Oak Acorn Quotes

Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.

For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.

After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until...

You look different now. Like a proper little girl." "I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns." "Nice, though. A nice oak tree.

A noble deed is a dream before it is reality. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul, a beautiful world waits to be realized.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

The oak sleeps in the acorn. The bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of reality.

Next morning, while her children were still asleep in their tent, Evie got up early. The acorn she had planted the day before had sprung to life and was nearly ten feet high. Sitting on the fallen log where the forest boy had sat thirty years earlier, she listened. There was no dancing partner. Maybe she was now too old, but the oak trees did sing for her.

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak!

The shape of power is always the same: it is infinite, it is complex, it is forever branching. While it is alive like a tree, it is growing; while it contains itself, it is a multitude. Its directions are unpredictable; it obeys its own laws. No one can observe the acorn and extrapolate each vein in each leaf of the oak crown. The closer you look, the more various it becomes. However complex you think it is, it is more complex than that. Like the rivers to the ocean, like the lightning strike, it is obscene and uncontained.

A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die.

My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is anther force operating here as well-the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.

When our instinctual life is shamed, the natural core of our life is bound up. It’s like an acorn going through excruciating agony for becoming an oak, or a flower feeling ashamed for blossoming.

The truth, I discovered, is a tree that grows as a man gains access to experience. A child sees the acorn of his daily life, but a man looks back on the oak.

Think of the self that God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God’s intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is ‘… the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don’t feel that the loss’ of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God’s purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses seem.

the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured.

There are useful herbs growing near the oak tree by the stream," Flamepaw pointed out "Littlecloud would come for these" his tail curled up in amusement "Then we could pelt Blackfoot with acorns and he'd think they came from StarClan

An acorn is an oak tree turned inside out.

Just as the acorn contains the mighty oak tree, the Self has everything it needs to fulfill its destiny. When the inner conditions are right, it naturally emerges.

Our ordinary mind always tried to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but this is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.

It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak.

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree." One of the giants grinned at him. Druellae snorted. "Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?

Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak.

An acorn does not have to say, ‘I intend to become an oak tree.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time only a dream. Just as the oak sleeps in the acorn, and the bird waits in the egg, so dreams are the seedlings of realities.

How can I explain such a thing? I simply know it in the way I know there's an oak tree inside an acorn...I've come to know it only this night, but it has always been the tree in the acorn.

Bit by bit, nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

The acorn does not know that it will become a sapling. The sapling does not remember when it was an acorn, and only dimly senses that it will become a mighty oak. The oak recalls fondly when it was a sapling, loves being a mighty oak, and joyfully creates new acorns.

Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.

Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

Well, surely, you will agree that a great improvement could be made simply by cutting down those trees that crowd about the house so much and darken every room? They grow just as they please – just where the acorn or seed fell, I suppose.” “What?” asked Strange, whose eyes had wandered back to his book during the latter part of the conversation. “The trees,” said Henry. “Which trees?” “Those,” said Henry, pointing out of the window to a whole host of ancient and magnificent oaks, ashes and beech trees. “As far as neighbours go, those trees are quite exemplary. They mind their own affairs and have never troubled me. I rather think that I will return the compliment.” “But they are blocking the light.” “So are you, Henry, but I have not yet taken an axe to you.

Big oaks grow from small acorns, and activity is a precursor to accomplishment. You don't think yourself into success.

The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two. Autumn in Fairyland is all that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland Forest or the morbidity of a Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces’ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland. And so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly cold air on their snorting, roaring high wheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September’s head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel to mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

As we actually taste the flavor of what he's teaching, we begin to see that it's not proverbs for daily living, or ways of being virtuous. He's proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood. He pushes us toward it, teases us, taunts us, encourages us, and ultimately walks us there.

The tree does not end at it's skin but exists also in the rain that falls downwind, many miles from the forest. In the seed exists the acorn, the oak, and the shade.

For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both.

An acorn does not see itself as a seed, but as an oak tree.

Storytellers tell stories, of course, but they aren't alone in doing so. The dawn tells a story; so does the sun as it arcs across the sky; so does the sunset. The seasons tell a complex story. The fall of an acorn and the growth of an oak tree tell a story. A farmer's plow and the furrows in a field tell a story as well. Even the waves crashing on a beach tell a story. How easy to see, then, that an ax tells a story, too, at least while it hangs for a moment in the air just before descending onto your neck. That story is: Now you die.

tall oaks from little acorns grow.

An acorn does not have to say, ‘I intend to become an oak tree'. Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly.

The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang.

The acorn contains the oak

Have no fear," the voice told her, "for in thee lies the hope of all. Only thou can deliver the land from darkness." "How can I?" she asked. "I am just one against so many." The eyes gleamed behind the dappling leaves. "Yet the smallest acorn may become the tallest oak," came the answer.

How many things are there in the world in which the wisest of us can ill descry the hand of God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in the pebble-like acorn? God’s beginnings do not look like his endings, but they are like; the oak is in the acorn, though we cannot see it.

You need not, and in fact cannot, teach an acorn to grow into an oak tree, but when given a chance, its intrinsic potentialities will develop. Similarly, the human individual, given a chance, tends to develop…the unique alive forces of his real self; the clarity and depth of his own feelings, thoughts, wishes, interests; the ability to tap his own resources, the strength of his will power…All this will in time enable him to find his set of values and aims in life. In short, he will grow, substantially undiverted, toward self-realization.

Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they've got to be harnessed and put to work to have value. Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good-size forest. Yet from these bushels of seeds perhaps only one or two acorns will become a tree. The Squirrels destroy most of them, and the hard ground beneath the tree doesn't give the few remaining seeds much chance for a start. So it is with ideas. Very few bear fruit. Ideas are highly perishable. If we're not on guard, the squirrels (negative-thinking people) will destroy most of them. Ideas require special handling from the time they are born until they're transformed into practical ways for doing things better.

We know the prodigality of Nature. How many acorns are scattered for one that grows to an oak? And need she be more careful of her stars than of her acorns? If indeed she has no grander aim than to provide a home for her greatest experiment, Man, it would be just like her methods to scatter a million stars whereof one might haply achieve her purpose.

The silver-haired elf woman Yaela had knelt by the side of the grave, taken an acorn from the pouch on her belt, and planted it directly above Wyrden’s chest. And then the twelve elves, Arya included, sang to the acorn, which took root and sprouted and grew twining upward, reaching and grasping toward the sky like a clutch of hands. When the elves had finished, the leafy oak stood twenty feet high, with long strings of green flowers at the end of every branch. Eragon had thought it was the nicest burial he had ever attended.

...which was no abode of the dead because there was no death, not Lion and not Sam: not held fast in earth but free in earth and not in earth but of earth, myriad yet undiffused of every myriad part, leaf and twig and particle, air and sun and rain and dew and night, acorn oak and leaf and acorn again, dark and dawn and dark and dawn again in their immutable progression and, being myriad, one...

He was the complete male in miniature, the tiny acorn from which the mighty oak must grow, the heir of all ages, the inheritor of unfulfilled renown, the child of progress, the darling of the budding Golden Age, and, what's more, Fortune and her Fairies, not content with well-nigh smothering him with their blessings of time and family, saved him up carefully until Progress was rotten-ripe with Glory.

