Streams To The River River To The Sea Quotes

Mist to mist, drops to drops. For water thou art, and unto water shalt thou return.

I believe . . . that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that, very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea.

…how it would be nice if, for every sea waiting for us, there would be a river, for us. And someone -a father, a lover, someone- able to take us by the hand and find that river -imagine it, invent it- and put us on its stream, with the lightness of one only word, goodbye. This, really, would be wonderful. It would be sweet, life, every life. And things wouldn’t hurt, but they would get near taken by stream, one could first shave and then touch them and only finally be touched. Be wounded, also. Die because of them. Doesn’t matter. But everything would be, finally, human. It would be enough someone’s fancy -a father, a lover, someone- could invent a way, here in the middle of the silence, in this land which don’t wanna talk. Clement way, and beautiful. A way from here to the sea.

Five years later, I take a deep, shuddery breath to stop myself crying. It’s not just that I can’t hold Aoife again, it’s everything: It’s grief for the regions we deadlanded, the ice caps we melted, the Gulf Stream we redirected, the rivers we drained, the coasts we flooded, the lakes we choked with crap, the seas we killed, the species we drove to extinction, the pollinators we wiped out, the oil we squandered, the drugs we rendered impotent, the comforting liars we voted into office—all so we didn’t have to change our cozy lifestyles.

The land has a memory. Every stream and river runs with a confession of sorts, history whispered over rocks, lifted in the beaks of birds at a stream, carried out to the sea. Buffalo thunder across plains whose soil was watered with the blood of battles long since relegated to musty books on forgotten shelves. Fields once strewn with blue and gray now flower with uneasy buds. The slave master snaps the lash, and generations later, the ancestral scars remain. Under it all, the dead lie, remembering.

The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.

The thing about love is that you will never run out of it. It's an ever-flowing river. So go ahead and LOVE. What are you saving all this love for — death?

It is never too late to go quietly to our lakes, rivers, oceans, even our small streams, and say to the sea gulls, the great blue herons, the bald eagles, the salmon, that we are sorry.

Your people suffer not because of any great will of the gods, but because of their own violent acts. They wage the wars that burn the forests and fields. They spill the blood that pollutes the rivers and streams. To blame the gods is to blame the land itself. Look upon your reflection to find your enemy.

In order to elucidate especially and most clearly the origination of this error (...) let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: "It is six o'clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see the sunset; I can go to the theater; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now , but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife". This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: "I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntaringly remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond.

Five years later, I take a deep, shuddery breath to stop myself crying. It’s not just that I can’t hold Aoife again, it’s everything: It’s grief for the regions we deadlanded, the ice caps we melted, the Gulf Stream we redirected, the rivers we drained, the coasts we flooded, the lakes we choked with crap, the seas we killed, the species we drove to extinction, the pollinators we wiped out, the oil we squandered, the drugs we rendered impotent, the comforting liars we voted into office—all so we didn’t have to change our cozy lifestyles. People talk about the Endarkenment like our ancestors talked about the Black Death, as if it’s an act of God. But we summoned it, with every tank of oil we burned our way through. My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing—while denying—that we’d be doing a runner and leaving our grandchildren a tab that can never be paid.

The Thames Shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it.

Old Man River! That seems far too austere a name For something made of mirth and rage. O, roiling red-blood river vein, If chief among your traits is age, You're a wily, convoluted sage. Is "old" the thing to call what rings The vernal heart of wester-lore; What brings us brassy-myth made kings (And preponderance of bug-type things) To challenge titans come before? Demiurge to a try at Avalon-once-more! And what august vitality In your wide aorta stream You must have had to oversee Alchemic change of timber beam To iron, brick and engine steam. Your umber whiskey waters lance The prideful sober sovereignty Of faulty-haloed Temperance And wilt her self-sure countenance; Yes, righteousness is vanity, But your sport's for imps, not elderly. If there's a name for migrant mass Of veteran frivolity That snakes through seas of prairie grass And groves of summer sassafras, A name that flows as roguishly As gypsy waters, fast and free, It's your real name, Mississippi.

I wonder if they dream the same dreams. I wonder if they dream of home: of jungle-tangled trees, bearing the weight of the sky. Of streams leading to rivers leading to the sea.

It is usual that little streams put their mouths into big rivers. Most rivers can also be traced to the big sea. The fact that you start with a small choice does not mean you will be on that narrow road forever.

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire? Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.

Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again.

Rivers, water streams, water falls, water lakes, seas and oceans confirm Your creativity.

Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River-smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver: No more by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, A rivulet then a river: Nowhere by thee my steps shall be For ever and for ever. But here will sigh thine alder tree And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever.

Morality is violence. An invisible violence at first. Love is a supreme violence, hidden deep in the darkness of our atoms. When a stream flows into a river, it’s love and it’s violence. When a cloud loses itself in the sky, it’s a marriage. When the roots of a tree split open a rock it’s the movement of life. When the sea rises and falls back only to rise again it’s the process of History. When a man and a woman find each other in the silence of the night, it’s the beginning of the end of the tribe’s power, and death itself becomes a challenge to the ascendancy of the group.

Would that it were possible for you to grow wings, and soar into the air! Poised between earth and heaven, you might see the solid earth, the fluid sea and the streaming rivers, the wandering air, the penetrating fire, the courses of the stars, and the swiftness of the movement with which heaven encompasses all. What happiness were that, my son, to see all these borne along with one impulse, and to behold Him who is unmoved moving in all that moves, and Him who is hidden made manifest through his works!

Twenty-five centuries ago, Lao-tse, a Chinese sage, said some thing that readers of this book might use today: " The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.

People passed stories from mouth to mouth like kisses, or plagues, until they flowed down the streets, into gutters, streams, and rivers, down to the ocean itself.

Spring becomes stream becomes river, and all three seek the sea.

The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventures and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!...The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires.

Just as a snowflake went on to feed a puddle that filled a stream and then the river, the pumpkin patch is a gathering of molecules from my old goats, chickens, and cats, feeding the underworld of dirt creatures. And somewhere, my father’s ashes mingle with birds, air, and sea.

When you preserve skies, you preserve lands. When you preserve lands, you preserve trees. When you preserve trees, you preserve forests. When you preserve forests, you preserve animals. When you preserve animals, you preserve people. When you preserve streams, you preserve rivers. When you preserve rivers, you preserve lakes. When you preserve lakes, you preserve seas. When you preserve seas, you preserve oceans. When you preserve oceans, you preserve the world.

Memory is a river. Memory is a pebble at the bottom of the river, slippery with the moss of our living hours. Memory is a tributary, a brackish stream returning to the oceam that dreamt it. Memory is the sea. Memory is the house on the sand with a red door I have stepped through, trying to remember the history of the waves.

