe is astonishingly similar to the universe that exists outside people. It is astonishingly similar to the universes still reflected within the skulls of millions of living people. But still more astonishing is the fact that this universe had something in it that distinguished the sound of its ocean, the smell of its flowers, the rustle of its leaves, the hues of its granite and the sadness of its autumn fields both from those of every other universe that exists and ever has existed within people, and from those of the universe that exists eternally outside people. What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.
”
”
Vasily Grossman (Life and Fate)
“
For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
She blushed, and two more peach flowers blossomed on her cheeks.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
Chastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often. Indeed, one of the books found in the bus with his remains was a collection of stories that included Tol¬stoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata,” in which the nobleman-turned-ascetic denounces “the demands of the flesh.” Several such passages are starred and highlighted in the dog-eared text, the margins filled with cryptic notes printed in McCandless’s distinc¬tive hand. And in the chapter on “Higher Laws” in Thoreau’s Walden, a copy of which was also discovered in the bus, McCand¬less circled “Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.”
We Americans are titillated by sex, obsessed by it, horrified by it. When an apparently healthy person, especially a healthy young man, elects to forgo the enticements of the flesh, it shocks us, and we leer. Suspicions are aroused.
McCandless’s apparent sexual innocence, however, is a corol¬lary of a personality type that our culture purports to admire, at least in the case of its more famous adherents. His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion—Thoreau (who was a lifelong virgin) and the naturalist John Muir, most prominently— to say nothing of countless lesser-known pilgrims, seekers, mis¬fits, and adventurers. Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too pow¬erful to be quenched by human contact. McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos it¬self. And thus was he drawn north, to Alaska.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
“
Pitiful, puling, like all your kin the slave of time that rots the body before the mind has seen more than a single flower in all the meadows of the Cosmos.
”
”
Barbara Hambly (Dragonsbane (Winterlands, #1))
“
Marigold (Calendula)--- Herb of the Sun.
Not a perennial. Apricot color like cosmos = rangy and tall, a weed. Calendula = composed. Loni's flower
”
”
Virginia Hartman (The Marsh Queen)
“
truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints. When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds, there could be no rain, and there would be no flower. No
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (Be Still and Know: Reflections from Living Buddha, Living Christ)
“
The gnostic is Muslim in that his whole being is surrendered to God; he has no separate individual existence of his own. He is like the birds and the flowers in his yielding to the Creator; like them, like all the elements of the cosmos, he reflects the Divine to his own degree. He reflects it actively, however, they passively; his participation is a conscious one.
”
”
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“
Biblical eschatology fundamentally challenges the "official" scientific idea that the universe will end in a violent heat death, and instead that the cosmos will be set free from its decadence. It calls us to consider the sobering similarities between ancient pagan cosmologies (creation began with war & violence between the gods) and modern naturalism as a nihilistic, philosophical worldview (all will end in astronomical war & violence). Instead, the revelation (apocalypse) of the Lamb is that God created out of love and love will win in the end.
”
”
David D. Flowers
“
If you are a sensitive person, you don’t give flowers to others, because you know that the flowers – these miraculous beauties and the wondrous jewels of our cosmos – excessively deserve to live!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Roses climbed the shed, entwined with dark purple clematis, leaves as glossy as satin. There were no thorns. Patience's cupboard was overflowing with remedies, and the little barn was often crowded with seekers. The half acre of meadow was wild with cosmos and lupine, coreopsis, and sweet William. Basil, thyme, coriander, and broad leaf parsley grew in billowing clouds of green; the smell so fresh your mouth watered and you began to plan the next meal. Cucumbers spilled out of the raised beds, fighting for space with the peas and beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and bright yellow peppers.
The cart was righted out by the road and was soon bowed under glass jars and tin pails of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, and salvia. Pears, apples, and out-of-season apricots sat in balsa wood baskets in the shade, and watermelons, some with pink flesh, some with yellow, all sweet and seedless, lined the willow fence.
”
”
Ellen Herrick (The Sparrow Sisters)
“
Look at it!” George’s voice shuddered with barely contained awe. “Look at it! Don’t you want to experience it? Don’t you want to be brave? You are not a gentle flower who spends its whole life in a greenhouse. You are a wildfire, Lark. A wildfire.”
A sun burst on the images, its violent fury drowning the cosmos.