The property wasn’t much to look at, but it might make a man his fortune. Carney took the previous tenants’ busted schemes and failed dreams as a kind of fertilizer that helped his own ambitions prosper, the same way a fallen oak in its decomposition nourishes the acorn.

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm and the sun strikes to gain a living wage - when thorns regard their roses with alarm and rainbows are insured against old age when every thrush may sing no new moon in if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice - and any wave signs on the dotted line or else an ocean is compelled to close when the oak begs permission of the birch to make an acorn - valleys accuse their mountains of having altitude - and march denounces april as a saboteur then we’ll believe in that incredible unanimal mankind (and not until)

Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?

The gardener digs a hole in the ground and throws in a seed and waters it and he hopes something comes up. Now, he knows generally what’s going to come up. He knows whether he planted an acorn for an oak tree or a tomato plant to get some tomatoes for the summer. But there’s a lot of details he doesn’t know. It may not grow at all. It may grow a little and then die. It may go wild. A chipmunk may eat it during the night. You don’t know.

It is the opinion of most thoughtful students of life that happiness in this world depends chiefly on the ability to take things as they come. An instance of one who may be said to have perfected this attitude is to be found in the writings of a certain eminent Arabian author who tells of a traveller who, sinking to sleep one afternoon upon a patch of turf containing an acorn, discovered when he woke that the warmth of his body had caused the acorn to germinate and that he was now some sixty feet above the ground in the upper branches of a massive oak. Unable to descend, he faced the situation equably. ‘I cannot,’ he observed, ‘adapt circumstances to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here.’ Which he did.

The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock’s Gardens, Liggs’s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak.

Out of little acorns do mighty oaks grow.

Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

If acorns were afraid of the dark, there would be no oak trees.

Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also

The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe who will grow to slay me.

she quoted the Spanish proverb, “The oak tree is in the acorn.

The greater the acorn the greater the oak tree.

In the same way an acorn is not an oak but contains the potential to become one, we all have the potential to become all we can be. Cornelia Merk & Janet G. Nestor

And yet who would argue that there was no difference in the moral implication of chopping down a hundred-year-old oak tree versus stepping on an acorn?

There are two ways to get to the top of a giant oak tree. You can sit on an acorn and wait. Or you can climb it.

Wisdom is a tree of slow growth; the rings around its trunk are earthly lives, and the grooves between are the periods between lives. Who grieves that an acorn is slow in becoming an oak?

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time only a dream. Just as the oak sleeps in the acorn, and the bird waits in the egg, so dreams are the seedlings of realities. Beware, therefore, what you dream of. For some dreams are given by the Medium to inspire us by what may yet be. Others are planted within us by others, foul seeds that we harvest to our destruction.

We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression. There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye. The difference is there even if an acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak. Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of an acorn and react to it. How we value it. If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way it might think and feel about itself. The Hindus use the greeting "Namaste" instead of our more noncommittal "Hello." The connotation of this is roughly, whatever your outer appearance, I see and greet the soul in you. There is a wisdom in such ways of relating. Sometimes we can best help other people by remembering that what we believe about them may be reflected back to them in our presence and may affect them in ways we do not fully understand. Perhaps a sense of possibility is communicated by our tone of voice, facial expression, or certain choice of words . . . Holding and conveying a sense of possibility does not mean making demands or having expectations. It may mean having no expectations, but simply being open to whatever promise the situation may hold and remembering the inability of anyone to know the future. Thoreau said that we must awaken and stay awake not by mechanical means, but by a constant expectation of the dawn. There's no need to demand the dawn, the dawn is simply a matter of time. And patience. And the dawn may look quite different from the story we tell ourselves about it. My experience has shown me the wisdom of remaining open to the possibility of growth in any and all circumstances, without ever knowing what shape that growth may take.

There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent. Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man.

If you plant an acorn,” he said, “it may grow to become an oak tree. Yet there is no acorn within that wooden body. Has the acorn been reborn as a tree? Or does the acorn grow to be something else entirely?

When I was finding my way as a young psychotherapy student, the most useful book I read was Karen Horney’s Neurosis and Human Growth. And the single most useful concept in that book was the notion that the human being has an inbuilt propensity toward self-realization. If obstacles are removed, Horney believed, the individual will develop into a mature, fully realized adult, just as an acorn will develop into an oak tree. “Just as an acorn develops into an oak …” What a wonderfully liberating and clarifying image! It forever changed my approach to psychotherapy by offering me a new vision of my work: My task was to remove obstacles blocking my patient’s path. I did not have to do the entire job; I did not have to inspirit the patient with the desire to grow, with curiosity, will, zest for life, caring, loyalty, or any of the myriad of characteristics that make us fully human. No, what I had to do was to identify and remove obstacles. The rest would follow automatically, fueled by the self-actualizing forces within the patient.

The centuries throw back their hair And the old men sing from newborn lips: Time is bearing another son. Kill Time! She turns in her pain! The oak is felled in the acorn And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.

Bit by bit, it comes over us that we shall never hear this laughter again, and that this one garden is forever locked against us, and at that moment begins our true mourning. For nothing in truth can replace that true companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories. . . . It is idle having planted an acorn in the morning to expect that afternoon to sit by an oak, so life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich, and then comes other years when time does its work and our plantation is sparse. One by one, our comrades depart, deprive us of their shade.

Had the Battle of Franklin ever really ended? Carrie walked her cemetery, and around her the wounds closed up and scarred over, but only in that way that an oak struck by lightning heals itself by twisting and bending around the wound: it is still recognizably a tree, it still lives as a tree, it still puts out its leaves and acorns, but its center, hidden deep within the curtain of green, remains empty and splintered where it hasn't been grotesquely scarred over. We are happy the tree hasn't died, and from the proper angle we can look on it and suppose that it is the same tree as it ever was, but it is not and never will be.

I've seen many impossible things,' the man said. 'I have seen the acorn before the oak. I have seen the spark before the flame. But never have I seen such as this: A dead woman living. A child born from nothing.

If you plant an acorn ... it may grow to become an oak tree. Yet there is no acorn within that wooden body. Has the acorn been reborn as a tree? Or does the acorn grow up to be something else entirely? It's my belief that the acorn and the tree are an idea, spread out over an abstraction of time. And if that new tree, when fully grown, drops one acorn or a thousand, that idea keeps progressing as this thing we call life.

This may not however elevate your stature during the years you have remaining; for fame’s a weed, but repute is a slow-growing oak, and all we can do during our lifetimes is hop around like squirrels and plant acorns.

specifically and the perennial philosophy generally. Before we do the conscious work of self-development, we are the seeds of what we may become. To transform from our “acorn-self” into our “oak tree–Self,” we must traverse our underground territory—allow our defenses to crack open and break down—and consciously integrate our disowned feelings, blind spots, and Shadow traits so that we can shake off the limiting outer shell of our personality and grow into all that we are meant to be. Nature brings us part of the way, but to fully manifest our potential, we need to make conscious efforts to grow—and the Enneagram can guide us in this transformation.

They have said that the Lilim were dead before now, but they have always lied. The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe who will grow to slay me.

couldn’t have explained then how the oak tree lives inside the acorn or how I suddenly realized that in the same enigmatic way something lived inside of me—the woman I would become—but it seemed I knew at once who she was.

The difference between man and God is significant - but it is one of degree, not kind. It is the difference between an acorn and an oak tree, a rosebud and a rose, a son and a father. . . Every man is a potential god in embryo.

a woman, nothing existed but the domestic sphere and those tiny flowers etched on the pages of my art book. For a woman to aspire to be a lawyer—well, possibly, the world would end. But an acorn grew into an oak tree, didn’t it?

There are useful herbs growing near the oak tree by the stream,” Flamepaw pointed out. “Littlecloud would come for those.” His tail curled up in amusement. “Then we could pelt Blackfoot with acorns, and he’d think they came from StarClan.

Although we experience our nonphysical levels of self as potential, they are also functional in our lives. An acorn is a potential oak tree, but the oak tree could be seen as the essence of the acorn, guiding its development into the oak tree.

✓In a garden you can find, quiet thoughts that calm the mind. ✓Every noble achievement is a dream before it is a reality just as the oak is an acorn before it is a tree. ✓Life is like a field, where we must gather what we grow, weed or wheat... this is the law, we reap the crop we sow. ✓Happy is the person who can keep a quiet heart, in the chaos and tumult of this modern world ✓While it is February one can taste the full joys of anticipation. Spring stands at the gate with her finger on the latch

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light: where it is, is day, where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid? This

The men and women of the Golden Age, Hesiod wrote, lived in an eternal spring, for hundreds of years, always youthful, fed on acorns from a great oak, on wild fruits, on honey. In the Silver Age, which is less written about, the people lived for 100 years as children, without growing up, and then quite suddenly aged and died. The Fabians and the social scientists, writers and teachers saw, in a way earlier generations had not, that children were people, with identities and desires and intelligences. They saw that they were neither dolls, nor toys, nor miniature adults. They saw, many of them, that children needed freedom, needed not only to learn, and be good, but to play and be wild. But they saw this, so many of them, out of a desire of their own for a perpetual childhood, a Silver Age.

What, scattering bird entrails across the cobblestones? Or do you inhale mystical vapours and babble prophecy in a stupor?” “I made a pendulum of an acorn,” said Butcher, “and ate it.” Wren stared at him. Butcher did not elaborate. Nor did he seem in any way discomfited by Wren’s continued scepticism.

Humankind’s greatest gift is that we are indeterminate beings. Unlike the tough and leathery seed of an acorn, which will grow into a magnificent oak tree, none of us has a predetermined final configuration of our ultimate essence. Our mental temperament is pliable. We make conscious and subconscious choices that govern who we become.

Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured.

(Her silver button) reminding me of the destiny I always believed was inside of me, waiting. How can I explain such a thing? I simply know it - the way I know there's an oak tree inside an acorn. I've been filled with a hunger to grow this seed my whole life... That's why I was born for (abolition)... I've come to know it only this night, but it has always been the tree in the acorn...

Henry tried again. “Well, surely, you will agree that a great improvement could be made simply by cutting down those trees that crowd about the house so much and darken every room? They grow just as they please – just where the acorn or seed fell, I suppose.” “What?” asked Strange, whose eyes had wandered back to his book during the latter part of the conversation. “The trees,” said Henry. “Which trees?” “Those,” said Henry, pointing out of the window to a whole host of ancient and magnificent oaks, ashes and beech trees. “As far as neighbours go, those trees are quite exemplary. They mind their own affairs and have never troubled me. I rather think that I will return the compliment.” “But they are blocking the light.” “So are you, Henry, but I have not yet taken an axe to you.

you are meant to grow into a true human being. Right now you are to a human being what an acorn is to an oak tree. A good start, that’s all. You’ve got a long way to go, baby, and you’re not going to grow into your full potential sitting in front of the laptop, bag of Cool Ranch Doritos in one hand, dick in the other, anime porn boring a hole in your corneas and consciousness. Just a thought.

He can climb anything lightning fast and is the king of the forest insofar as using the canopy as a highway. While his favorite food is voles, caught on the floors of forest and meadow, he much enjoys squirrels of all kinds and is the only hunter of squirrels who can follow them to the highest, thinnest branches; not even the fisher, eing heavier, can achieve that dangerous elevation. He eats everything else he can find, of course, but given his druthers, like today's late-summer bounty, he would have a vole for breakfast and then some thimbleberries and a cricket as a midmorning snack and then another vole for late lunch, followed by huckleberries in the afternoon, most of a dead White-crowned sparrow, some early white-oak acorns...and then, delightfully a young flying squirrel...

just as in the world of plants and animals nothing ceases to exist, but continually changes its form, the manure into grain, the grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog, the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also does not perish, but only undergoes a change. He believed in this, and therefore always looked death straight in the face, and bravely bore the sufferings that lead towards it

when problems arise—and they always do—disentangling them is not as simple as correcting the original error. Often, finding a solution is a multi-step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve—think of that as an oak tree—and then there are all the other problems—think of these as saplings—that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down.

Acornology Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their life with a purposeful energy; and since they were mid-life baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell” and “Who Would You Be Without Your Nutty Story?” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped out of the blue by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And to make things worse, crouched beneath the mighty oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing up at the tree, he said, “We … are … that!” Delusional thinking, obviously, the other acorns concluded, but they continued to engage him in conversation: “So tell us, how do we … become that tree?” “Well,” said he, pointing downward, “it has something to do with going into the ground … and cracking open the shell.” “Insane!” they responded. “Totally morbid! Why then we wouldn’t be acorns anymore.

God has ordered our existence to operate like a farmer planting seed in a field. If you pray and ask God for an oak tree, the Almighty might send you an acorn, because big things can come from small beginnings. God’s answer may not look like your request. So when you get an acorn but were expecting a tree, don’t throw the acorn away. Your tree is in the seed. God works through the agricultural principle of planting a seed and reaping a harvest. Your something small can become something mighty if you are a good steward of the seed.

Out of the urn a size of a man Out of the room the weight of his trouble Out of the house that holds a town In the continent of a fossil One by one in dust and shawl, Dry as echoes and insect-faced, His fathers cling to the hand of the girl And the dead hand leads the past, Leads them as children and as air On to the blindly tossing tops; The centuries throw back their hair And the old men sing from newborn lips:' Time is bearing another son. Kill Time! She turns in her pain! The oak is felled in the acorn And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.

The plants and animals and even our small children know, with a wisdom deeper than ours, that the Way is simply about growing and becoming whoever we really are, in the core of our being. It is about recognising the acorn in our hearts and trusting the process by which it will become an oak. It is about co-operating with that process of becoming, about keeping our feet on the earth of our own lived experience even as we reach out to the horizon beyond us. And it is about letting our own personal becoming be fully engaged with the evolution, physical, intellectual and spiritual, of the whole of creation.

If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Cardan pulls a pin from his coat, a glittering, filigree thing in the shape of an acorn with an oak leaf behind it. For a delirious moment, I think he's going to give it to Locke in exchange for leaving me there. That seems impossible, even to my wild mind. Then Cardan takes hold of my hand, which seems even less possible. His fingers are overwarm against my skin. He stabs the point of his pin into my thumb. 'Ow,' I say, pulling away from him and putting the injured digit in my mouth. My own blood is metallic against my tongue. 'Have a nice walk home,' he tells me. ... I suck on my injured thumb, feeling odd. My head is still swimming, but not like it was. Something's wrong. A moment later, I realise what. There's salt in human blood. My stomach lurches.

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges; The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides, narrow lanes, and every street causeway; Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind halloos in the oak-toop like thunder; The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying unseen into the bushes; The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards; The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves, and the patter of squirrels on the green moss; The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness; The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles- how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.

But by hit, nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be tending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak. So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

In the heart of the house lay a garden. In the heart of the garden stood a tree. In the heart of the tree lived an old man who wore the shape of a red-haired boy with cracker-nut eyes that seemed as bright as salmon tails glinting up the water. His was a riddling wisdom, older by far than the ancient oak that housed his body. The green sap was his blood, and leaves grew in his hair. In the winter, he slept. In the spring, the moon harped a windsong against his antler tines as the oak's boughs stretched its green buds awake. In the summer, the air was thick with the droning of bees and the scent of wildflowers that grew in stormy profusion where the fat brown bole became root. And in the autumn, when the tree loosed its bounty to the ground below, there were hazelnuts lying in among the acorns. The secrets of a Green Man.

Could Stephen have met men on equal terms, she would always have chosen them as her companions; she preferred them because of their blunt, open outlook, and with men she had much in common—sport for instance. But men found her too clever if she ventured to expand, and too dull if she suddenly subsided into shyness. In addition to this there was something about her that antagonized slightly, an unconscious presumption. Shy though she might be, they sensed this presumption; it annoyed them, it made them feel on the defensive. She was handsome but much too large and unyielding both in body and mind, and they liked clinging women. They were oak-trees, preferring the feminine ivy. It might cling rather close, it might finally strangle, it frequently did, and yet they preferred it, and this being so, they resented Stephen, suspecting something of the acorn about her.

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years - I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue. My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well - the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.

Generally speaking, most of our vital, spontaneous, instinctual life gets shamed. Children are shamed for being too rambunctious, for wanting things and for laughing too loud. Much dysfunctional shame occurs at the dinner table. Children are forced to eat when they are not hungry. Sometimes children are forced to eat what they do not find appetizing. Being exiled to the dinner table until the plate is cleaned is not unusual in modern family life. The public humiliation of sitting at the dinner table all alone, often with siblings jeering, is a painful kind of exposure. I’ve had clients who eat standing up or on the run because of shameful scenes at the dinner table when they were children. When our instinctual life is shamed, the natural core of our life is bound up. It’s like an acorn going through excruciating agony for becoming an oak, or a flower feeling ashamed for blossoming. What happens is that because our instincts are part of our natural endowment, they cannot be repressed. Once our instincts are shame-bound, they become like hungry dogs that must be watched.

Oak trees can churn out roughly 500 to 1,000 pounds (225 to 450 kg) of acorns a year, albeit during a brief window of a few weeks. A Native American family living in California a few centuries ago, collecting over the span of two or three weeks, could set aside enough acorns to last two or three years. They could gather acorns from at least seven different species of oak trees, preferring oily acorns over sweet ones, and knew two methods to purge them of noxious tannins. The common technique was to de-hull the acorns, pound the acorn meat into mush and drop it into a pit, then douse the mush with water heated by hot stones until all the bitterness was leached. Alternatively, acorns could be buried in mud by streams or swamps for several months, after which they would become edible. To complement their protein-deficient acorn cuisine, Native Americans in California hunted salmon, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and black bear and gathered earthworms, caterpillars (smoked and then boiled), grasshoppers (doused with salty water and roasted in earth pits), and bee and wasp larvae.15 The

Very strange, very wonderful, seemingly very improbable phenomena may yet appear which, when once established, will not astonish us more than we are now astonished at all that science has taught us during the last century,” Charles Robert Richet, Nobel Prize winner in physiology, has declared. “It is assumed that the phenomena which we now accept without surprise, do not excite our astonishment because they are understood. But this is not the case. If they do not surprise us, it is not because they are understood, it is because they are familiar; for if that which is not understood ought to surprise us, we should be surprised at everything—the fall of a stone thrown into the air, the acorn which becomes an oak, mercury which expands when it is heated, iron attracted by a magnet, phosphorus which burns when it is rubbed… The science of today is a light matter; the revolutions and evolutions which it will experience in a hundred thousand years will far exceed the most daring anticipations. The truths—those surprising, amazing, unforeseen truths—which our descendants will discover, are even now all around us, staring us in the eyes, so to speak, and yet we do not see them. But it is not enough to say that we do not see them; we do not wish to see them; for as soon as an unexpected and unfamiliar fact appears, we try to fit it into the framework of the commonplaces of acquired knowledge and we are indignant that anyone should dare to experiment further.

New trout, having never seen rain on the river, rise eagerly to ripples on the Mink. Some windows close against the moist and some open for the music. Rain slips and slides along hawsers and chains and ropes and cables and gladdens the cells of mosses and weighs down the wings of moths. It maketh the willow shiver its fingers and thrums on doors of dens in the fens. It falls on hats and cats and trucks and ducks and cars and bars and clover and plover. It grayeth the sand on the beach and fills thousands of flowers to the brim. It thrills worms and depresses damselflies. Slides down every window rilling and murmuring. Wakes the ancient mud and mutter of the swamp, which has been cracked and hard for months. Falls gently on leeks and creeks and bills and rills and the last shriveled blackberries like tiny dried purple brains on the bristles of bushes. On the young bear trundling through a copse of oaks in the woods snorffling up acorns. On ferns and fawns, cubs and kits, sheds and redds. On salmon as long as your arm thrashing and roiling in the river. On roof and hoof, doe and hoe, fox and fence, duck and muck. On a slight man in a yellow slicker crouched by the river with his recording equipment all covered against the rain with plastic wrap from the grocery store and after he figures out how to get the plastic from making crinkling sounds when he turns the machine on he settles himself in a little bed of ferns and says to the crow huddled patiently in rain, okay, now, here we go, Oral History Project, what the rain says to the river as the wet season opens, project number …something or other … where’s the fecking start button? …I can’t see anything … can you see a green light? yes? is it on? damn my eyes … okay! there it is! it’s working! rain and the river! here we go!

Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow. "Go back to bed," she tells herself. "You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up. The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink. Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds. Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality. Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque. GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior. What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story. Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845. Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding. Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below. [Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.] Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand. LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines: "Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud." She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline: "Dentist Punished for Misconduct." She turns the page. There is yet another: "Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients." This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....

There is no rule that says that a potential X has the same value as an X or has all the rights of an X. There are many examples that show just the contrary. To pull out a sprouting acorn is not the same as cutting down a venerable oak. To drop a fertile egg into a pot of boiling water is very different from doing the same to a live chicken. Prince Charles is (at the time of writing) a potential King of England, but he does not now have the rights of a king.

New Gravity ..how a life’s new gravity suspends in water. Under the oak, the fallen leaves are pieces of the tree’s jigsaw; by your father’s grave you are pressing acorns into the shadows to seed.

New Gravity ..how a life’s new gravity suspends in water. Under the oak, the fallen leaves are pieces of the tree’s jigsaw; by your father’s grave you are pressing acorns into the shadows to seed.

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges. The crumping of cat-ice and snow down wood rides, narrow lanes and every street causeways. Rustling through a wood, or rather rushing while the wind hallows in the oak tops like thunder. The rustles of birds wings startled from their nests, or flying unseen into the bushes. The whizzing of larger birds over head in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards &c. The trample of roburst wood larks on the brown leaves, and the patter of Squirrels on the green moss. The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches, ere they fall from ripeness. The flirt of the ground-larks wing from the stubbles, how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.

The ground under the oak tree was littered with hundreds of acorns. And it dawned on me that I was standing in the forest of tomorrow.

OAK-BARK BISQUE with saffron-infused acorns’!” “‘Cottage-grown ferns with sea

Nurturing your dream is like tending a garden; it requires patience, care, and the faith that from the smallest seeds, the most magnificent blooms will emerge, transforming vision into reality. Remember— every giant oak was once a tiny acorn; believe in the potential of small beginnings and the power of growth

on the goodness of people and how little acts of kindness were like little acorns that grew into mighty oaks.

Jeff often used an analogy in those days when describing our efforts to innovate and build new businesses. “We need to plant many seeds,” he would say, “because we don’t know which one of those seeds will grow into a mighty oak.” It was an apt analogy. The oak is one of the sturdiest and longest-living trees in the forest. Each tree produces thousands of acorns for every one tree that eventually rises to the sky.

But Marcus Mackenzie believed that from little acorns big oaks grew.

Actually, there are two oaks native to Britain. The English, common or pendunculate oak (Quercus robur), and the durmast or sessile oak (Quercus petraea). The trees are similar in appearance and grow to roughly the same height (20m to 25m average). They can be differentiated so: the pendunculate bears its acorns on long stalks – elves use them for their tobacco pipes in fairy stories – while its leaves have little lobes at the base. The sessile has a short stalk for the acorn and a long stalk for the leaf, which lacks lobes. That said, a British oak is a British oak.

Each pregnant Oak ten thousand acorns forms Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms; Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads; The countless Aphides, prolific tribe, With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe; Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig ... —All these, increasing by successive birth, Would each o'erpeople ocean, air, and earth. So human progenies, if unrestrain'd, By climate friended, and by food sustain'd, O'er seas and soils, prolific hordes! would spread Erelong, and deluge their terraqueous bed; But war, and pestilence, disease, and dearth, Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth... The births and deaths contend with equal strife, And every pore of Nature teems with Life; Which buds or breathes from Indus to the Poles, And Earth's vast surface kindles, as it rolls!

Every action produces a reaction, and the reaction is always in exact accord with the action.” Throw a rock into a pond and it makes ripples—every time. The bigger the rock, the bigger the ripples. If you plant an acorn, you’ll get an oak tree, not a willow. If you overeat, you’ll get fat. If you’re a mean person, you’ll lack friends. If you fail to nourish yourself, you’ll become ill. Ultimately, by the consequences you experience, the truth will make itself known to you.

Big streams from little fountains flow. Great oaks from little acorns grow;

You dismiss the idea that the death of Jesus—the “torture and death of a single individual in a backward part of the Middle East” — could possibly be the solution to the sorrows of our brutish existence. When I said that Jesus is good for the world because he is the life of the world, you just tossed this away. You said, “You cannot possibly ‘know’ this. Nor can you present any evidence for it.” Actually, I believe I can present evidence for what I know. But evidence comes to us like food, and that is why we say grace over it. And we are supposed to eat it, not push it around on the plate—and if we don’t give thanks, it never tastes right. But here is some evidence for you, in no particular order. The engineering that went into ankles. The taste of beer. That Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, just like he said. A woman’s neck. Bees fooling around in the flower bed. The ability of acorns to manufacture enormous oaks out of stuff they find in the air and dirt. Forgiveness of sin. Storms out of the North, the kind with lightning. Joyous laughter (diaphragm spasms to the atheistic materialist). The ocean at night with a full moon. Delta blues. The peacock that lives in my yard. Sunrise, in color. Baptizing babies. The pleasure of sneezing. Eye contact. Having your feet removed from the miry clay, and established forever on the rock. You may say none of this tastes right to you. But suppose you were to bow your head and say grace over all of it. Try it that way. You say that you cannot believe that Christ’s death on the Cross was salvation for the world because the idea is absurd. I have shown in various ways that absurdity has not been a disqualifier for any number of your current beliefs. You praise reason to the heights, yet will not give reasons for your strident and inflexible moral judgments, or why you have arbitrarily dubbed certain chemical processes “rational argument.” That’s absurd right now, and yet there you are, holding it. So for you to refuse to accept Christ because it is absurd is like a man at one end of the pool refusing to move to the other end because he might get wet. Given your premises, you will have to come up with a different reason for rejecting Christ as you do. But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

So much happened, though, in our early, prechildren days, that served to turn our life around irretrievably. Much of it came from small, serendipitous, unlikely turns of events--like driving for many hours to do a small Everest talk for a charity and finding out afterward that the young son of the head of Channel 4 (the large UK TV network) was there. He then told his dad that I should do a TV show for the network. Kids, eh? Or getting spotted by the Discovery Channel, after having been chosen out of many climbers to be the subject of a big worldwide “Sure for Men” deodorant TV campaign. (Ironically, this one came just days after Dad died--which always felt like his little spark of a parting gift to me. And, wow, there were so many little gifts from him throughout his life.) But would I ever have done the bigger TV shows without minibreaks like those? I doubt it. But from small acorns grow big oaks.

She changed her position, contemplated a row od apple shrubs that she had put in last autumn at the bottom of the terrace, and slowly filled up again with comfortable thoughts. Things wee coming to a head. Her inner life, her restless inner life, was still and lay asleep. She was at liberty now to think of material things; positions of wardrobes and chests-of-drawers; lists of books to be piled by her bed; dressing jackets; white wooly vests and pants. It was not often she could thus play dolls and doll-houses without feeling she ought to be doing something else; that life was short; that she was threatened by the melancholy of life itself whose vapors sometimes reached her with overpowering strength. from her present sea-deep content two things were absent now - the horror of the ultimate departure, and the need to express herself before the end. The baby seemed to swim and strike like a dolphin. "it is a mystery," she said. "Women bearing children, bulbs becoming hyacinths, acorns … sheep… lambs. Feet that never touched the earth… I shall become two people." She stared between the apple trees; hypnotized, drugged by that sea-deep peace; wonder drifting weedily in and out. She was a vase, a container, a plot oak for a gnome to live in, a split oak, a hollow elm.

There is an oak tree is inside the acorn seed, but the acorn seed will never become an oak tree unless it is willing to grow and develop

The oak tree is inside the acorn seed, but the acorn seed will never become the oak tree unless it is willing to grow and develop

The oak sleeps in the acorn; the giant sequoia tree sleeps in its tiny seed; the bird waits in the egg; and the Universe waits to give you everything you want.