By noon Carter reached the jasper terraces of Kiran which slope down to the river's edge and bear that temple of loveliness wherein the King of Ilek-Vad comes from his far realm on the twilight sea once a year in a golden palanquin to pray to the god of Oukranos, who sang to him in youth when he dwelt in a cottage by its banks. All of jasper is that temple, and covering an acre of ground with its walls and courts, its seven pinnacled towers, and its inner shrine where the river enters through hidden channels and the god sings softly in the night. Many times the moon hears strange music as it shines on those courts and terraces and pinnacles, but whether that music be the song of the god or the chant of the cryptical priests, none but the King of Ilek-Vad may say; for only he had entered the temple or seen the priests. Now, in the drowsiness of day, that carven and delicate fane was silent, and Carter heard only the murmur of the great stream and the hum of the birds and bees as he walked onward under the enchanted sun.

As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage.

Poem in October" It was my thirtieth year to heaven Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore The morning beckon With water praying and call of seagull and rook And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Myself to set foot That second In the still sleeping town and set forth. My birthday began with the water- Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name Above the farms and the white horses And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days. High tide and the heron dived when I took the road Over the border And the gates Of the town closed as the town awoke. A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder, Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly Come in the morning where I wandered and listened To the rain wringing Wind blow cold In the wood faraway under me. Pale rain over the dwindling harbour And over the sea wet church the size of a snail With its horns through mist and the castle Brown as owls But all the gardens Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud. There could I marvel My birthday Away but the weather turned around. It turned away from the blithe country And down the other air and the blue altered sky Streamed again a wonder of summer With apples Pears and red currants And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother Through the parables Of sun light And the legends of the green chapels And the twice told fields of infancy That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine. These were the woods the river and sea Where a boy In the listening Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide. And the mystery Sang alive Still in the water and singingbirds. And there could I marvel my birthday Away but the weather turned around. And the true Joy of the long dead child sang burning In the sun. It was my thirtieth Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon Though the town below lay leaved with October blood. O may my heart's truth Still be sung On this high hill in a year's turning.

Why, sir,' said the lawyer, 'if the persecution were tortious, and if it happened at sea, or even on fresh water or reasonably damp land, the Admiralty court would no doubt have cognizance.' 'Pray, sir,' said Stephen, 'just how damp would the land have to be?' 'Oh, pretty damp, pretty damp, I believe. The judge's patent gives him power to deal with matters in, upon, or by the sea, or public streams, or freshwater ports, rivers, nooks and places between the ebb and flow of the tide, and upon the shores and banks adjacent - all tolerably humid.

There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and all the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat died in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat, of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream.

[The goal is] "liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from the mind and its intelligence; it is not part of the Absolute, for the Absolute, being infinite, can have no parts but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed form eternity and when at least it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance will return to the infinitude from which it came. It is like a drop of water that has arisen from the sea, and in a shower has fallen into a puddle, then drifts into a brook, finds its way into a stream, after that into a river, passing through mountain gorges and wide plains, winding this way and that, obstructed by rocks and fallen trees, till at least it reaches the boundless seas from which it rose." "But that poor little drop of water, when it has once more become one with the sea, has surely lost its individuality." Larry grinned. "You want to taste sugar, you don't want to become sugar. What is individuality but the expression of our egoism? Until the soul has shed the last trace of that it cannot become one with the Absolute." "You talk very familiarly of the Absolute, Larry, and it's an imposing word. What does it actually signify to you?" "Reality. You can't say what it is ; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. The Indians call it Brahman. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness and perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth and freedom." "Golly," I said to myself, but to Larry: "But how can a purely intellectual conception be a solace to the suffering human race? Men have always wanted a personal God to whom they can turn in their distress for comfort and encouragement." "It may be that at some far distant day greater insight will show them that they must look for comfort and encouragement in their own souls. I myself think that the need to worship is no more than the survival of an old remembrance of cruel gods that had to be propitiated. I believe that God is within me or nowhere. If that's so, whom or what am I to worship—myself? Men are on different levels of spiritual development, and so the imagination of India has evolved the manifestations of the Absolute that are known as Brahma, Vishnu, Siva and by a hundred other names. The Absolute is in Isvara, the creator and ruler of the world, and it is in the humble fetish before which the peasant in his sun-baked field places the offering of a flower. The multitudinous gods of India are but expedients to lead to the realization that the self is one with the supreme self.

Life often goes along in a stream. The details float by like a leaf on a river. The current is pushing and pulling the leaf, but we do not see it because we are standing on the banks of the river. There are moments when the leaf is caught up in little eddies. Events pile up. They gather like twigs--like flotsam and jetsam--caught up in the stream of life. Time blocks and unblocks in little bursts at such places. Information pours through like water. The details crystallize. Various pressures and turbulences in the river, pouring into the sea of life, push and pull, but we do not see it. We do not see the leaf or the pushing and pulling.

A gushing sound is created by the flowing rivers, streams and rivulets. But on joining the sea they become calm and serene. Likewise, the various stages of mysticism are to be considered." - Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti

eyes open to this precious land and its people, to the covenant of water, water that washes away the sins of the world, water that will gather in streams, ponds, and rivers, rivers that float the seas, water that I will never enter.

When you preserve streams, you preserve rivers. When you preserve rivers, you preserve lakes. When you preserve lakes, you preserve seas. When you preserve seas, you preserve oceans. When you preserve oceans, you preserve the world.

And you, vast sea, sleeping mother, Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream, Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade, And then I shall come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the joyful assurance, "I shall become the sea." It is not a vain assumption; it is true humility, for it is the truth. The river has no other alternative. On both sides of its banks it has numerous fields and forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in various ways, cleanse them and feed them, carry their produce from place to place. But it can have only partial relations with these, and however long it may linger among them it remains separate; it never can become a town or a forest. But it can and does become the sea. The lesser moving water has its affinity with the great motionless water of the ocean. It moves through the thousand objects on its onward course, and its motion finds its finality when it reaches the sea.

When I come to the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest. As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true contrast that men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever. Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on, just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea in death- two dark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work and chattering unceasing.

As humans, our territory is on land. If we were meant to control the skies, we would have been given wings, and if we were meant to control the seas and oceans, we would have been designed to breathe underwater. The Creator created for us many natural water sources: lakes, ponds, rivers, springs, and streams — so that we would not tamper with the seas or oceans. This is why there is salt in the them, so we do not drink from them, or bother the huge creatures he put there to control the food chain. The salt content found in huge bodies of water is extremely vital to the elevation and balancing of the earth. This can be explained through basic physics or metaphysics. At the same time, wild creatures were also placed in jungles and forests to keep humans out of them. Plants are vital to purifying the atmosphere, and many wild animals rely on them as their food and medicine. Had the Creator not placed animals like tigers, wolves, bears, and other big creatures in untamed regions which are intended to remain inhabited, he knew that mankind would take over those areas — leaving nothing for the animals.