“Dare to take that step and I will show you wonders beyond your imagination. I will give you a chance to make a difference. Come with me.” George offered his hand to her. “Live. Join me or not, but live, gods damn you, because I cannot stand the thought of you slowly aging here like some dusty fossil under glass. Take my hand and bring your sword. The universe is waiting.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles, #2))
“
The Manger of Incidentals "
We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe.
By meaningless bulk, vastness without size,
power without consequence. The stubborn iteration
that is present without being felt.
Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon
and its physics. An endless, endless of going on.
No habitat where the brain can recognize itself.
No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication.
The horror of none of it being alive.
No red squirrels, no flowers, not even weed.
Nothing that knows what season it is.
The stars uninflected by awareness.
Miming without implication. We alone see the iris
in front of the cabin reach its perfection
and quickly perish. The lamb is born into happiness
and is eaten for Easter. We are blessed
with powerful love and it goes away. We can mourn.
We live the strangeness of being momentary,
and still we are exalted by being temporary.
The grand Italy of meanwhile. It is the fact of being brief,
being small and slight that is the source of our beauty.
We are a singularity that makes music out of noise
because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness
and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.
”
”
Jack Gilbert (Refusing Heaven: Poems)
“
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her like she was his and had been for years. Like he was a man dying and she was his greatest love. He felt like she was. Shylah Cosmos. His only little peony. His delicate flower. Dependable. Long-lived.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Toxic Game (GhostWalkers #15))
“
This is my creed: For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man as for flower and beast and bird the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterward. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours alone, and ours for only a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh and part of the living incarnate cosmos.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence
“
Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. … And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of a flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It’s a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it.
”
”
Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2))
“
With this Humboldt brought together the external physical world with the internal world of the mind. Humboldt’s Cosmos was about the relationship between humankind and nature, and Thoreau placed himself firmly into this cosmos. At Walden Pond, he wrote, ‘I have a little world all to myself’ – his own sun, stars and moon. ‘Why should I feel lonely?’ he asked. ‘Is not our planet in the Milky Way?’ He was no more lonely than a flower or bumblebee in a meadow because like them he was part of nature. ‘Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?’ he asked in Walden.
”
”
Andrea Wulf (The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World)
“
Republicans are the Taliban of the West. But please don't hate them. Now more than ever they need our help, for they are ill, terribly ill. They are suffering from a condition, I call, Clinical Caucasianitis, or White Supremacy Syndrome. So next time you see one, offer them a flower and say - get well soon!
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love)
“
White cosmos nodded their heads in the breeze as if greeting them. In front of the taller flowers were blue cornflowers and mauve asters, mixed with pink phlox, spikes of grape hyacinth and purple salvias. As they walked around the path leading towards the front of the house, they passed beds of roses, the buds showing the promise of beauty to come
”
”
Ellen Read (The Inca's Curse (The Thornton Mysteries #2))
“
The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice.
This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings—happiness, peace of mind, exaltation—must be sought by each man within himself alone.
Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim.
No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men's senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.
”
”
Ludwig von Mises (Liberalism: The Classical Tradition)
“
Time would heal the wound that was Frank; the world would continue to spin, to wobble, its axis only slightly skewed, momentarily displaced, by the brief, shuddering existence of one man -one THING - a post-human mutant, a blurred Xerox copy of a human being, the offspring of the waste of technology, the bent shadow of a fallen angel; Frank was all of these things. . . he was the sum of everything dark and sticky, the congealment of all things wrong and dark and foul in this world and every other seedy rathole world in every back-alley universe throughout the vast garbage dump of creation; God rolled the dice and Frank lost. . . he was a spiritual flunkie, a universal pain-in-the-ass, a joy-riding, soul-sucking cosmic punk rolling through time and space and piling up a karmic debt of such immense magnitude so as to invariably glue the particular vehicle of the immediate moment to the basement of possibility - planet earth - and force Frank to RE-ENLIST, endlessly, to return, over and over, to a flawed world somewhere to spend the Warhol-film-loop nights of eternity serving concurrent life sentences roaming the dimly lit hallways of always, stuck in the dense overshoes of physicality, forever, until finally - one would hope there is always a FINALLY - eventually, anyway - God would step in and say ENOUGH ALREADY and grab Frank by the collar of one of his thrift-shop polyester flower-print shirts and hurl him out the back door of the cosmos, expelling the rotten orb into the great wide nothingness and out of our lives - sure, that would be nice - but so would a new Cadillac - quit dreaming - it just doesn't work that way. . .