A farmer’s crops weren’t doing well. He had tried everything he could with the land and soil he had, but no matter what he did, year after year, his harvest grew smaller, his bounty less plentiful. So, he up and moved, searching for a new land, a new beginning. After a long journey, he came upon the most ideal, freshest, nutrient-rich soil on earth. Living there in prosperity, he felt the urge to plant something to pass onto future generations so they could see what he was blessed with. He tilled the soil, and with tender love and care, he planted an acorn. He watched as the tree broke the soil, making its way upward. Young, healthy, and free. Year after year, he saw it expand, stretching its branches in all directions, letting it be, never pruning it, never tending to it. Under its own direction, it took off, soaring upward and outward, becoming the mighty oak seen from all directions. “People traveled from far and wide to admire the tree, wanting one for themselves. They all asked the farmer, ‘What did you do to grow such a majestic oak tree?’ “His answer, always the same. ‘I don’t do a thing, I just let it grow on its own.’ “Most turned away, perplexed by his explanation, convinced he was hiding something from them. Others, however, listened, reproducing the same results. “Time passed and eventually the farmer was no longer, but the tree remained a steadfast fixture on the farmer’s land. Eventually, more people moved into the area. They were different from the man. They considered themselves to be more educated, more advanced than a simple farmer. They disliked his gigantic symbol of individual success. “So they hatched a plan. They conspired with each other and decided to stop making it about the tree. Why don’t they turn the people’s attention to the branches? Brilliant. So, year after year, they would rev up the citizens over a blemish on a branch. One was crooked, another’s bark was too thick, some had too many leaves, others didn’t have enough. The people who cared passionately about more foliage fought with those who wanted less. Citizens who wouldn’t stand for crooked branches ganged up on those who only wanted them to be straight. All the while, the elites stood back, stirring the pot, and achieving their plan to eliminate the tree. Every once in a while a side would win, and a branch would be cut off. Others would chop one off from spite and anger. As the years passed, branch after branch not escaping the scourge of the bickering groups, the tree finally was nothing more than a trunk. The people who were so used to fighting with each other gazed upon one another from either side of the pathetic, devoured symbol. They realized they had destroyed the once extraordinary, grand oak. But it was too late. The elites got what they wanted.

Once upon a time, in a not-so-far-away land, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped “out of the blue” by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, “We…are…that!

An acorn is an oak tree inside out.

Drool has sprouted an erection. Let’s ask him what he’s thinking about. Had his way with a knotted oak on the way here. A right spectacular tree-shagging it was, too. Knocked down enough acorns to feed the village for a week. They wanted to have a special feast day in honor of the git—declare him god of the tree-shag—more fertility symbols there than you can shake a stick at, innit?

He knew he was not making enough of an effort. Margaret, with her news, her reports and small jokes, her flying starts at conversation, was trying so much harder. Every evening she had some disastrous item to offer up. Tonight the dog, but often it was a story from the news online: “Did you hear about—?” a tornado carrying away a trailer park in Nebraska, pirates kidnapping a family off their sailboat, the stoning of schoolgirls in Kabul, as if to say, “See? What’s happening to us is not so bad.” Then again she might offer something she’d heard on the radio while making dinner, a little mystery explained, how habits are formed or why people applaud after theater performances. She was trying, he realized with a stab of grief, to be interesting. Candles on the table, a vase of flowers, something baked for dessert. It was graceful of her, it was valiant. And all he wanted was for her to stop. The lawn mower from down the street quit and he could hear the cricket again. Margaret was gazing up at the oak trees, leaves dark now but trunks banded with gold. “You know”—he stood up to collect their glasses—“I was thinking I might mow the grass tonight. I might really enjoy something like that.” “Oh, I wish I’d known, Bill. It’s already done. The landscape guys were here yesterday. I got them to put more mulch around the hydrangeas.” Mulch. That explained the smell. Another fusillade of acorns hit car roofs along the street. This time Margaret had her hand on Binx’s collar, holding him back as he lunged forward, toenails scratching the patio slates.

Truth does grow, but it grows homogeneously, like an acorn into an oak; it does not swing in the breeze, like a weathercock. The leopard does not change his spots nor the Ethiopian his skin, though the leopard be put in bars or the Ethiopian in pink tights. The nature of certain things is fixed, and none more so than the nature of truth. Truth may be contradicted a thousand times, but that only proves that it is strong enough to survive a thousand assaults.

The fact that there were more adults than children at her party didn't seem to faze Dixie. "That child is like a dandelion," Lettie said. "She could grow through concrete." Dixie's birthday party had a combination Mardi Gras/funeral wake feel to it. Mr. Bennett and Digger looped and twirled pink crepe paper streamers all around the white graveside tent until it looked like a candy-cane castle. Leo Stinson scrubbed one of his ponies and gave pony rides. Red McHenry, the florist's son, made a unicorn's horn out of flower foam wrapped with gold foil, and strapped it to the horse's head. "Had no idea that horse was white," Leo said, as they stood back and admired their work. Angela, wearing an old, satin, off-the-shoulder hoop gown she'd found in the attic, greeted each guest with strings of beads, while Dixie, wearing peach-colored fairy wings, passed out velvet jester hats. Charlotte, who never quite grasped the concept of eating while sitting on the ground, had her driver bring a rocking chair from the front porch. Mr. Nalls set the chair beside Eli's statue where Charlotte barked orders like a general. "Don't put the food table under the oak tree!" she commanded, waving her arm. "We'll have acorns in the potato salad!" Lettie kept the glasses full and between KyAnn Merriweather and Dot Wyatt there was enough food to have fed Eli's entire regiment. Potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs, bread and butter pickles, green beans, fried corn, spiced pears, apple dumplings, and one of every animal species, pork barbecue, fried chicken, beef ribs, and cold country ham as far as the eye could see.

It is assumed that the phenomena which we now accept without surprise do not excite our astonishment because they are understood. But this is not the case. If they do not surprise us, it is not because they are understood, it is because they are familiar; for if that which is not understood ought to surprise us, we should be surprised at everything—the fall of a stone thrown into the air, the acorn which becomes an oak, mercury which expands when it is heated, iron attracted by a magnet. “The science of today is a light matter....Those amazing truths that our descendants will discover are even now all around us, staring us in the eyes, so to speak; and yet we do not see them. But it is not enough to say that we do not see them; we do not wish to see them—for as soon as an unexpected and unfamiliar fact appears, we try to fit it into the framework of the commonplaces of accepted knowledge, and are indignant that anyone should dare to experiment further.

as the acorn is nourished by the dead leaves of the oak, the hope strengthens that the rise and fall of men and their movements are only the changing foliage of the ever-growing tree of life,

The uterus, then, is like a deciduous tree, an oak or a maple, and the endometrium acts like the leaves. When the weather is warm, when sunlight sings, the tree awakes and invests in leaves. The branching pattern of the tree—its trunk, its branches, its twigs—is like the branching of the body’s vascularization, parceling out water rather than blood. The homology of the pattern is no coincidence. Holy water, sacred blood, they are one and the same, and branching is the most hydraulically efficient means of pumping the fluid from a central source—the heart, the trunk—out to all extremities. Thus nourished, the leaves bud, unfurl, thicken, and darken. The leaves are photosynthetic factories, transforming sunlight into usable energy. That energy allows the tree to create seeds and nuts, the acorns that are embryonic trees. The leaves are expensive to maintain—the tree must deliver them water, nitrogen, potassium, the nutrients from the soil—but they repay the tree by spinning sunlight into gold.

Author Cynthia Bourgeault presents an instructive parable in her book The Wisdom Way of Knowing that captures the essence of what this ancient knowledge tradition says to us about us:   Once upon a time, in a not-so-far-away land, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern,

fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped “out of the blue” by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, “We…are…that!”  

The “acorn-self” doesn’t know a life without fear; only the “oak tree–Self” grows beyond fear and anxiety.

No oak trees without acorns' may be a formally true proposition, but that this acorn did in fact produce this oak tree, there and then, is not a teleological necessity; it is a circumstantial occurrence" (OH 104-5). Because history is what happened, not what must have happened, there is no room in an authentic historical explanation for teleological causes.

The giant oak tree of a story, started with a small acorn of a thought. -T.A. Cline

With two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time only a dream. Just as the oak sleeps in the acorn, and the bird waits in the egg, so dreams are the seedlings of realities. Beware, therefore, what you dream of. For some dreams are given by the Medium to inspire us by what may yet be. Others are planted within us by others, foul seeds, that we harvest to our destruction.”     -

Every child should be taught to expect success, and to believe that he was born to achieve, as the acorn is destined to become an oak. It is cruel for parents and teachers to tell children that they are dull or stupid, or that they are not like others of their age.

The Gandhian idea of basic education is to observe the child, to help like a gardener helps the acorn, or the seed, an apple seed, or a tomato seed, or a potato seed, or whatever seed it is. A gardener does not tell an oak to be an ash. A gardener does not tell an apple to be a pear. A gardener says, “Apple if you are an apple seed, be an apple, and I will help you: I will water you, I will put some stakes so that you are not blown away in the wind.

Heritage breeds, with or without Chinese “blood,” are threatened primarily because they are not suitable for the ultraintensive farming practices that predominate in the West today. Generally, they don’t grow fast enough for factory farming, or they require too much space and resources. The Iberico, for example, needs about an acre of oak woodland (called dehesa forest) per pig to supply the acorns for its famous hams.35

Being an acorn is to have a taste for being an oak tree,” wrote Thomas Merton.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time only a dream. Just as the oak sleeps in the acorn, and the bird waits in the egg, so dreams are the seedlings of realities. Beware, therefore, what you dream of.

The oak sleeps in the acorn. The bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

Under the stars we are as one. Theirs is the power of countless years. They see our grief and know our pain, yet still they shine and their light gives us hope. From acorn to oak, but even the mightiest of oaks shall fall. Thus do we recognize the great wheel of life and death and life once more. We surrender our departed souls under the stars and may the Green gather them to him.

A verse from a short poem - 'Philosophy is Forestry's Child' - in my Foreword: Ask not which came first, the acorn or the oak. We came as children of the forest; First our wooden cradle, then our kindling for industry. Instead think forward –– trees will shelter us from ourselves.

Perhaps our deepest love is already inscribed within us, so its object doesn't create a new word but instead allows us to read the one written. For their entire lives, even before they met, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.

Often, finding a solution is a multi-step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve—think of that as an oak tree—and then there are all the other problems—think of these as saplings—that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it.

But if we consider whether you will stay as you are now, we must consider what you are now, and what you wish to be. We must see clearly. We must have done with daydreams, and see whether this sapling—" he touched her arm, "—be oak, holly, ash or cherry. We can grow no cherries on an oak, nor acorns on a holly. And however your life goes, Paksenarrion, it cannot return to past times: you will never be just as you were. What has hurt you will leave scars. But as a tree that is hacked and torn, if it lives, will be the same tree—will be an oak if an oak it was before—so you are still Paksenarrion. All your past is within you, good and bad alike.

The greatest achievement was, at first, and for a time, but a dream.” “The oak sleeps in the acorn. The bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. DREAMS ARE THE SEEDLINGS OF REALITY.

The tallest oak in the forest is not just the tallest because it grew from the heartiest acorn. It is also the tallest because no other trees blocked its sunlight, because the soil around it was deep and rich, because no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and because no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hearty seeds, but do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them? The soil in which they put down their roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?

From an acorn grows a mighty oak - don't be embarrassed, be proud of where you're starting from, because it's all part of the journey!

Consider the acorn. It is in the nature of an acorn, we might say, to become an oak tree—but only if the climate and soil are right, and provided no enterprising squirrel squirrels it away for winter sustenance. Even if it roots and sprouts successfully, the size and healthy branching of the oak tree born of that acorn would depend on what nourishment the ground can provide, climatic conditions, sunlight and irrigation, its spacing from or proximity to its fellow flora, and so on. We, too, have needs the environment must satisfy if we are to flourish.

In the 4th century BC Aristotle asserted that the proper end, or aim, of each thing is the realization of its own being, or the actualization of its latent potentialities. An acorn’s proper end is to develop into a healthy oak tree, while the individual’s proper end is to actualize the latent capacities within: an idea expressed in the Ancient Greek poet Pindar’s assertion to “Become who you are”. Becoming who you are is not a guarantee but a difficult and arduous task requiring self-knowledge, commitment and courage – and is thus a purpose or meaning worthy and sturdy enough to support one’s life.

Children have no sympathy with growth in any world, whether of nature or of grace. Nothing pleases them but that an acorn should become an oak at once, and that immediately after the blossom should come the ripe fruit. Then it is idle to speak of the uses of patience to the inexperienced; for the moral value of the discipline of trial cannot be appreciated till the trial is past.

A personal bioplan can take a form as humble as a pot on the balcony of an urban high-rise. One beneficial plant, a mint for example, releases aerosols that open up your airways. That plant does the same thing for the birds and other small creatures, and for the people you love and keep close. The true goal of the global bioplan is for every person to create and protect the healthiest environment they can for themselves, their families, the birds, insects and wildlife. That personal bioplan then gets stitched to their neighbours’, expanding outward exponentially. If we each start with something as small as an acorn and nurture it into an oak, a master tree that we have grown and protect and are the steward of, if we have that kind of thinking on a mass scale, then the planet is no longer in jeopardy from our greed. We’ve become the guardians of it. It’s a dream of trying to get a better world for every living thing.

The young boar, plump and heavy, and strong as an oak, was tearing out the roots of a tree. Apparently, it had buried acorns there in the fall. Boars were almost like squirrels. Except the latter constantly forgot where they’d left their supplies, while the former never did.

For their entire lives, even before they met, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree. You were their rain and sun, their morning and night.

I planted an acorn twenty years ago just for fun. Today it is the pride of all my planting. It is now twenty-five feet high. Who knows, you may live to enjoy those plantings of your earlier days and derive peace and joy each year you live to greet them.

Now the twin leaves of the seedling chestnut oak on the Carvin's cover path have dried, dropped, and blown; the acorn itself is shrunk and sere. But the sheath of the stem holds water and the white root still delicately sucks, porous and permeable, mute. The death of the self of which the great writers speak is no violent act. It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll. It is merely the slow cessation of the will's sprints and the intellect's chatter: it is waiting like a hollow bell with stilled tongue. Fuge, tace, quiesce. The waiting itself is the thing.

I’ve seen many impossible things,” the man said. “I have seen the acorn before the oak. I have seen the spark before the flame. But never have I seen such as this: A dead woman living. A child born from nothing.

Within the acorn is encoded everything it needs to know to become the oak tree. It may not land in the best conditions, but that is out of the acorn’s control, and such a circumstance does not diminish the acorn’s true oakness. Even if it never gets the chance to fully become the oak tree, the acorn is Whole. The oakness of the acorn is inherent.

The angels are survivors. They looked on as the glass was smashed, the walls whitewashed, the statues decapitated, the roods torn down, Destruction was nothing new to them, of course; they were born of it. Acorn to oak to angel, these were trees once. They had roots and branches, drank from the earth, knew the thistledown touch of the sky. Birds landed and nested in them, the wings of crows foreshadowing their own coming form. In time, they felt the kiss of the axe, the teeth of the saw, and they began to take shape, to become angelic.

Poppy took a deep, appreciative breath. “How bracing,” she said. “I wonder what makes the country air smell so different?” “It could be the pig farm we just passed,” Leo muttered. Beatrix, who had been reading from a pamphlet describing the south of England, said cheerfully, “Hampshire is known for its exceptional pigs. They’re fed on acorns and beechnut mast from the forest, and it makes the bacon quite lovely. And there’s an annual sausage competition!” He gave her a sour look. “Splendid. I certainly hope we haven’t missed it.” Win, who had been reading from a thick tome about Hampshire and its environs, volunteered, “The history of Ramsay House is impressive.” “Our house is in a history book?” Beatrix asked in delight. “It’s only a small paragraph,” Win said from behind the book, “but yes, Ramsay House is mentioned. Of course, it’s nothing compared to our neighbor, the Earl of Westcliff, whose estate features one of the finest country homes in England. It dwarfs ours by comparison. And the earl’s family has been in residence for nearly five hundred years.” “He must be awfully old, then,” Poppy commented, straight-faced. Beatrix snickered. “Go on, Win.” “‘Ramsay House,’” Win read aloud, “‘stands in a small park populated with stately oaks and beeches, coverts of bracken, and surrounds of deer-cropped turf. Originally an Elizabethan manor house completed in 1594, the building boasts of many long galleries representative of the period. Alterations and additions to the house have resulted in the grafting of a Jacobean ballroom and a Georgian wing.’” “We have a ballroom!” Poppy exclaimed. “We have deer!” Beatrix said gleefully. Leo settled deeper into his corner. “God, I hope we have a privy.

After all, what is man but a hoard of ghosts? Oaks, that were acorns, that were oaks...

To be an acorn is to have a taste for being an oak tree. Habitual grace brings with it all the Christian virtues in their seed.

Once upon a time, in a not-so-far-away land, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped “out of the blue” by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, “We… are… that!” Delusional thinking, obviously, the other acorns concluded, but one of them continued to engage him in conversation: “So tell us, how would we become that tree?” “Well,” he said, pointing downward, “it has something to do with going into the ground …and cracking open the shell.” “Insane,” they responded. “Totally morbid! Why, then we wouldn’t be acorns anymore.” 3

Even before you were born, she worried for you. It was amazing to see her love you before you even met. Perhaps our deepest love is already inscribed within us, so its object doesn’t create a new word but instead allows us to read the one written. For their entire lives, even before they met, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree. You were their rain and sun, their morning and night.

Sometimes you plant an acorn, and you plant it in good faith and instead of finding yourself with an admirable sturdy single oak tree, you’re landed with a terrible mad forest that won’t stop growing in all directions and develops an uncontrollable life of its own.

This is the nature of management. Decisions are made, usually for good reasons, which in turn prompt other decisions. So when problems arise—and they always do—disentangling them is not as simple as correcting the original error. Often, finding a solution is a multi-step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve—think of that as an oak tree—and then there are all the other problems—think of these as saplings—that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down.

Honestly, I sometimes wonder if humans are any more efficient than the mighty oak tree that drops thousands of acorns year after year in the desperate attempt to create one or two saplings.

Acorns came from oaks, trees that were sturdy and hard to break. They didn't have to grow in a grove and did fine all alone.

As for the thing that changes, although it can be what it will become, it is not yet what it will become. It actually exists right now in this state (an acorn); it will actually exist in that state (large oak tree). But it is not actually in that state now. It only has the potentiality for that state.

The normal form of motion always involves telos or goal," I say, trying to get a word in edgewise. "Motion involves the transition from an acorn to an oak. Newton made violent motion the paradigm for all motion because it was the perfect description of the actions of William of Orange, the usurper whom the Whigs put on the throne in England. The impetus for all motion now came from without. There was no telos. All motion was a function of human will and intention.

That evening, as dusk was falling, Dolly Clare took her accustomed walk at the edge of Hundred Acre Field, behind her home. All her little duties were done, and she felt free to enjoy the evening air before settling by the fireside. She reached the oak tree, and stood very still, watching three fine pheasants searching for acorns at the foot of the gnarled old trunk. Above her the rooks were flying homeward. The great field before her, gleaming with gold when last she walked there with Emily, was now freshly ploughed, the furrows dark and glistening. Within a few days the seed would be planted and she would watch, alone now, the first tender blades appear, then the ripening crop and, finally, its harvesting. The comforting cycle of the seasons continued unchanged—the sowing, the growing and the reaping. Dolly Claire turned, and made her way homeward with a grateful heart. Life went on, and was still sweet.

There are two ways to get to the top of an oak tree: You can sit on an acorn and wait for it to grow, or you can climb the tree.

But the skater came closer. Legs, hands, carriage, were a boy’s, but no boy ever had a mouth like that; no boy had those breasts; no boy had eyes which looked as if they had been fished from the bottom of the sea. Finally, coming to a stop and sweeping a curtsey with the utmost grace to the King, who was shuffling past on the arm of some Lord-in-waiting, the unknown skater came to a standstill. She was not a handsbreadth off. She was a woman. Orlando stared; trembled; turned hot; turned cold; longed to hurl himself through the summer air; to crush acorns beneath his feet; to toss his arms with the beech trees and the oaks.

A strong foundation is what allows you to create structures that seemingly defy gravity... Nature mirrors this, leaning toward creating a strong foundation first. Take the majestic oak tree. It starts as a small acorn that demands space pushing out to create an invisible vast, deep, wide root system, deploying nutrients and energy there first. Then goes up the tree canopy. This enables it to stay grounded and withstand great storms, It's why oaks endure, many well over five hundred years.

In the beginning the Ṭsi´-zhu people came down, in the form of eagles, from the upper to the lower world. As they came in sight of the earth they beheld a large red oak tree. They soared down to it and alighted upon its topmost branches. The shock of their weight sent to the ground a shower of acorns which scattered around the foot of the tree, whereupon they said: We shall make of this tree our life symbol; our little ones shall multiply in numbers like

other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t. Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid? This is not a book about tall trees. It’s a book about forests—and hockey is a good place to start because the explanation for who gets to the top of the hockey world is a lot more interesting and complicated than it looks. In fact, it’s downright peculiar. 3. Here is the player roster of the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers. Take a close look and see if you can spot anything strange about it. No. Name Pos. L/R Height Weight Birth Date Hometown 22 Tyler Ennis C L 5’9” 160 Oct. 6, 1989 Edmonton, AB 23 Jordan Hickmott C R