MAY 6 I HAVE BROKEN LEVIATHAN’S POWER FROM YOUR LIFE MY CHILD, I have broken the demonic power of the sea serpent from your life. I have caused all his demonic little demon fish to stick to his scales as I brought him up out of the midst of the sea and cast him into the wilderness to lie on the open field as food for all the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens. The rivers and seas belong to Me, and I will make utterly waste and desolate the places where his evil power has dwelt. I am the one who commands the sea and its streams to run dry, and I have broken the power of the evils of the sea from bringing destruction to your life. EZEKIEL 29:3–5; ISAIAH 44:27 Prayer Declaration Father, in the name of Jesus I bind every sea monster that would attack my life or region. You have raised a watch against Leviathan, and You will not let the demonic powers of the sea oppress me. You have stripped him of his power and have taken away his armor. You have caused the places of his domain to become utterly waste and desolate and have thrown him and his demonic spirits into the wilderness to be food for the beasts and birds who dwell there.

With this last adherent, Florence hurried away in the advancing morning, and the strengthening sunshine, to the City. The roar soon grew more loud, the passengers more numerous, the shops more busy, until she was carried onward in a stream of life setting that way, and flowing, indifferently, past marts and mansions, prisons, churches, market-places, wealth, poverty, good, and evil, like the broad river, side by side with it, awakened from its dreams of rushes, willows, and green moss, and rolling on, turbid and troubled, among the works and cares of men, to the deep sea.

Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purposes, from right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path. For men who leap from one purpose to another, or do not even leap but are carried over by a sort of hazard, – how can such wavering and unstable persons possess any good that is fixed and lasting? 8. There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose; the rest do not proceed; they are merely swept along, like objects afloat in a river. And of these objects, some are held back by sluggish waters and are transported gently; others are torn along by a more violent current; some, which are nearest the bank, are left there as the current slackens; and others are carried out to sea by the onrush of the stream.

The Garden of Proserpine" Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here. No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn. Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well. Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn. There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

The Ganges, though flowing from the foot of Vishnu and through Siva's hair, is not an ancient stream. Geology, looking further than religion, knows of a time when neither the river nor the Himalayas that nourished it existed, and an ocean flowed over the holy places of Hindustan. The mountains rose, their debris silted up the ocean, the gods took their seats on them and contrived the river, and the India we call immemorial came into being. But India is really far older. In the days of the prehistoric ocean the southern part of the peninsula already existed, and the high places of Dravidia have been land since land began, and have seen on the one side the sinking of a continent that joined them to Africa, and on the other the upheaval of the Himalayas from a sea. They are older than anything in the world. No water has ever covered them, and the sun who has watched them for countless aeons may still discern in their outlines forms that were his before our globe was torn from his bosom. If flesh of the sun's flesh is to be touched anywhere, it is here, among the incredible antiquity of these hills.

Our home villages with the hills, mountains and forests, the lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, waterfall and fjords. The smell of new hay in summer, of birches in spring, of the sea, and the big forest, and even the biting winter cold. Everything . . . Norwegian songs and music and so much, much more. That’s our Fatherland and that’s what we have to struggle to get back.

Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot’s seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting. But in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest and from then on the pilot had been silent, staring out the front, and the drone of the engine had been all that was left. The drone and the sea of green trees that lay before the plane’s nose and flowed to the horizon, spread with lakes, swamps, and wandering streams and rivers.

Passions are nothing more than ideas at the first stage of their development. They belong to the heart's youth, and he is foolish who thinks they will stir him all his life. Many a placid river beglns as a roaring waterfall, but not a single stream leaps and froths all the way to the sea. Frequently this placidity is a symptom of great though latent force. The fullness and depth of emotions and thought precludes furious impulses, for the soul in its suffering or rejoicing is fully alive to what is taking place and conscious that so it must be. It knows that were there no storms the constant heat of the sun would shrivel it. It is imbued with its own life, fostering and chastising itself as a mother does her beloved child. Only in this state of supreme self-knowledge can a man appreciate divine judgment.

    The river and sea can be kings of                          the hundred valley streams                because they are good at lying below them. For this reason,     They can be kings of the hundred valley streams. For this reason, too,     If the sage wants to be above the people,                in his words, he must put himself below them;     If he wishes to be before the people,                in his person, he must stand behind them. Therefore,     He is situated in front of the people,                but they are not offended;     He is situated above the people,                but they do not consider him a burden.     All under heaven happily push him forward without                          wearying.     Is this not because he is without contention? Therefore,     No one under heaven can contend with him.

And his soul cried out to them, and he said: Sons of my ancient mother, you riders of the tides, How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream. Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind. Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward, And then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers. And you, vast sea, sleeping mother, Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream, Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade, And then I shall come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean. And as he walked he saw from afar men and women leaving their fields and their vineyards and hastening towards the city gates. And he heard their voices calling his name, and shouting from field to field telling one another of the coming of his ship.

The hardest challenge of early coal mining was drainage. Rainwater flows through rills and streams into brooks and brooks into rivers, drawn always downward by gravity to the sea. About a third of any rainfall soaks into the soil and percolates downward into the earth. Eventually it encounters impermeable layers of rock. There it spreads out and flows along the rock layer until it finds cracks or permeable rock, when it continues percolating down to the next impermeable layer.

No matter how tall or wide a tree is, it started off a seed. No matter how tall or wide a building is, it started off a brick. No matter how tall or wide a fire is, it started off a flame. No matter how tall or wide a mountain is, it started off a rock. No matter how tall or wide a baby is, he started off a cell. No matter how deep or wide a heart is, it started off a spirit. No matter how deep or wide an idea is, it started off a thought. No matter how deep or wide a concept is, it started off a desire. No matter how deep or wide a memory is, it started off an experience. No matter how deep or wide an experience is, it started off an awareness. No matter how deep or wide a stream is, it started off a puddle. No matter how deep or wide a river is, it started off a stream. No matter how deep or wide a lake is, it started off a river. No matter how deep or wide a sea is, it started off a lake. No matter how deep or wide an ocean is, it started off a sea.

Colorado and Wyoming are America’s highest states, averaging 6,800 feet and 6,700 feet above sea level. Utah comes in third at 6,100 feet, New Mexico, Nevada, and Idaho each break 5,000 feet, and the rest of the field is hardly worth mentioning. At 3,400 feet, Montana is only half as high as Colorado, and Alaska, despite having the highest peaks, is even further down the list at 1,900 feet. Colorado has more fourteeners than all the other U.S. states combined, and more than all of Canada too. Colorado’s lowest point (3,315 feet along the Kansas border) is higher than the highest point in twenty other states. Rivers begin here and flow away to all the points of the compass. Colorado receives no rivers from another state (unless you count the Green River’s’ brief in and out from Utah).Wyoming’s Wind River Range is the only mountain in North America that supplies water to all three master streams of the American West: Missouri, Colorado, and Columbia rivers.

If I was a flower, I would sell perfume. If I was a plant, I would sell herbs. If I was a seed, I would sell wood. If I was a tree, I would sell forests. If I was a garden, I would sell beauty. If I was a plant, I would sell medicine. If I was a fish, I would sell oceans. If I was a bee, I would sell honey. If I was a spider, I would sell silk. If I was a firebug, I would sell light. If I was a sheep, I would sell wool. If I was a rabbit, I would sell carrots. If I was a cow, I would sell leather. If I was a hen, I would sell eggs. If I was a stream, I would sell lakes. If I was a river, I would sell seas. If I was a bird, I would sell skies. If I was a monkey, I would sell trees. If I was a dog, I would sell plains. If I was a bear, I would sell caves. If I was a goat, I would sell mountains. If I was a fox, I would sell wit. If I was a dove, I would sell peace. If I was a bear, I would sell valor. If I was a camel, I would sell grit. If I was an owl, I would sell wisdom. If I was a lion, I would sell strength. If I was an elephant, I would sell might.

But it is hard to keep within bounds in that which you believe to be good. The real good may be coveted with safety. Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purposes, from right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path. For men who leap from one purpose to another, or do not even leap but are carried over by a sort of hazard, – how can such wavering and unstable persons possess any good that is fixed and lasting? There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose; the rest do not proceed; they are merely swept along, like objects afloat in a river. And of these objects, some are held back by sluggish waters and are transported gently; others are torn along by a more violent current; some, which are nearest the bank, are left there as the current slackens; and others are carried out to sea by the onrush of the stream. Therefore, we should decide what we wish, and abide by the decision.

We feel the life and motion about us, and the universal beauty: the tides marching back and forth with weariless industry, laving the beautiful shores, and swaying the purple dulse of the broad meadows of the sea where the fishes are fed, the wild streams in rows white with waterfalls, ever in bloom and ever in song, spreading their branches over a thousand mountains; the vast forests feeding on the drenching sunbeams, every cell in a whirl of enjoyment; misty flocks of insects stirring all the air, the wild sheep and goats on the grassy ridges above the woods, bears in the berry-tangles, mink and beaver and otter far back on many a river and lake; Indians and adventurers pursuing their lonely ways; birds tending to their young—everywhere, everywhere, beauty and life, and glad, rejoicing action. In this moment, he was experiencing what the Stoics would call sympatheia—a connectedness with the cosmos. The French philosopher Pierre Hadot has referred to it as the “oceanic feeling.” A sense of belonging to something larger, of realizing that “human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity.

At the spring of the River Ar I named you,' the mage said, 'a stream that falls from the mountain to the sea. A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea. You returned to Gont, you returned to me, Ged. Now turn clear round, and seek the very source, and that which lies before the source. There lies your hope of strength.

So of the Flanders Moss. It, too, in mist seems to roll on for miles; its heathy surface turns to long waves that paly against the foot of the low range of hills, and beat upon Craigforth as if it were an island in the sea. Through wreathes of steam, the sullen Forth winds in and out between the peat hags, and when a slant of wind leaves it clear for an instant it looks mysterious and dark, as might a stream of quicksilver running down from a mine. When a fish leaps, the sound re-echoes like a bell, as it falls back into the water, and rings spread out till they are lost beneath the banks.

. “You will be fine, moa kiri. You are strong. Life and magic and strength flows through your veins. You are a wellspring of power, a queen of all waters. All the life and energy and vitality in every ocean, every sea, every river, lake and stream lives in you. And if you need more, then take it from me. What is mine is yours without question or limits. So long as there is breath in my lungs, you will never stop breathing. So long as my heart beats, yours will never stop. Whatever pain you have, let me bear it for you. I offer my strength and magic and life force to nourish your own. Stay with me, moa kiri. Live for me.

Sometimes, the youthful Hebe would insist on scattering her father`s seed further afield, & to various places, inside & outside Greece, & even in Italy. And when the seed of the King of the Gods was scattered into the rivers & streams, lakes & ponds, & the springs in the woods, Satyrs of various types were born, & also Nymphs & Naiads, those usually described as "the sons & daughters of Zeus", not those of Oceanus & Tethys, just as the Sea Nymphs, other than the Nereids, were the daughters of Poseidon. And this also accounts for the many cities, villages & places inside & outside Greece, said to be founded by a son or daughter of Zeus.

Everything on Earth and everything that must exist in the heavens poured exultantly and noiselessly through me in a single stream. In bliss barely supportable by the human heart, I felt as if slowly revolving, graceful spheres glided through me in a universal dance, and everything I could think of or imagine merged in a jubilant oneness. The ancient forests and clear rivers, the people sleeping by the fire, the peoples of countries near and far, cities waking up and busy streets, cathedrals with sacred icons, seas tossing tirelessly, and steppes with blowing grass – everything indeed was within me that night, and I was within everything.

They [mountains] are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried sunlight—that is what it is. Now think: out of that caldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped—up and away, and there they stand in the cool, cold sky—mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about the very look of a mountain: from the darkness—for where the light has nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness—from the heat, from the endless tumult of boiling unrest—up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers; and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the glaciers fresh-born. Think too of the change in their own substance—no longer molten and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its armour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down the valleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! But the inside, who shall tell what lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tin or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones—perhaps a brook, with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaseless, cold and babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes, or over a gravel of which some of the stones are rubies and emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires—who can tell?—and whoever can't tell is free to think—all waiting to flash, waiting for millions of ages—ever since the earth flew off from the sun, a great blot of fire, and began to cool. Then there are caverns full of water, numbing cold, fiercely hot—hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and rushes down the mountain side in torrents, and down the valleys in rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountain tops and the snow, the solid ice, and the molten stream.

Except for the Marabar Caves—and they are twenty miles off—the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than washed by the river Ganges, it trails for a couple of miles along the bank, scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so freely. There are no bathing-steps on the river front, as the Ganges happens not to be holy here; indeed there is no river front, and bazaars shut out the wide and shifting panorama of the stream. The streets are mean, the temples ineffective, and though a few fine houses exist they are hidden away in gardens or down alleys whose filth deters all but the invited guest. Chandrapore was never large or beautiful, but two hundred years ago it lay on the road between Upper India, then imperial, and the sea, and the fine houses date from that period. The zest for decoration stopped in the eighteenth century, nor was it ever democratic. There is no painting and scarcely any carving in the bazaars. The very wood seems made of mud, the inhabitants of mud moving. So abased, so monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil. Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life.

From the still heart of darkness two notes echoed forth, one low, one high- and the eternal globe immediately spun into motion. Blessed be the first octave that opened this heavenly hymn! Let it gather the days from sabbath to sabbath into its magic web. It sings from the hills to the valleys, from the springs to the streams, from the streams to the rivers, from the rivers to the seas; its music trembles through the air and sets the budding flowers ashimmer. The earth's quivering breast heaves a sigh of love, and the chorus of stars reverberates through infinity, now receding, now returning back on itself, now contracting, now expanding, scattering the seeds of new creations far and wide.

London’s lost rivers had taken on a romantic sort of mystery in popular awareness. The idea of waters flowing on and on in the endless darkness under the city streets was deliciously eerie, and of course lost and abandoned tunnels and caverns had always appealed to a certain sort of adventurous spirit. Even the names were evocative: the Tyburn, the Fleet, the Effra, the Westbourne, once broad streams in their own right—now bound and channeled in the bowels of the ancient city, but not entirely forgotten. The old rivers flowed now in a muffled roar and chime of water through cathedrals of tile and brick, unseen arches and coigns of gorgeous complexity guiding and shaping their eventual journey to the sea.

It was the Kojagar full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool? But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island sand-bank. It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,—all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore—the shore of life—where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold sway, and tea and cigarettes.

Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again. But the longing voice had changed. It still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices.

In the deep woods of the far North, under feathery leaves of fern, was a great fairyland of merry elves, sometimes called forest brownies. These elves lived joyfully. They had everything at hand and did not need to worry much about living. Berries and nuts grew plentiful in the forest. Rivers and springs provided the elves with crystal water. Flowers prepared them drink from their flavorful juices, which the munchkins loved greatly. At midnight the elves climbed into flower cups and drank drops of their sweet water with much delight. Every elf would tell a wonderful fairy tale to the flower to thank it for the treat. Despite this abundance, the pixies did not sit back and do nothing. They tinkered with their tasks all day long. They cleaned their houses. They swung on tree branches and swam in forested streams. Together with the early birds, they welcomed the sunrise, listened to the thunder growling, the whispering of leaves and blades of grass, and the conversations of the animals. The birds told them about warm countries, sunbeams whispered of distant seas, and the moon spoke of treasures hidden deeply in the earth. In winter, the elves lived in abandoned nests and hollows. Every sunny day they came out of their burrows and made the forest ring with their happy shouts, throwing tiny snowballs in all directions and building snowmen as small as the pinky finger of a little girl. The munchkins thought they were giants five times as large as them. With the first breath of spring, the elves left their winter residences and moved to the cups of the snowdrop flowers. Looking around, they watched the snow as it turned black and melted. They kept an eye on the blossoming of hazel trees while the leaves were still sleeping in their warm buds. They observed squirrels moving their last winter supplies from storage back to their homes. Gnomes welcomed the birds coming back to their old nests, where the elves lived during winters. Little by little, the forest once more grew green. One moonlight night, elves were sitting at an old willow tree and listening to mermaids singing about their underwater kingdom. “Brothers! Where is Murzilka? He has not been around for a long time!” said one of the elves, Father Beardie, who had a long white beard. He was older than others and well respected in his striped stocking cap. “I’m here,” a snotty voice arose, and Murzilka himself, nicknamed Feather Head, jumped from the top of the tree. All the brothers loved Murzilka, but thought he was lazy, as he actually was. Also, he loved to dress in a tailcoat, tall black hat, boots with narrow toes, a cane and a single eyeglass, being very proud of that look. “Do you know where I’m coming from? The very Arctic Ocean!” roared he. Usually, his words were hard to believe. That time, though, his announcement sounded so marvelous that all elves around him were agape with wonder. “You were there, really? Were you? How did you get there?” asked the sprites. “As easy as ABC! I came by the fox one day and caught her packing her things to visit her cousin, a silver fox who lives by the Arctic Ocean. “Take me with you,” I said to the fox. “Oh, no, you’ll freeze there! You know, it’s cold there!” she said. “Come on.” I said. “What are you talking about? What cold? Summer is here.” “Here we have summer, but there they have winter,” she answered. “No,” I thought. “She must be lying because she does not want to give me a ride.” Without telling her a word, I jumped upon her back and hid in her bushy fur, so even Father Frost could not find me. Like it or not, she had to take me with her. We ran for a long time. Another forest followed our woods, and then a boundless plain opened, a swamp covered with lichen and moss. Despite the intense heat, it had not entirely thawed. “This is tundra,” said my fellow traveler. “Tundra? What is tundra?” asked I. “Tundra is a huge, forever frozen wetland covering the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean.

Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion. But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it. The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.—“Like me.

I take a deep, shuddery breath to stop myself crying. It’s not just that I can’t hold Aoife again, it’s everything: It’s grief for the regions we deadlanded, the ice caps we melted, the Gulf Stream we redirected, the rivers we drained, the coasts we flooded, the lakes we choked with crap, the seas we killed, the species we drove to extinction, the pollinators we wiped out, the oil we squandered, the drugs we rendered impotent, the comforting liars we voted into office—all so we didn’t have to change our cozy lifestyles. People talk about the Endarkenment like our ancestors talked about the Black Death, as if it’s an act of God. But we summoned it, with every tank of oil we burned our way through. My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing—while denying—that we’d be doing a runner and leaving our grandchildren a tab that can never be paid.

PSALM 46 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see what the LORD has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Then there are caverns full of water, numbingly cold, fiercely hot—hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and rushes down the Mountainside in torrents, and down the valleys in rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountaintops and the snow, the solid ice, and the molten stream.

PILGRIM I bow to the lark and its tiny lifted silhouette fluttering before infinity. I promise myself to the mountain and to the foundation from which my future comes. I make my vow to the stream flowing beneath, and to the water falling towards all thirst, and I pledge myself to the sea to which it goes and to the mercy of my disappearance, and though I may be left alone or abandoned by the unyielding present or orphaned in some far unspoken place, I will speak with a voice of loyalty and faith to the far shore where everything turns to arrival, if only in the sound of falling waves and I will listen with sincere and attentive eyes and ears for a final invitation, so that I can be that note half-heard in the flying lark song, or that tint on a far mountain brushed with the subtle grey of dawn, even a river gone by still looking as if it hasn’t, or an ocean heard only as the sound of waves falling and falling, and falling, my eyes closing with them into some undeserved nothing even as they give up their strength on the sand.

PSALM 46 God is our  crefuge and strength, a very dpresent [2] help in etrouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear  fthough the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into  gthe heart of the sea, 3 though  hits waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah 4 There is  ia river whose streams make glad  jthe city of God, the holy  khabitation of the Most High. 5  lGod is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. 6  mThe nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he  nutters his voice, the earth  omelts. 7  pThe LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah 8  qCome, behold the works of the LORD, how he has brought desolations on the earth. 9  rHe makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he  sbreaks the bow and shatters the spear; the burns the chariots with fire. 10  u“Be still, and know that I am God. vI will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” 11  pThe LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

And Ulf said, "There sets, O King, a river outward from earth which meets with a mighty sea whose waters rollthrough space and fling their billows on the shores of every star. These are the river and the sea of the Tears of Men." And the King said: "Men have not written of this sea." And the prophet answered: "Have not tears enough burst in the night time out of sleeping cities? Have not the sorrows of 10,000 homes sent streams into this river when twilight fell and it was still and there was none to hear? Have there not been hopes, and were they all fulfilled? Have there not been conquests and bitter defeats? And have not flowers when spring was over died in the gardens of many children? Tears enough, O King, tears enough have gone down out of earth to make such a sea; and deep it is and wide and the gods know it and it flings its spray on the shores of all the stars. Down this river and across this sea thou shalt fare in a ship of sighs and all around thee over the sea shall fly the prayers of men which rise on white wings higher than their sorrows.

Perhaps the most remarkable geological observation ever made by a Muslim scientist, however, is al-Birūni's identification of the Ganges Plain in India as a sedimentary deposit. After studying extensively all aspects of India including its natural forms al-Birūni wrote in his unique work Taḥqīq mā li'l-hind (India): 'One of these plains is India, limited in the south by the above-mentioned Indian Ocean, and on three sides by lofty mountains, the waters of which flow down to it. But if you see the soil of India with your own eyes and meditate on its nature, if you consider the rounded stones found in the earth however deeply you dig, stones that are huge near the mountains and where the rivers have violent current, stones that are of smaller size at a greater distance from the mountains and where the streams flow more slowly, stones that appear pulverized in the shape of sand where the streams begin to stagnate near their mouths and near the sea — if you consider all this, you can scarcely help thinking that India was once a sea, which by degrees had been filled up the alluvium of the streams.

MAY 7 IN THE NAME OF MY SON YOU WILL DRY UP THE SEAS OF DEMONIC POWER DO NOT FEAR the sea or the demonic spirits that dwell there, for I am the One who commands the sea and its streams to run dry. I will turn rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground. I will cause the dry land to spring forth into watersprings and make a place for you to dwell. I have come to cause waters to burst forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. My highway of holiness shall be there, and you will walk on My road, for you are My redeemed child. Everlasting joy will be on your head, and you will find joy and gladness as all your sorrow and sighing flee away. PSALM 107:35–37; ISAIAH 35:6–10 Prayer Declaration Father, You have dried up the rivers and seas that the enemy brought into my life to bring me to destruction. You have opened the waters of the deep and destroyed the enemy’s threats against me. You have established Your highway of holiness and have set my feet upon it. I will be found there, and I will walk with You in joy and gladness as Your ransomed child.

I will rouse you from your sleep, you who have given yourself up to recitation, who have taken the study of the Qur’an as a practice, who have seized upon some of its outward meanings and sentences. How long will you wander about the shore of the sea with your eyes closed to its wonders? Was it not for you to sail through its depths in order to see its amazing things, to travel to its islands to pick its delicacies, to dive to its bottom and become rich from obtaining its jewels? Don’t you despise yourself for losing out on its pearls and jewels as you continue to look only to its shores and esoteric aspects? Haven’t you heard that the Qur’an is an ocean from which the knowledge of all ages branches out just as rivers and streams branch out from the shores of the ocean? Don’t you envy the happiness of people who have plunged into its overflowing waves and seized red sulfur, who have dived into its depths and taken out red rubies, shining pearls and green chrysolite, who have roamed its shores and gathered gray ambergris and fresh blooming aloes wood, who have clung to its islands and found an abundance in their animals of the greatest antidote and pungent musk?

In 1498, Vasco da Gama the Portuguese navigator explored this eastern coast of Africa flanking the Indian Ocean. This led him to open a trade route to Asia and occupy Mozambique to the Portuguese colony. In 1840, it came under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar and became a British protectorate in 1895, with Mombasa as its capital. Nairobi, lying 300 miles to the northwest of Mombasa is the largest city in Kenya. It became the capital in 1907 and is the fastest growing urban area in the Republic having become independent of the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963 and declared a republic the following year on December 12, 1964. Kenya is divided by the 38th meridian of longitude into two very different halves. The eastern half of Kenya slopes towards the coral-backed seashore of the Indian Ocean while the western side rises through a series of hills to the African Shear Zone or Central Rift. West of the Rift, the lowest part of a westward-sloping plateau contains Lake Victoria. This, the largest lake in Africa, receives most of its water from rain, the Kagera River and countless small streams. Its only outlet is the White Nile River which is part of the longest river on Earth. Combined, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, stretches 4,160 miles before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.

Fear is one of the biggest single factors that deprives one of being able to achieve your full potential. We experience fear more as a result of our internal communication of mind rather than because of actual external factors.Fear is an unseen enemy that whispers negative thoughts into your mind, body and soul. It tries to convince you that you will not prosper and that you cannot achieve your full potential.Our lives can be compared to beautiful streams, which are destined to flow, grow in majesty to create wonderful features such as cascading waterfalls, and give nourishment and life to those in its path.Sometimes we let fear put up a small dam in our rivers of life and it causes us to have stunted growth. We need to be able to rise above it, rise above the fear, break the dam and let our potential flow.When we allow fear to create dams in our rivers of life, then our streams become like the Dead Sea, which is stagnant and void of life and movement. When we confront fear, we break the dams and free our potential to flow forward.We are beings of immense potential, ability and skills. In order to realize our God given talents we need to break through the fear barrier, which through its invisible walls traps us better than any physical prison can be constructed by the hands of man. Our human will and faith can break any barriers that fear can construct.

They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship—like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags—the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. 'Look at dese cattle,' said the German skipper to his new chief mate.

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

Space is cold and stiff, but Time is alive. Space divides, but Time brings everything to everything else. It does not course outside of you and you do not swim upon it like a drifting log. Time flows through you: you yourself are in flow. You are the river. Are you grieving? Trust Time: soon you will be laughing. Are you laughing? You cannot hold fast your laughing, for soon you will be weeping. You are blown from mood to mood, from one state to another, from waking to sleeping and from sleeping again to waking. You cannot go on wandering for long. You come to a halt, you are tired, you are hungry, you must sit down, you eat, you stand again, you begin anew to wander. You suffer: from the distance unattainable, you glimpse the Deed which you long. But the stream is constantly moving you and one morning the hour of action has arrived. You are a child, and never (so you think) will you escape the helplessness of childhood, which locks you into four windowless walls. But look: your wall itself movable and yielding, and your whole being becomes re-fashioned into a youth. From within yourself there rise hidden springs that leap up to yourself. Posibilities open up before you like flowers, and one day the world has grown all around you. Softly, Time transports you from one curve to another. New vistas and horizons unfold at your side as you pass by. You begin to love the change: you've discovered an extraordinary adventure is afoot. You sense a direction, you feel a new impulse, you can smell the sea. And you see that what changes in you changes also in everything around you. Every point you hurriedly pass by is itself in movement. Every point is being whirled in some direction: its own long history is following its course: but each point knows the ending of its history no more than you know that of yours. You glance up to heaven, Sublime is the rotation of its suns, but these are each heavily laden with their planetary systems as with grapes, and they dash away from one another into already-prepared distances and unfathomable spaces. You smash atoms and they swarm about in more confusion that if you had stamped your foot on an anthill. You seek a mainstay and a temperament law in the temperate mid-region of our earth, but here, too, there is nothing but constant event changing history, and no one can forecast for you even next week's clouds.

There are halibut as big as doors in the ocean down below the town, flapskimming on the murky ocean floor with vast skates and rays and purple crabs and black cod large as logs, and sea lions slashing through the whip-forests of bull kelp and eelgrass and sugar wrack, and seals in the rockweed and giant perennial kelp and iridescent kelp and iridescent fish and luminous shrimp too small to see with the naked eye but billions of which feed the gray whales which slide hugely slowly by like rubbery zeppelins twice a year, north in spring and south in fall. Salmonberries, thimbleberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, bearberries, snowberries, salal berries, elderberries, blackberries along the road and by the seasonal salt marshes north and south. The ground squirrels burrow along the dirt banks of the back roads, their warren of mysterious holes, the thick scatter of fine brown soil before their doorsteps, the flash of silver-gray on their back fur as they rocket into the bushes; the bucks and does and fawns in the road in the morning, their springy step as they slip away from the gardens they have been eating; the bobcat seen once, at dusk, its haunches jacked up like a teenager's hot-rodding car; the rumor of cougar in the hills; the coyotes who use the old fire road in the hills; the tiny mice and bats one sometimes finds long dead and leathery like ancient brown paper; the little frenetic testy chittering skittering cheeky testy chickaree squirrels in the spruces and pines - Douglas squirrels, they are, their very name remembering that young gentleman botanist who wandered near these hills centuries ago. The herons in marshes and sinks and creeks and streams and on the beach sometimes at dusk; and the cormorants and pelicans and sea scoters and murres (poor things so often dead young on the beach after the late-spring fledging) and jays and crows and quorking haunted ravens (moaning Poe! Poe! at dusk) especially over the wooded hills, and the goldfinches mobbing thistles in the meadowed hills, and sometimes a falcon rocketing by like a gleeful murderous dream, and osprey of all sizes all along the Mink like an osprey police lineup, and the herring gulls and Caspian terns and arctic terns, and the varied thrushes in wet corners of thickets, and the ruffed grouse in the spruce by the road, and the quail sometimes, and red-tailed hawks floating floating floating; from below they look like kites soaring brownly against the piercing blue sky, which itself is a vast creature bluer by the month as summer deepens into crispy cold fall.

He'd found a sweet-water stream that I drank from, and for dinner we found winkles that we ate baked on stones. We watched the sun set like a peach on the sea, making plans on how we might live till a ship called by. Next we made a better camp beside a river and had ourselves a pretty bathing pool all bordered with ferns; lovely it was, with marvelous red parrots chasing through the trees. Our home was a hut made of branches thatched with flat leaves, a right cozy place to sleep in. We had fat birds that Jack snared for our dinner, and made fire using a shard of looking glass I found in my pocket. We had lost the compass in the water, but didn't lament it. I roasted fish and winkles in the embers. For entertainment we even had Jack's penny whistle. It was a paradise, it was." "You loved him," her mistress said softly, as her pencil resumed its hissing across the paper. Peg fought a choking feeling in her chest. Aye, she had loved him- a damned sight more than this woman could ever know. "He loved me like his own breath," she said, in a voice that was dangerously plaintive. "He said he thanked God for the day he met me." Peg's eyes brimmed full; she was as weak as water. The rest of her tale stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Mrs. Croxon murmured that Peg might be released from her pose. Peg stared into space, again seeing Jack's face, so fierce and true. He had looked down so gently on her pitiful self; on her bruises and her bony body dressed in salt-hard rags. His blue eyes had met hers like a beacon shining on her naked soul. "I see past your always acting the tough girl," he insisted with boyish stubbornness. "I'll be taking care of you now. So that's settled." And she'd thought to herself, so this is it, girl. All them love stories, all them ballads that you always thought were a load of old tripe- love has found you out, and here you are. Mrs. Croxon returned with a glass of water, and Peg drank greedily. She forced herself to continue with self-mocking gusto. "When we lay down together in our grass house we whispered vows to stay true for ever and a day. We took pleasure from each other's bodies, and I can tell you, mistress, he were no green youth, but all grown man. So we were man and wife before God- and that's the truth." She faced out Mrs. Croxon with a bold stare. "You probably think such as me don't love so strong and tender, but I loved Jack Pierce like we was both put on earth just to find each other. And that night I made a wish," Peg said, raising herself as if from a trance, "a foolish wish it were- that me and Jack might never be rescued. That the rotten world would just leave us be.

1They raised me up into a certain place, where there was the appearance of a burning fire; and when they pleased they assumed the likeness of men. 2They carried me to a lofty spot, to a mountain, the top of which reach to heaven. 3And I beheld the receptacles of light and of thunder at the extremities of the place, where it was deepest. There was a bow of fire, and arrows in their quiver, a sword of fire, and every species of lightning. 4Then they elevated me to a babbling stream, and to a fire in the west, which received all the setting of the sun. I came to a river of fire, which flowed like water, and emptied itself into the great sea westwards. 5I saw every large river, until I arrived at the great darkness. I went to where all of flesh migrate; and I beheld the mountains of the gloom which constitutes winter, and the place from which issues the water in every abyss. 6I saw also the mouths of all the rivers in the world, and the mouths of the deep.

Clouds are very pretty from above. You can really appreciate their unique shapes, consistencies, the different colors they reflect. And that they’re a part of a system. If they were to turn gray and break, water would fall onto the mountains and flow down streams to lakes and rivers and eventually the sea. The water would support the cities and suburbs and the rural towns and farmland you can also see up here, down through them, the clouds. Haruka has a view of it all.

Classical theology saw nature as a book, reading its symbols in order to understand the mind of a heavenly author. Our culture reads nature like a map, defined by roads leading to roads leading to places of money, the land merely blank space…there is another kind of vision. The eyes feel the curve and slope of the earth as it flows, following the water to the sea. The mind follows as well, wondering what creek lies below, what stream below that, what river. It is a geographic vision. What is here does not end here; all is unbroken. Place molds the sensual mind. The essays in this book are now also part of…the grain of this place. They explore with uncommon sensitivity what it means to be at home on the earth. There is no one way to do so; there are various kinds of settings in which this can and must be accomplished…what we make of ourselves and of our society is linked to what we make of the earth, and how we let the earth make us.

Your people suffer not because of any great will of the gods, but because of their own violent acts. They wage the wars that burn the forest and fields. They spill the blood, the pollutes, the rivers and streams. To blame the gods is to blame the land itself. Look upon your reflection to find your enemy.

Against All Odds --- Nobody taught me how to swim. So, I swam and followed the rivers, hoping that I'd end up in the ocean; the calm seas. To see some dolphins and the colourful fish. But the river that chose me was long with hard turns, blockages, and fishing traps. On some days, the river would run dry, leaving me nowhere but in the middle of hard cracks. While suffering underneath the hot sun, the rains would hit again on my sore flesh. Luckily by then, I'd still be breathing; even though affected, harmed, and bleeding. But, I had a dream that was heavier than my challenges. So I continued with my journey, following the stream of the river. Hoping to reach the ocean; the calm seas. Some days the current would be brutal, even though I was flowing with it. It would hit on my body, my bones would crack. Sometimes the river would eject me to the side. Where I'd need to survive while I found my way back to it. I'd have to fend off snakes, defending myself from harm and malice. Back in the river, I'd have to fend off scorpions, rocks, and the debris. So, there I went, alone in the river I flowed. At times I'd meet with swimmers who'd be cooling off from the same waters. Some were kayaking; others fishing. All oblivious to my dreams, and to my state of struggle. Some would greet me; smiling at me. While some laughed the hardest, laughing at me. Some would express pity, while some expressed their sympathy. Some would pretend that I wasn't even there. And those who ignored me equalled my presence to that of the debris. I remember that a few picked me up and placed me in their small boats; helping me to cruise afloat. But, eventually, they left me in my struggle too. Those who carried me, left me in the rivers where they'd found me. Those who passed me by, passed-by me again on the following days. Some shouted the loudest from their lungs encouraging me from the sides. Telling me that I was almost reaching the seas. That the ocean was at a hand's reach. But those who shouted the most rarely did anything else to help. I also learnt that those who picked me up rarely shouted about their help. Some used my vulnerability to gain charity points. They'd say, "see I helped her, now clap for me from your joints". But, above all the help, true or fake, my dream was carrying me for my sake. With my dream to reach the ocean, the calm seas, I held my head the highest and swam beyond all the peaks.

I lay in the rain as it made intricate rivers that flowed off my nose and along the peaks and valleys of my face. I could almost feel memories encapsulated in the different streams. Water pooled in the leeward side of my mouth after cascading across the rapids of my front teeth. In the previous hours, my jaw and mouth went limp from their newfound home on the ground. They now served for little more than a shitty birdbath. I wished the water would drown me.

THE BASIC ACUPUNCTURE POINTS The points are the entryways to the meridians. They are called acupuncture points, meridian points, or acupoints. Each of the points has a particular effect on the different currents and organs in the body. Their names and purposes differ slightly from system to system, but there are some commonly accepted points. Here are a few. THE FIVE TRANSPORTING POINTS In five-phase theory, there are five “transporting points” that are described using a river analogy. Chi moves along the rivers or channels of the meridian as does water in a river, lake, or other body of water. For instance, chi might “bubble up” from a spring before “gliding” into a channel. The five major transporting points are located on each channel, starting at the fingers or toes and stopping at the elbows or knees. At each point, the flow of chi appears as it is described by name: Well, Spring, Stream, River, and Sea.57 More formal names are: Jing (well): Where the chi “bubbles up.” These are the first on the yang channels or last on the yin channels, with the exception of certain points on the tips of the fingers and toes. Ying (spring): Where the chi “glides” down the channel. Two types, the nan jing and nei jing, describe ying-spring points for heat in the body and changes in complexion. Shu (stream): Where the chi “pours” down the channel. Shu-stream points are indicated for treating heaviness in the body and pain in the joints, and for intermittent diseases. Jing (river): Where the chi “flows” down the channel. He (sea): Where the chi collects and then travels deeper into the body.

Let my power take root. Let it spread deep in the earth, in the wind in the trees, in the fire on the mountain, in the running of the stream. Let it send the darkness back, back, until the rivers run clear and the flowers bud and bloom and our people are free.

Two thousand golden warriors rose up behind the Scarlet Swordsman one final time. Then two more followed, and two more came after them, and so on until all the free space of the steppe was filled by the golden army. The spectators presumed that the army was going to rush into battle, but something unexpected happened. Damage began to appear on the warriors’ armor: cuts, holes, even horrific lacerations through which the people could see their terrible wounds, which oozed blood. The streams of blood gushing out of the dying golden warriors became rivers, then merged into a sea, which rose into the air like a tsunami.

Dear Lord, Please, forgive their visions, and let them hear the vulture's apology to its prey, lest they think you made some, killers, and some, killed. Lay in their hearts a blue morning star, to show them the course of laughs in the wind of sea, adorn their dreams with the meaning of life, so they know that you are the creator of beauty, too. Sprinkle their roads with diamonds of your words, so they break the walls in their souls and fly to you washed like air in the rain. Dear Lord, At the beat of sins, in a valley only eminent from rapture by an illusion, I stand, naked of all hate, flooding with love. The honey of your grace drips over my body, and creatures smile. Like your power taught me, I forgive sinners in routs of ignorance and roads of knowledge. I look under my feet lest I block the way of ants. I look up at your sky to thank you for a star that embraced my heart with illumination, I kneel before you, for you taught me how to fill the chalice of love, and pour it in the grieving river, turning its stream into a rhythm, and its water, into a mother's touch on the head of a lonely orphan. Dear Lord, I know your wisdom in creating pain. They don't.

Dear Lord, Please, forgive their visions, and let them hear the vulture's apology to its prey. Lay in their hearts a blue morning star, to show them the course of laughs in the wind of sea. Adorn their dreams with the meaning of life, so they know that You are the Creator of beauty, too. Sprinkle their roads with diamonds of Your words, so they break the walls in their souls, and fly to You washed like air in the rain. Dear Lord, At the beat of sins, in a valley only eminent from rapture by an illusion, I stand, empty of all hate, flooding with love. The honey of Your grace drips over me, and creatures smile. Like Your power taught me, I forgive sinners in routs of ignorance and roads of knowledge. I look under my feet lest I block the way of ants. I look up at Your sky to thank You for a star that embraced my heart with illumination. I kneel before You, for You taught me how to fill the chalice of love, and pour it in the grieving river, turning its stream into a rhythm, and its water, into a mother's touch on the head of a lonely orphan. Dear Lord, I know Your wisdom in creating pain. They don't.