”
”
George Mangels (Frank's World)
“
We are grass of the field. We flourish for a season and then fade. Death wipes us out. Yet, we are part of a totality that death cannot eradicate. I was, am, and will forever be a particle within a resurrecting cosmos. My DNA was included in the Big Bang. The blossoming of time, space, and multiplicity intended me, and I will be a part of the unfolding, flowering, and closing of time. I exist within the alpha and the omega.
”
”
Sam Keen (Sightings: Extraordinary Encounters with Ordinary Birds)
“
Because all such things are aspects of the holomovement, he feels it has no meaning to speak of consciousness and matter as interacting. In a sense, the observer is the observed. The observer is also the measuring device, the experimental results, the laboratory, and the breeze that blows outside the laboratory. In fact, Bohm believes that consciousness is a more subtle form of matter, and the basis for any relationship between the two lies not in our own level of reality, but deep in the implicate order. Consciousness is present in various degrees of enfoldment and unfoldment in all matter, which is perhaps why plasmas possess some of the traits of living things. As Bohm puts it, "The ability of form to be active is the most characteristic feature of mind, and we have something that is mindlike already with the electron. "11 Similarly, he believes that dividing the universe up into living and nonliving things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matter are inseparably interwoven, and life, too, is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. Even a rock is in some way alive, says Bohm, for life and intelligence are present not only in all of matter, but in "energy, " "space, " "time, " "the fabric of the entire universe, " and everything else we abstract out of the holomovement and mistakenly view as separate things. The idea that consciousness and life (and indeed all things) are ensembles enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of the universe enfolds the whole. This means that if we knew how to access it we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left hand. We could also find Cleopatra meeting Caesar for the first time, for in principle the whole past and implications for the whole future are also enfolded in each small region of space and time. Every cell in our body enfolds the entire cosmos. So does every leaf, every raindrop, and every dust mote, which gives new meaning to William Blake's famous poem:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
”
”
Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
“
Prose vs. Poetry
To a writer of prose
a flower is a flower.
To a poet a flower can be
the origami of God's eye
enfolding the cosmos;
it is the luminous
well of imagination
bursting into pattern;
it is the coalescence
of infinite possibility
into palpable reality;
it is a confetti forest
for dancing bumble bees;
it is the flirtatious blush
ofradial symmetry;
it is the heartache of love
manifest in a rose.
For a true poet
A FLOWER IS NOT A FLOWER.
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
the architecture of our brains was born from the same trial and error, the same energy principles, the same pure mathematics that happen in flowers and jellyfish and Higgs particles.
Viewed in this way, our human aesthetic is necessarily the aesthetic of nature.
Viewed in this way, it is nonsensical to ask why we find nature beautiful.
Beauty and symmetry and minimum principles are not qualities we ascribe to the cosmos and then marvel at in their perfection.
They are simply what is, just like the particular arrangement of atoms that make up our minds.
We are not observers on the outside looking in. We are on the inside too.
”
”
Alan Lightman (The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew)
“
Abul l'-Qasim al-Iraqi writes of such a tree, [...] 'Materia Prima', which can produce the form of the elixir, is obtained from one single tree, which grows in the 'lands of the West'. It has two branches, which are too high to anyone who would eat its fruit to reach without labour and effort, and two others whose fruit is drier and more wrinkled than that of the former. The flower of the first of the two branches is red, and the flower of the second is between white and black. The tree has two further branches, which are weaker and softe rthan th efirst four. The flower of the first of these two branches is black, and that of the second is white and yellow. [...]
”
”
Titus Burckhardt (Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul)
“
If ever you're possessed by love, be mindful that it's beyond your capacity and flourishes in your 'non-doing state', observe how it transforms you from within and remain a witness to it.
One of the biggest fallacy that we do is we confine this experience from beyond into mere words, compress feelings into articulation, the more effort you put in, more you dilute the experience.
When nature blesses you with emotion called LOVE, just drown in silence, let every pore of your being radiate with this divine experience, convey your gratitude to the other while being a 'Silent Witness', for it matters no more who the other is, what matters is how this experience made you more livelier, more compassionate, more sensitive and in this no-mind state your tears become flowers...
Sri Ramana Pemmaraju
”
”
Sri Ramana Pemmaraju (Life in Quotes)
“
This is Earth
Where each breath and step is none but progression toward death.
Where pain is the loud and bloody birthing ground for peace.
Our cowardice saves us from nothing
in a world where bravery was never a choice.
It leaks like sweat from the pores
It's dried in the sun of our commitment to live.
Where a trillion lives are spinning through the cosmos,
at a thousand miles per hour
with no destionation in sight.
Our faith is placed in the colour of our blood,
in the salt of our tears.
Where the heart is broken and it keeps of beating just the same.
Where love is the only evidence we have that God exists
something greater than ourselves
and the blindness with which we fumble through life.
Our cowardice saves us from nothing
in a world where bravery was never a choice.
Where no matter how careful you are, you will die.
some of us simply arrive at death safely.
But in honest defeat,
with a life half lived.
Drenched in the sweat of our own cowardice,
having made no commitment to fully live.
Where in some distant desert, a flower opens,
offing its frailty to the world.
And therein lies its strength.
A coward is incapable of love.
And so he has no evidence that God exists,
something greater than himself.
Our cowardice saves us from nothing
in a world where bravery was never a choice...
So love
because
This is Earth.
This is Earth.
”
”
Teal Swan
“
This is Earth
Where each breath and step is none but progression toward death.
Where pain is the loud and bloody birthing ground for peace.
Our cowardice saves us from nothing
in a world where bravery was never a choice.
It leaks like sweat from the pores
It's dried in the sun of our commitment to live.
Where a trillion lives are spinning through the cosmos,
at a thousand miles per hour
with no destination in sight.
Our faith is placed in the colour of our blood,
in the salt of our tears.
Where the heart is broken and it keeps of beating just the same.
Where love is the only evidence we have that God exists
something greater than ourselves
and the blindness with which we fumble through life.
Our cowardice saves us from nothing
in a world where bravery was never a choice.
Where no matter how careful you are, you will die.
some of us simply arrive at death safely.
But in honest defeat,
with a life half lived.
Drenched in the sweat of our own cowardice,
having made no commitment to fully live.
Where in some distant desert, a flower opens,
offering its frailty to the world.
And therein lies its strength.
A coward is incapable of love.
And so he has no evidence that God exists,
something greater than himself.
Our cowardice saves us from nothing
in a world where bravery was never a choice...
So love
because
This is Earth.
This is Earth.
”
”
Teal Swan (The Anatomy of Loneliness: How to Find Your Way Back to Connection)
“
A native is a man or creature or plant indigenous to a limited geographical area - a space boundaried and defined by mountains, rivers, or coastline (not by latitudes, longitudes, or state and county lines), with its own peculiar mixture of weeds, trees, bugs, birds, flowers, streams, hills, rocks, and critters (including people), its own nuances of rain, wind, and seasonal change. Native intelligence develops through an unspoken or soft spoken relationship with these interwoven things: it evolves as the native involves himself in his region. A non-native awakes in the morning in a body in a bed in a room in a building on a street in a county in a state in a nation. A native awakes in the in the center of a little cosmos - or a big one, if his intelligence is vast - and he wears this cosmos like a robe, senses the barely perceptible shiftings, migrations, moods, and machinations of its creatures, its growing green things, its earth and sky. Native intelligence is what Huck Finn had rafting the Mississippi, what Thoreau had by his pond, what Kerouac had in Desolation Lookout and lost entirely the instant he caught a whiff of any city. But some have it in cities - like the Artful Dodger, picking his way through a crowd of London pockets; like Mother Teresa in the Calcutta slums. Sissy Hankshaw had it on freeways, Woody Guthrie in crowds of fruit pickers, Ghandi in jails. Almost everybody has a dab of it wherever he or she feels most at home..
”
”
David James Duncan (The River Why)
“
When considered closely it is evident that what is usually referred to as “God” in orthodox religions is actually identical to that which he is said to create: the natural/mechanical/organic order or cosmos.
”
”
Stephen E. Flowers (Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies)
“
Our True Heritage Thich Nhat Hanh The cosmos is filled with precious gems. I want to offer a handful of them to you this morning. Each moment you are alive is a gem, shining through and containing earth and sky, water and clouds. It needs you to breathe gently for the miracles to be displayed. Suddenly you hear the birds singing, the pines chanting, see the flowers blooming, the blue sky, the white clouds, the smile and the marvelous look of your beloved. You, the richest person on Earth, who have been going around begging for a living, stop being the destitute child. Come back and claim your heritage. We should enjoy our happiness and offer it to everyone. Cherish this very moment. Let go of the stream of distress and embrace life fully in your arms. PART III
”
”
Mary Pipher (Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age)
“
All that your mother wanted was to give you education and to fulfill your dreams. She’s not here anymore – but her memories still live. Her art works still live and some of them are in the national museum. Her trees still live – and still blossom in spring. And more than everything, her passion still lives in the heart of her son – who loves to paint just like his mother.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
The barren earth in the evening looked rejuvenated. The grasses were greener than winter and so were the trees – and were the birds and the flowers and the air. I felt as though the walls and the roads and the sky above were whispering to me. I felt songs in birds and music in the air. It was love I felt – and the blessing of being loved. It was a completely new world – a world of loving someone and being loved at the same time.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
We have to enjoy our togetherness, Yeezin. Peach flowers never blossom twice, do they?
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
Singh then experimented on a vast number of species, such as com mon asters, petunias, cosmos, and white spider lilies, along with such economic plants as onions, sesame, radishes, sweet potatoes, and tapioca. Each of these species Singh entertained for several weeks just before sunrise with more than half a dozen separate ragas, one per experiment, played on the flute, violin, harmonium, and veena; the music lasted a half hour daily, scaled at a high pitch, with frequencies between one hundred and six hundred cycles per second. From all this experimentation Singh was able to state, in the magazine of the Bihar Agricultural College at Sabour, that he had "proven beyond any shadow of doubt that harmonic sound waves affect the growth, flowering, fruiting, and seed-yields of plants.
”
”
Peter Tompkins (The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man)
“
Republicans are the Taliban of the West. But please don't hate them. Now more than ever they need our help, for they are ill, terribly ill. They are suffering from a condition, I call, Clinical Caucasianitis, or White Supremacy Syndrome. So next time you see one, offer them a flower and say - get well soon!
In a way (sarcastically speaking), no other political party on earth has done more to eliminate Islamophobia than the republican party, by boldly revealing themselves to the world as the face of new age christian terrorism. Finally, thanks to the republicans, the people of planet earth get to relive the atrocious days and ominous nights of the roman catholic crusades - which by the way, is the very antithesis of Christ's "love thy neighbor" - just like it is the antithesis of something Mohammed said - that Muslims should help their neighbors rebuild their churches, synagogues and monasteries if they burn down (22:40 Quran).
The point is, one who has integration in their heart, will find integration everywhere, but those who have nothing but hate in their heart, will remain hateful no matter how many messengers of love come and go.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love)
“
Black-Eyed Susans, Cosmos, Globe Amaranth, Phlox, Daylilies, and Shasta Daisies Daylilies, Taro, Coneflower, Black-Eyed Susan, Yarrow, and Lavender Global Thistle, Silver Sage, Columbine, and Bee Balm Tulips, Daffodils, Hosta, Grape Hyacinth, and Asters
”
”
Gabe Mabry (Flower Gardening for Beginners: The Essential 3-Step System on How to Plant Flowers, Grow from Seeds, Design Your Landscape, and Maintain a Beautiful Flower Yard)
“
A starting point in conversations about sufficiency might be to decouple it from the idea of “austerity” and instead reframe it as “simplicity.” Let’s take a leaf out of nature’s book and slow things down. As Lao Tzu reminds us, “Nature does not hurry, yet all is accomplished.” When we slow down, we relax and become more present. Calmer nervous systems allow us to enjoy the simple things in life, which means we are less likely to search for happiness outside of ourselves by accumulating more “stuff.” When we feel peaceful in the moment, we can find joy in smallest of things like the warm sun on our face, the scent of a flower, or the sound of a child laughing. A litmus test of personal growth is our ability to enjoy these little things because simplicity can lead to an abiding sense of contentment that has nothing to do with material wealth and everything to do with a sense of inner abundance. When we have an abundance mindset, our benchmark of success is no longer confined to our income bracket or the size of our house. Instead it is about intangible things like vibrant health, psychological well-being, loving relationships, community spirit, and our connectedness with nature and the cosmos.
”
”
Dr. Andrea Revell
“
God is not a robot. He isn’t a comptroller of an accounting company trying to make things add up or work out. He is a being full of deep emotion, longing, and memories of what it used to be like. The incarnation therefore isn’t about an equation but about remembering what home used to be like and making a plan to get back there. Consider this reboot of the Genesis creation account. It may help you see God’s emotion a little better. First off, nothing … but God. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God says the word and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! The cosmos in chaos: no shape, no form, no function—just darkness … total. And floating above it all, God’s Holy Spirit, ready to play. Day one: Then God’s voice booms out, “Lights!” and, from nowhere, light floods the skies and “night” is swept off the scene. God gives it the big thumbs up, calls it “day”. Day two: God says, “I want a dome—call it ‘sky’—right there between the waters above and below.” And it happens. Day three: God says, “Too much water! We need something to walk on, a huge lump of it—call it ‘land’. Let the ‘sea’ lick its edges.” God smiles, says, “Now we’ve got us some definition. But it’s too plain! It needs colour! Vegetation! Loads of it. A million shades. Now!” And the earth goes wild with trees, bushes, plants, flowers and fungi. “Now give it a growth permit.” Seeds appear in every one. “Yesss!” says God. Day four: “We need a schedule: let’s have a ‘sun’ for the day, a ‘moon’ for the night; I want ‘seasons’, ‘years’; and give us ‘stars’, masses of stars—think of a number, add a trillion, then times it by the number of trees and we’re getting there: we’re talking huge! Day five: “OK, animals: amoeba, crustaceans, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals … I want the whole caboodle teeming with a million varieties of each—and let’s have some fun with the shapes, sizes, colours, textures!” God tells them all, “You’ve got a growth permit—use it!” He sits back and smiles, says, “Result!” Day six: Then God says, “Let’s make people—like us, but human, with flesh and blood, skin and bone. Give them the job of caretakers of the vegetation, game wardens of all the animals.” So God makes people, like him, but human. He makes male and female.… He smiles at them and gives them their job description: “Make babies! Be parents, grandparents, great-grandparents—fill the earth with your families and run the planet well. You’ve got all the plants to eat from, so have all the animals—plenty for all. Enjoy.” God looks at everything he’s made, and says, “Fantastic. I love it!” Day seven: Job done—the cosmos and the earth complete. God takes a bit of well-earned R&R and just enjoys. He makes an announcement: “Let’s keep this day of the week special, a day off—battery-recharge day: Rest Day.”2 I’m not normally a paraphrase guy, but we always read the creation story like a textbook. I love this rendition because it captures the enthusiastic emotion that God felt about everything He created, especially humans. He loved it all. He loved us. Most of all, He loved the way things were.
”
”
Hugh Halter (Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth)
“
Poetry vs. Prose
To a writer of prose
a flower is a flower.
To a poet a flower can be
the origami of God's eye
enfolding the cosmos;
it is the luminous
well of imagination
bursting into pattern;
it is the coalescence
of infinite possibility
into palpable reality;
it is a confetti forest
for dancing bumble bees;
it is the flirtatious blush
ofradial symmetry;
it is the heartache of love
manifest in a rose.
For a true poet
A FLOWER IS NOT A FLOWER.
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
May the sound of the bell penetrate deep into the cosmos. Even in the darkest spots living beings are able to hear it clearly. So that all suffering in them cease. Understanding comes to their heart, and they transcend the path of sorrow and death." "The universal dharma door is already open; the sound of the rising tide is already heard clearly. The miracle happens. A beautiful child appears in the heart of the lotus flower. One single drop of this compassionate water is enough to bring back the refreshing spring to our mountains and rivers." "Listening to the bell I feel the afflictions in me dissolve. My mind is calm, my body relaxed. A smile is born on my lips. Following the sound of the bell, my breath brings me back to the safe island of mindfulness. In the garden of my heart, the flowers of peace bloom beautifully.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“
She watched the early-morning sun filter out from the trees still glistening from frost, and imagined the way here perennial beds would be thick and wild with beauty in just a few months. And her zinnias and sunflowers and trumpet vine would cover the fence and keep Patsy out.
The messy look. That is just how Patsy described it last summer. After Elizabeth dug up the boxwoods and hollies with their geometric precision, their obedient square ugliness, she planted daisies, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, and phlox. She planted zinnias and cosmos that she had grown from seed. The border had exploded in color and texture. The plants had flowered wild and strong and generous. Every morning, Elizabeth had fingered the velvety petals.
”
”
Mindy Friddle (The Garden Angel)
“
In heraldry the quatrefoil is a stylized four-petaled flower. As a Christian symbol, the petals are supposed to represent the four evangelists. But the quatrefoil is also an Indigenous symbol, Mayan, Olmec. It represents the four directions, the opening of the cosmos. And get this: It is considered a passageway between the celestial world and the underworld.
”
”
Louise Erdrich (The Sentence)
“
Everything is empty. Empty of what? Empty of a separate self. A flower is full of everything in the cosmos—sunshine, clouds, air, and space. It is empty of only one thing, a separate existence.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics))
“
It was always the favorite time of the year, for me at least. The world blossomed with new flowers, and new flowers blossomed with new hope. The world was like an art, a rejuvenating art drawn by an enthusiastic nature. The air was becoming warmer, and warmth had all to do with positives. It was the best time of the year, a time of warmth, a time of hope and a time of positives.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
She probably was a town girl. Perhaps she had never witnessed such art of a season. Perhaps she has never gotten a chance to wander into the wild. I wondered if what she was speaking was true but she looked too innocent to be guilty. She was still holding the twig.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
The world can, but blossom flowers only in spring
And from the myriad galaxy of stars
Descended a flower to blossom eternally
That flower is but, the queen of my heart.
To my dearest beautiful Phurshum Dem,
Let this be a small magic between us
And let our moments live forever in words and phrases
With an eternal blossom in you.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
I found myself mostly gazing outside, to the interlocking spurs and the snow that capped it. I found myself gazing at the clouds that ever gently swayed above the mountains. I found myself falling in love with every flower that blossomed on my way home.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
Few honey bees buzzed above my head, pollinating on the last few flowers left untouched. But all the butterflies were in my stomach.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
The sun may rise from the west or the stars may cover up the sky in the day but there’s no way you’ll ever grieve for my love. I am here and I’ll always love you. Best wishes, my eternal flower. Do blossom eternally.
”
”
Tshetrim Tharchen (A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars)
“
The balcony banisters were on the southern side, and, in the sloping roof above them, a window let in the light and, sometimes, the sun itself, whose beams made of this silent, forgotten landing a cosmos, a firmament of moving motes, brilliantly illumined, an astral and at the same time a solar province; for the sun would come through with its long rays and the rays would be dancing with stars. Where the sunbeams struck, the floor would flower like a rose, a wall break out in crocus-light, and the banisters would flame like rings of coloured snakes.
”
”
Mervyn Peake (The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy)
“
The apartment was completely quiet. She walked across the floor to the door and slid it open. A small balcony presented her with a view of the sunset: above her the cosmos was deep purple and far ahead, at the horizon, where the setting sun rolled behind the distant mountains, the sky glowed with bright vivid red. Wind fanned her, bringing with it a scent of some flower she didn't know. She sat down on the floor of the balcony, behind the trellised rail, and cried.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (The Kinsmen Universe)
“
Thirteen hundred years ago, an ancient Tantric text, the Shiva Swarodaya, described how one nostril will open to let breath in as the other will softly close throughout the day. Some days, the right nostril yawns awake to greet the sun; other days, the left awakens to the fullness of the moon. According to the text, these rhythms are the same throughout every month and they’re shared by all humanity. It’s a method our bodies use to stay balanced and grounded to the rhythms of the cosmos, and each other. In 2004, an Indian surgeon named Dr. Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani attempted to scientifically test the Shiva Swarodaya patterns on an international group of subjects. Over the course of a month, he found that when the influence of the sun and moon on the Earth was at its strongest—during a full or new moon—the students consistently shared the Shiva Swarodaya pattern. Bhavanani admitted the data were anecdotal and much more research would be needed to prove that all humans shared in this pattern. Still, scientists have known for more than a century that the nostrils do pulse to their own beat, that they do open and close like flowers throughout the day and night.
”
”
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
“
Cosmos are my favourite flowers." His eyes flashed with surprise. "I had no clue. They just make me think of you." "Really?" "Really." He smiled, allowing dimples to adorn his face whilst his cheekbones were coated with a rosy tinge. "The name makes me think of the galaxy, so the moon; you. Their petals are evenly placed, perfectly ordered, just like you are when you do something – always calculated, organised. But above all, they are strong, resilient flowers.
”
”
Kanitha P. (Falling Off the Cliff (Full Throttle, #1))
“
Like everyone else, I was always fond of flowers, attracted by their external beauty and purity. Now my eyes wee opened to their inner beauty, all alike revealing glorious traces of the thoughts of God, and leading on and on into the infinite cosmos.
”
”
John Muir (Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir’s Best Writings)
“
A Florescent Floral Acrostic:
Flowerevelation 777.777
– Goldenrod
– Cosmos
– Red-Hot Poker
– Beardtongue
– Marguerite
– Beebalm
– Speedwell
– Cotoneaster
-----------------
=’s God Rules.
– Learn to see His sparkling hidden secrets which are abundantly made manifest in the ordinary.
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent
“
Our True Heritage
The cosmos is filled with precious gems.
I want to offer a handful of them to you this morning.
Each moment you are alive is a gem,
shining through and containing earth and sky,
water and clouds.
It needs you to breathe gently
for the miracles to be displayed.
Suddenly you hear the birds singing,
the pines chanting,
see the flowers blooming,
the blue sky,
the white clouds,
the smile and the marvelous look
of your beloved.
You, the richest person on Earth,
who have been going around begging for a living,
stop being the destitute child.
Come back and claim your heritage.
We should enjoy our happiness
and offer it to everyone.
Cherish this very moment.
Let go of the stream of distress
and embrace life fully in your arms.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“
Cosima lines up all her little jars of dried herbs and flowers, then carefully picks the ones she needs.
"Acacia, for secret love. Celandine, for joys to come. Bluebell," she whispers, "for constancy. Bougainvillea, for passion. And chrysanthemum, for truth."
She finds her special ceramic baking bowl and begins to add the usual ingredients: flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.
"And the only flavor strong enough to mask the flowers." Cosima opens the cupboard above her head and takes down two bars of the finest dark chocolate she's ever tasted. "Ninety-nine percent. Perfect."
After she's grated a beetroot, for moisture, and added vanilla pods, for extra flavor, Cosima pours the dark, thick mixture into a small baking tin and slips it into the oven. An hour later, she cools the cake, then glazes its black (with a tint of purple) surface with a chocolate icing seasoned with a little dust of daffodil, passionflower, and cosmos: new beginnings, faith, joy in love and life.
”
”
Menna Van Praag (The Witches of Cambridge)
“
I want to make a heart in red flowers with blue flowers around it."
"Okeydokey. So, let's look for red flowers and blue flowers."
We flipped, she picked blue violas ("painted porcelain" they were called, a pale blue with darker blue edges, very pretty,) and something called a "chocolate cosmos," which was more burgundy than red, but still, it's her garden.
"Are they actually chocolate?" asked Clare, who had come back for a snack for herself and a rawhide chewy for Frank.
"No, but it says here that they smell of chocolate."
"Hmm." She'd fallen for that one before.
”
”
Abbi Waxman (The Garden of Small Beginnings)
“
blue
red
yellow
flowers,
flies
picking
through a
deer's fur
until bone
”
”
Bremer Acosta (Cosmos in a Tree)
“
The Cosmos as a Flower
This model, which I’ve briefly mentioned already, is easy to remember because it uses one of the
most beautiful creations of the cosmos: a flower.
The cosmos as a flower
The centre of the flower represents the physical world, the Earth we live on. The four directions are
represented by four petals. The land of the dead is located in one of them; the house of knowledge, the
house of the guides, in another; the forces of life and death in a third; and the land of emotions and
the will in the last one.
On top of the flower, the stamen contains the heavens — not only the physical heavens such as those
of the moon, the wind, the sun and stars, but also the energetic heavens, such as the heaven of
movement and, of course, the heaven of the great Centeotl, who both dreams and reflects all of them.
Lower down, in the stem and the roots, are the underworlds or the places where the mind is
imprisoned
”
”
Sergio Magaña (El secreto tolteca: Prácticas ancestrales para comprender el poder de los sueños (Spanish Edition))
“
At the end of the Cosmos season, what's left is a field of seeds. How they'll sleep through the grip of winter, nursing dreams in the frosty star-filled nights.
#autumnmusings
”
”
Jodi Sky Rogers
“
When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds, there could be no rain, and there would be no flower. Without time, the flower could not bloom. In fact, the flower is made entirely of non flower elements; it has no independent, individual existence. It 'inter-is' with everything else in the universe.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (Living Buddha, Living Christ)
“
Once dead, nothing comes back. No flowers and no people. There are new flowers and new people that take their place.
”
”
Rajesh` (Random Cosmos)
“
The Kingdom of the Meadows
(G)oldenrod
C(o)smos
Re(d)-hot poker
Bea(r)dtongue
Marg(u)erite
Beeba(l)m
Speedw(e)ll
Blazing (s)tar
="s
God Rules
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent