Weed Inspirational Quotes

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.

Don't let the tall weeds cast a shadow on the beautiful flowers in your garden.

The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.

Disappointments are like weeds in the garden. You can let them grow and take over your life, or you can rout them out and let the flowers sprout.

It's disturbing how fast weeds take root in my garden of worthiness. They're so hard to pull. And grow back so easily.

When life is not coming up roses Look to the weeds and find the beauty hidden within them.

The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on. I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.

Pick the weeds and keep the flowers.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship

Ladies, it’s harvest time!!! Take care of your crops, water them and weed them out.

If you tend to a flower, it will bloom, no matter how many weeds surround it.

They're just weeds, love, they don't belong anywhere.' Her granddaughter stuck out her bottom lip and furrowed her brow. 'That doesn't seem very nice. Everything belongs somewhere.

LOOK AROUND. GAME DEAD, RIVERS BLACK, LAND CHOKED WITH WEED. SKIES BLEEDING, RED AS BLOOD. FOR WHAT? YOUR KIND ARE BLIND. YOU SEE ONLY THE NOW. NEVER THE WILL BE. BUT SOON YOU WILL. WHEN ALL IS GONE, WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY MONKEY-CHILDREN THAT YOU MURDER FOR A SCRAP OF LAND, A DROP OF CLEAN WATER, THEN YOU WILL SEE.

Fear is like a weed in a garden. Once you allow it to take root, it spreads, replicating itself, until, eventually, it chokes out all the other life there. Trust, love, kindness – none of those things can ever really bloom in a garden of fear.

Awake! arise! the hour is late! Angels are knocking at thy door! They are in haste and cannot wait, And once departed come no more. Awake! arise! the athlete's arm Loses its strength by too much rest; The fallow land, the untilled farm Produces only weeds at best.

The garden of faith Has no room to grow a weed like fear.

I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.

I only thought Of lying quiet there where I was thrown Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her To prick me to a pattern with her pin, Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf, And dry out from my drowned anatomy The last sea-salt left in me.

Its all a matter of weeding out the bad and cultivating more productive thoughts. And just like pulling weeds, you have to get to the root otherwise that weed, the self-doubt, that negative programming, will spring back up and shoke off the flower that can blossom for you in the future.Be consistent. Apply that "weed off" whenever you feel the need. Every day see the brighter side of things. Continually tell yourself how lucky you are, how good your life is right now, and how things can only get better

Do you want to flourish in the garden of life? Life's gardeners pluck the weeds and care only for the productive plants.

You have planted many seeds in the garden of possibilities. Meditation is the art removing the weeds from the garden of possibilities.

To him, she was like a flower that bloomed in the snow. Thriving under conditions in which nothing could grow. To some, she was a weed born benighted. But in his eyes, she was a wildflower with a soul ignited.

Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.

I open my arms wide and let the wind flow over me. I love the universe and the universe loves me. That’s the one-two punch right there, wanting to love and wanting to be loved. Everything else is pure idiocy—shiny fancy outfits, Geech-green Cadillacs, sixty-dollar haircuts, schlock radio, celebrity-rehab idiots, and most of all, the atomic vampires with their de-soul-inators, and flag-draped coffins. Goodbye to all that, I say. And goodbye to Mr. Asterhole and the Red Death of algebra and to the likes of Geech and Keeeevin. Goodbye to Mom’s rented tan and my sister’s chargecard boobs. Goodbye to Dad for the second and last time. Goodbye to black spells and jagged hangovers, divorces, and Fort Worth nightmares. To high school and Bob Lewis and once-upon-a-time Ricky. Goodbye to the future and the past and, most of all, to Aimee and Cassidy and all the other girls who came and went and came and went. Goodbye. Goodbye. I can’t feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic “weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now

...ugly interlopers threaten to choke off your story, depriving it of much-needed nutrition, sunlight and water. Identify and cut those weeds – the life-sucking adverbs, the shade-killing descriptions that don’t move the story forward, the crowding passive voice sentences.

The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if they had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought --to call it by a prouder name than it deserved-- had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until --you know the little tug -- the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.

Small herbs have grace, great weeds to grow apace.

Roses do not take beauty advice from weeds.

Your tears only water your weeds

A flower does not diminish in beauty, no matter how many weeds envy it.

Stick with the wrong person long enough and they'll convince you that your flowers are weeds.

Everything is in the root. If you pick the weed without getting the root out of the soil, be assured, it is going to grow back.

Get high on love, not drugs.

Everything is in the root. If you pick the weed without getting the root out of the soil, be assured, it is going to grow back.

An anxious mind makes lions of tumble weeds.

We can't stop anyone to love somebody, neither we could stop someone to go away! What we can do is to just love truly.

Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find in it a kind of soothing monotony. It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative's latest example of unreasonableness.

So much of my life had been spent taking and taking and taking. Thinking it was all about me, believing that everything came down to me and how I felt, what I wanted. Even in my grasping attempts to know God, I did exactly that: I grasped. I sought. Sometimes I waited. But I never opened myself, spread my soul wide as an offering so He could come and capture me. I never let Him run strong fingers through my soil, watering it with His grace so my fruit could grow and grow above the weeds that threatened to choke it out.

I always wondered how a wildflower can be so soft when it is stepped on and covered by weeds. It is because the earth has covered it in boundless, endless love. I am a wildflower; there is no such thing as being tamed; we take what is given and somehow find our way.

Establishing yourself as a scientist takes an awfully long time. The riskiest part is learning what a true scientist is and then taking the first shaky steps down that path, which will become a road, which will become a highway, which will maybe someday lead you home. A true scientist doesn’t perform prescribed experiments; she develops her own and thus generates wholly new knowledge. This transition between doing what you’re told and telling yourself what to do generally occurs midway through a dissertation. In many ways, it is the most difficult and terrifying thing that a student can do, and being unable or unwilling to do it is much of what weeds people out of Ph.D. programs.

Healing is comparable to a garden. It needs tended to on a consistent basis. For weeds to be pulled out. The garden needs water and sunshine in effort to grow. Like a lotus flower, you will sprout through the soil, reaching up through the dark water towards the sunlight, stretching to the surface where you will beautifully bloom.

The leader acknowledges and eradicates the weeds in the garden, but keeps vision on the beauty they are creating and not on the weeds they are destroying

Don’t waste time watering a weed hoping to transform it into a flower.

If there has to be one flower that springs from the weeds, let that flower be YOU.

There may be weeds in my life, but the sun outweighs all of the bad.

Resentment is the weed that chokes the orchard of happiness.

A relationship is like a garden. To create a condition that will cause your plants to thrive and produce abundantly, you must weed, water, fertilize, and care for the plants in your garden. You must also know about the special needs of the plants you're caring for. Some need more or less light than others, some need more or less water than others, and some need special fertilizers.

Who doesn't enjoy a little gardening? As we plant the seeds and remove the weeds we reap a wonderful harvest of blessings. What are the weeds? Anyone or anything that sucks the nutrients from the seeds we have planted. The seeds are our goals, desires, good thoughts and feelings. good works and deeds anything that uplifts us. If we don't keep up on our weeding then our garden will die.

He taught all to look upon themselves as endowed with precious talents, which if rightly employed would secure for them eternal riches. He weeded all vanity from life, and by His own example taught that every moment of time is fraught with eternal results; that it is to be cherished as a treasure, and to be employed for holy purposes. He passed by no human being as worthless, but sought to apply the saving remedy to every soul. In whatever company He found Himself, He presented a lesson that was appropriate to the time and the circumstances. He sought to inspire with hope the most rough and unpromising, setting before them the assurance that they might become blameless and harmless, attaining such a character as would make them manifest as the children of God. Often He met those who had drifted under Satan’s control, and who had no power to break from his snare. To such a one, discouraged, sick, tempted, and fallen, Jesus would speak words of tenderest pity, words that were needed and could be understood.

And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians – dead! – slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.” —Richard David Bach The caterpillar believes it is dying because it's being sealed in a tomb. The Master knows that the caterpillar is not dying, and is simply transitioning (to something more). This points out that things are never over, that change is carrying us, (so often kicking and screaming), to higher states of being. I find it interesting that the caterpillar spends it's caterpillar existence crawling, (on a lone weed in the midst of an endless beautiful forest), surviving on bitter, poisonous leaves. Yet resists the changes to come. After the caterpillars "death"... And upon the butterflie's rebirth... The butterfly lives out it's butterfly existence experiencing all of the forest's wonders, being carried by the wind, landing on beauty, and drinking sweet nectar, all the while, being shielded from harm by the caterpillar's bitter and poisonous experiences of eating the weeds. Without the struggles of the caterpillar, the butterfly could never be. It is Truly wonderful how something as simple as caterpillars and butterflies can be such amazing reminders sent to us by a Loving Eternal Creator.

It is difficult to be an artist, because what you can see needs to be done and what you can achieve are generally two very opposite things. The two are like yin and yang, north and south, positive and negative. What you see is just totally opposite of what the reality can be, and that's unfortunate. But there are things we can do. Writers can either repave--we fill in some of the cracks in the road that are already there--or we start to knock down some of the weeds to make a clearing in the wilderness.

It is these uncontrollable circumstances that pop up like weeds in the human soul. The effects of inner conflict are comparable to the childhood dizziness of a spinning game. It's only when you step out of the game for a moment, you are able to gain control and clarity.

Sharing a meal put people at ease, helped them forget the cameras were there, and inspired them to open up about their lives. Most importantly, food had become our cover, at least as far as I was concerned. In Iran and Laos, it was actually thought we were CIA like in the movie Argo. And in certain ways they were right. If it wasn’t for the cover of a “food show,” we never would have been able to get to the places we did. Season after season while planning the shoots, food had morphed from the show’s raison d’être to almost an afterthought. By the end, it was a show about people far more than one about food.

What does it matter if they’re weeds? They’re pretty all the same. In fact, I’d call them special compared to flowers. Weeds are stronger. They dominate. They grow everywhere, and some are just as pretty as any flower, but people still toss them aside because of what they are. It’s the title that does it, I think.

Being a man is the weeding and the watering and the fertilizing. Doing it not just once but ten thousand times. Not just when the mood strikes but precisely when it doesn't. When there's nothing you'd rather less than change another diaper, warm another bottle. Nothing you'd rather than sleep cause you ain't since the baby arrived shrieking like a banshee—

I developed an awe-inspired concept of being enveloped within nature and feeling like a tiny speck. This concept helps me change my body budget whenever I want. I can notice a tiny weed forcing its way through a crack in the sidewalk, proving yet again that nature cannot be tamed by civilization, and employ the same concept to take comfort in my insignificance.

I do not know what inspires the image of a fish but it comes to me, wide eyed, open mouthed and gaping, glimmering, swimming towards me as though a creature of the darkness come to claim me. I imagine it in a twinkling blue pool. It swims through the dark currents of the sea, gliding above sea weed, beneath sunlight, augmenting and shying away from the surface. It belongs to this element between land and sky, sifts through it, a creature of the deep. My mind drifts, fades, but then comes back to the fish: its glimmering scales, its strange beady eyes. Its body is contained within the water. It opens its mouth, moving it open and closed as though it’s trying to speak a language I never learned. I think about the fish’s lungs, full of water. Is not the sea contained within the fish, too?

I noticed regardless if they are surrounded by weeds, they still grow, and they are so colorful because there isn’t anyone to intervene with the process of Mother Nature. They know what to do. It comes naturally. I think everything should happen naturally, but that is impossible because humans are good at interfering with the natural process of life. They fuck it up, and that is why things are so complicated. They think they know what is best, but in reality, they are just in the way. They make things worse than they should be. If human beings just let nature take its course, I believe we would have more happy people in the world ... as opposed to people who suffer by the hands and actions of someone who has fucked up their life. Then they have to figure it out alone—regardless of age.

Think of your heart as a garden. If you want it to thrive and bloom, you need to water it with love, kindness, compassion, positivity, and gratitude. If you neglect your garden, all you may get in return are weeds. Certain seasons may come along to make conditions harsh for us, so our garden might shrink at times, but if we persevere, we know our garden will bloom again soon. We can turn life's hardship and experiences into fertilizer that helps us grow and flourish. With a beautiful heart, we can transform life's ugly situations into beautiful lessons. There's no way around it; a beautiful life can only come with a beautiful heart.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

{From Luther Burbank's funeral. He was loved until he revealed he was an atheist, then he began to receive death threats. He tried to amiably answer them all, leading to his death} It is impossible to estimate the wealth he has created. It has been generously given to the world. Unlike inventors, in other fields, no patent rights were given him, nor did he seek a monopoly in what he created. Had that been the case, Luther Burbank would have been perhaps the world's richest man. But the world is richer because of him. In this he found joy that no amount of money could give. And so we meet him here today, not in death, but in the only immortal life we positively know--his good deeds, his kindly, simple, life of constructive work and loving service to the whole wide world. These things cannot die. They are cumulative, and the work he has done shall be as nothing to its continuation in the only immortality this brave, unselfish man ever sought, or asked to know. As great as were his contributions to the material wealth of this planet, the ages yet to come, that shall better understand him, will give first place in judging the importance of his work to what he has done for the betterment of human plants and the strength they shall gain, through his courage, to conquer the tares, the thistles and the weeds. Then no more shall we have a mythical God that smells of brimstone and fire; that confuses hate with love; a God that binds up the minds of little children, as other heathen bind up their feet--little children equally helpless to defend their precious right to think and choose and not be chained from the dawn of childhood to the dogmas of the dead. Luther Burbank will rank with the great leaders who have driven heathenish gods back into darkness, forever from this earth. In the orthodox threat of eternal punishment for sin--which he knew was often synonymous with yielding up all liberty and freedom--and in its promise of an immortality, often held out for the sacrifice of all that was dear to life, the right to think, the right to one's mind, the right to choose, he saw nothing but cowardice. He shrank from such ways of thought as a flower from the icy blasts of death. As shown by his work in life, contributing billions of wealth to humanity, with no more return than the maintenance of his own breadline, he was too humble, too unselfish, to be cajoled with dogmatic promises of rewards as a sort of heavenly bribe for righteous conduct here. He knew that the man who fearlessly stands for the right, regardless of the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, was the real man. Rather was he willing to accept eternal sleep, in returning to the elements from whence he came, for in his lexicon change was life. Here he was content to mingle as a part of the whole, as the raindrop from the sea performs its sacred service in watering the land to which it is assigned, that two blades may grow instead of one, and then, its mission ended, goes back to the ocean from whence it came. With such service, with such a life as gardener to the lilies of the field, in his return to the bosoms of infinity, he has not lost himself. There he has found himself, is a part of the cosmic sea of eternal force, eternal energy. And thus he lived and always will live. Thomas Edison, who believes very much as Burbank, once discussed with me immortality. He pointed to the electric light, his invention, saying: 'There lives Tom Edison.' So Luther Burbank lives. He lives forever in the myriad fields of strengthened grain, in the new forms of fruits and flowers, plants, vines, and trees, and above all, the newly watered gardens of the human mind, from whence shall spring human freedom that shall drive out false and brutal gods. The gods are toppling from their thrones. They go before the laughter and the joy of the new childhood of the race, unshackled and unafraid.

Commitment is what transforms a dream into reality. One percent or ninety-nine percent complete are both incomplete. Wanting is wishing or dreaming. Deciding is the willingness to do whatever it takes to make your wishes and dreams come true. Pondering on what you are going to do actually sucks up more time and energy than going out there and doing it. If you’re planted in an environment with depleted soil loaded with weeds, your conditions must change in order for you grow and thrive. As you change your circle of influence, your thinking changes, and ultimately your world changes too. When you are too busy trying to outshine others, you miss out on your own inner spark. If your focus is on competing with others, you cannot complete you. Perfection is a myth, a misconception, and just an opinion. A well-tailored business suit might look perfect to a banker, but deemed to be dreadful to a heavy metal rocker. Going out of your comfort zone might be gut-wrenching, but dying with the music still inside is even more painful. Stagnation drains your energy and slowly sucks the life out of you. When you declutter your mental space, just like clearing out physical space, you find valuables you had long forgotten about. Keeping emotional toxin in your head is like fertilizing unwanted weeds. Positivity is your weed killer. Turn it around, and let that poison fuel your passion, just like farmers using manure to fertilize plants. Like eating, going to the bathroom, or exercising, self-transformation cannot be delegated. I was a sunflower trying to survive and grow in a stinky muddy swamp, but instead being strangled by a bunch of weeds.

Flower Beds by Maisie Aletha Smikle Flower beds in a row Like tic toc toe Spread the mulch Pluck the weeds and mow Water the flower beds And flowers will bud Colorful blooms All season long Welcome the sunshine From heaven’s furnace Anchored far up in the sky Gentle rays beam from up above A round ball of fire way up in the sky Always suspended in the anchored sky Shines its radiant beams from way up high Warming the sprouting flower beds Sunlight Moonlight Starlight Warm gentle and bright Make the flower beds bright Glowing softly in the night Thanks for the moon Thanks for the stars Thanks for the sun Thanks for the soft radiant beams of light That make the flower beds beautiful and bright In colorful shades of red Yellow orange black pink Purple green and white In the blooming flower bed Sat a rabbit called Skip Watching the horizon as the circle of fire slowly dip Diving slowly into the ocean deep

Springs and summers full of song and revolution. The Popular Front, demonstrations and confrontations, time that takes you away from yourself and your poetry, so that you could see them as if from cosmic space, a way of looking that changes everything into stars, our Earth, you and me, Estonia and Eritrea, blue anemones and the Pacific Ocean. Even the belief that you will write more poems. Something that was breathing into you, as May wind blows into a house bringing smells of mown grass and dogs' barks, - this something has dissipated, become invisible like stars in daylight. For quite a time I haven't permitted myself to hope it would come back. I know I am not free, I am nothing without this breathing, inspiration, wind that comes through the window. Let God be free, whether he exist or no. And then, it comes once again. At dusk in the countryside when I go to an outhouse, a little white moth flies out of the door. That's it, now. And the dusk around me begins little by little to breathe in words and syllables. * In the morning, I was presented to President Mitterrand, in the evening, I was weeding nettles from under the currant bushes. A lot happened inbetween, the ride from Tallinn to Tartu and to our country home through the spring that we had waited for so long, and that came, as always, unexpectedly, changing serious greyish Estonia at once into a primary school child's drawing in pale green, into a play-landscape where mayflies, mayors and cars are all somewhat tiny and ridiculous... In the evening I saw the full moon rising above the alder grove. Two bats circled over the courtyard. The President's hand was soft and warm. As were his eyes, where fatigue was, in a curious way, mingled with force, and depth with banality. He had bottomless night eyes with something mysterious in them like the paths of moles underground or the places where bats hibernate and sleep.

You were taught that even when the charism of celibacy and chastity is present and embraced, the attractions, the impulses, the desires will still be present. So the first thing you need to do is be aware that you are a human being, and no matter how saintly or holy you are, you will never remove yourself from those passions. But the idea was making prudent choices. You just walk away. Celibacy is a radical call, and you’ve made a decision not to act on your desire.” Today, seminaries say they screen applicants rigorously. In Boston, for example, a young man must begin conversations with the vocations director a year before applying for admissions, and then the application process takes at least four months. Most seminaries require that applicants be celibate for as long as five years before starting the program, just to test out the practice, and students are expected to remain celibate throughout seminary as they continue to discern whether they are cut out to lead the sexless life of an ordained priest. Some seminaries screen out applicants who say they are sexually attracted to other men, but most do not, arguing that there is no evidence linking sexual orientation to one’s ability to lead a celibate life. The seminaries attempt to weed out potential child abusers, running federal and local criminal background checks, but there is currently no psychological test that can accurately predict whether a man who has never sexually abused a child is likely to do so in the future. So seminary officials say that in the screening process, and throughout seminary training, they are alert to any sign that a man is not forming normal relationships with adults, or seems abnormally interested in children. Many potential applicants are turned away from seminaries, and every year some students are forced out. “Just because there’s a shortage doesn’t mean we should lessen our standards,” said Rev. Edward J. Burns,

The Extraordinary Persons Project In fact, Ekman had been so moved personally—and intrigued scientifically—by his experiments with Öser that he announced at the meeting he was planning on pursuing a systematic program of research studies with others as unusual as Öser. The single criterion for selecting apt subjects was that they be “extraordinary.” This announcement was, for modern psychology, an extraordinary moment in itself. Psychology has almost entirely dwelt on the problematic, the abnormal, and the ordinary in its focus. Very rarely have psychologists—particularly ones as eminent as Paul Ekman—shifted their scientific lens to focus on people who were in some sense (other than intellectually) far above normal. And yet Ekman now was proposing to study people who excel in a range of admirable human qualities. His announcement makes one wonder why psychology hasn't done this before. In fact, only in very recent years has psychology explicitly begun a program to study the positive in human nature. Sparked by Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania long famous for his research on optimism, a budding movement has finally begun in what is being called “positive psychology”—the scientific study of well-being and positive human qualities. But even within positive psychology, Ekman's proposed research would stretch science's vision of human goodness by assaying the limits of human positivity Ever the scientist, Ekman became quite specific about what was meant by “extraordinary.” For one, he expects that such people exist in every culture and religious tradition, perhaps most often as contemplatives. But no matter what religion they practice, they share four qualities. The first is that they emanate a sense of goodness, a palpable quality of being that others notice and agree on. This goodness goes beyond some fuzzy, warm aura and reflects with integrity the true person. On this count Ekman proposed a test to weed out charlatans: In extraordinary people “there is a transparency between their personal and public life, unlike many charismatics, who have wonderful public lives and rather deplorable personal ones.” A second quality: selflessness. Such extraordinary people are inspiring in their lack of concern about status, fame, or ego. They are totally unconcerned with whether their position or importance is recognized. Such a lack of egoism, Ekman added, “from the psychological viewpoint, is remarkable.” Third is a compelling personal presence that others find nourishing. “People want to be around them because it feels good—though they can't explain why,” said Ekman. Indeed, the Dalai Lama himself offers an obvious example (though Ekman did not say so to him); the standard Tibetan title is not “Dalai Lama” but rather “Kundun,” which in Tibetan means “presence.” Finally, such extraordinary individuals have “amazing powers of attentiveness and concentration.

It was marijuana that drew the line between us and them, that bright generational line between the cool and the uncool. My timidity about pot, as I first encountered it in Hawaii, vanished when, a few months later, during my first year of high school, it hit Woodland Hills. We scored our first joints from a friend of Pete's. The quality of the dope was terrible -- Mexican rag weed, people called it -- but the quality of the high was so wondrous, so nerve-end-opening, so cerebral compared to wine's effects, that I don't think we ever cracked another Purex jug. The laughs were harder and finer. And music that had been merely good, the rock and roll soundtrack of our lives, turned into rapture and prophecy. Jimi Hendrix, Dylan, the Doors, Cream, late Beatles, Janis Joplin, the Stones, Paul Butterfield -- the music they were making, with its impact and beauty amplified a hundredfold by dope, became a sacramental rite, simply inexplicable to noninitiates. And the ceremonial aspects of smoking pot -- scoring from the million-strong network of small-time dealers, cleaning "lids," rolling joints, sneaking off to places (hilltops, beaches, empty fields) where it seemed safe to smoke, in tight little outlaw groups of three or four, and then giggling and grooving together -- all of this took on a strong tribal color. There was the "counterculture" out in the greater world, with all its affinities and inspirations, but there were also, more immediately, the realignments in our personal lives. Kids, including girls, who were "straight" became strangers. What the hell was a debutante, anyway? As for adults -- it became increasingly difficult not to buy that awful Yippie line about not trusting anyone over thirty. How could parents, teachers, coaches, possibly understand the ineluctable weirdness of every moment, fully perceived? None of them had been out on Highway 61.

We have to water, cultivate, and weed on a regular basis if we're going to enjoy the harvest. The difference between our own active involvement as gardeners and neglect is the difference between a beautiful garden and a weed patch

The Moment opens. The moment closes. There is sunlight. There is frost. There is the brief idea of roses amid the patch of weeds.

Do you grow straight up like a redwood to the sun in choosing your heart and not list like a weed in the wind to the fads of the day?

Another component to living in the weeds and trees is earthly success, which will quickly place a crown on our heads without discipleship. The answer is Jesus Christ and it will always be him.

We are responsible for helping and encouraging others, for guiding them further along. But we are not responsible for their choices. You cannot force a good attitude upon someone. If they want to live in the pits, unhappy, discouraged, and in self-pity, that’s their choice. Do not allow them to drag you into the pit with them. If you spend all your time trying to encourage others, trying to make them do what’s right, trying to keep them cheered up, they’ll drain all the life and energy out of you. You cannot bloom if you spend all your time trying to keep others happy. That is not your responsibility. I learned long ago that not everyone wants to be happy. Some people want to live in the pits. They like the attention it brings them. Make the decision to say: “If you don’t want to be happy, that’s fine, but you can’t keep me from being happy. If you want to live in the pits, that’s your choice, but I’m not diving in there with you. If you want to be a weed, you can be a weed, but I’m a flower. I’m blooming. I’m choosing a good attitude. I’m smiling. I’m happy despite my circumstances.” When you bloom in the midst of weeds, you sow a seed to inspire and challenge the people around you to come up higher, and that’s a seed for God to take you higher. You may be in a negative environment right now. The people in your life may not be going places. They may lack goals, dreams, vision, enthusiasm. You may not see how you could ever rise above. It might be easy to just accept and settle where you are and think this is your destiny. Let me challenge you. This is not your destiny. You were made for more. God has incredible things planned for your future, but you have to do your part and bloom where you’re planted. What does that mean? Develop your gifts and talents. Whatever you do, whatever your occupation is, do your best to be the best. Improve your skills. Read books. Take training courses. Go back to school if you need to. But don’t you dare just sit back and think, I’ll never rise any higher. I’ll never get out of this neighborhood. I guess this is just my lot in life. Your lot in life is to excel. It’s to go further. It’s to make a difference in this world. Take a stand and say, “I will not settle where I am. I was made for more. I’m a child of the Most High God. I have seeds of greatness on the inside. So I am rising up to be the best I can be right here, knowing God will take me where I’m supposed to go.

Dandelions. The dandelion flower head can change into a white, globular seed head overnight. Each seed has a tiny parachute that allows it to spread far and wide in the wind. The entire plant has medicinal properties. Dandelions are often mistakenly identified as weeds, aggressively removed, but are hard to uproot; the top is pulled but the long taproot remains. Resilience. Resistance. Regeneration. Decentralization. brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy (p. 34). AK Press. Kindle Edition.

I’d yell out the screen door when he was outside spraying weeds, “I love you!” When he was reading a history book on the sofa, I’d plant a kiss on his forehead and say, “I love you.” Even when the volume was turned up too loud on the television, which previously annoyed me, out came, “I love you.” Our house had become filled with love, partially because it made the misery easier to tolerate but also because having a cancer diagnosis makes you realize how much you love someone.

That hard sadness when the blue sky turns colorless in the forbidding dark of despair and I struggle like a robin nibbling at your depths to feel the fullness of poetry and all that is tender and sweet for I explode inside to be that drunken soul of summer and impossible dreams that lies deep inside my wellspring where the weeds turn to flowers and moors become mystical forests. Oh, how spring has awakened in my deeps as I desire to be all those things again--the youthful, hopeful, aroused wholeness again. So I can deliver myself to this world, enchanted in my depths.

That hard sadness when the blue sky turns colorless in the forbidding dark of despair and I struggle like a robin nibbling at my depths to feel the fullness of poetry and all that is tender and sweet for I explode inside to be that drunken soul of summer and impossible dreams that lies deep inside my wellspring where the weeds turn to flowers and moors become mystical forests. Oh, how spring has awakened in my deeps as I desire to be all those things again--the youthful, hopeful, aroused wholeness again. So I can deliver myself to this world, enchanted in my depth

those who see beauty in chaos also see flowers instead of weeds, and that’s a gift in a world like ours.

Making the wrong friends is like picking a bouquet of weeds—looks promising at first, but soon you’re sneezing and regretting every choice. These are the pals who convince you that midnight adventures are a great idea until you're explaining to a judge why a shopping cart was found in your backyard. They’re the folks who turn your life into a sitcom where you're the punchline. Remember, choosing friends is like picking a fruit—go for the ones that add sweetness, not a trip to the ER!

Her soul was a garden blooming with hope and with each new day she tended to its weeds and wounds bringing it ever slowly back to life.

The lounge of the private terminal in Delhi. A place of beige leather sofas and cappuccinos, set deep in that world where a seeling modernity has yet to close over the land, and where in the empty spaces that lie between the elevated roads and the coloured glass buildings there are still, like insects taking shelter under the veined roof of a leaf, the encampments of families who built them. Black pigs still thread their way through the weeds, there are still patient lorry-loads of labourers, waiting among the dazzle of the new cars, for the lights to change. One India, dwarfed and stunted, adheres like a watchful undergrowth to another India which, in very physical ways, as with the roads that fly up out of the pale land, or the chunks of monorail that rise up from the ground like the remnants of an ancient wall, or the blank closed faces of the glass buildings, wishes to shrug off its poorer opposite: to leave it behind; to shut it out; to soar over it. One man, above all, captures the mood of this time: the security guard. In him, this man of expectation – a man not rich himself, but standing guard at the doorway to a world of riches – it is possible to feel the boredom and restlessness of a world that inspires ambition, but cannot answer it. Skanda watches him watching the lounge, with eyes glazed and yellowing from undernourishment. A favourite phrase from college returns: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

You should love the weeds as much as the flowers because everything on the planet has its own beauty and it is up to the artist to discover it

Just like watering the field will cause both the desired seed and the undesirable weed to germinate, the opportunities for your mission in life will be equally presented with real-life threats.

When you are desperately grabbing at straws all you get is a handful of weeds.

The third major lesson in life is this: learn how to nourish and protect your crops all summer. Sure enough, as soon as you’ve planted, the busy bugs and noxious weeds are out to take things over. And here is the next bit of truth: they will take it, unless you prevent it. There

Our mind is a garden, our thoughts are the seeds. We can grow flowers or we can grow weeds. Don't forget to water it!

But that's precisely how stupidity flourishes; in bunches, in fast-growing weeds that choke delicately nurtured knowledge.

If one flower has to grow out of all the weeds, let that flower be YOU.

This was fueled by a return to a cardinal tenet of the Protestant faith, Sola Scriptura, which argues that God’s Word alone is sufficient for faith and practice.[3] This principle makes the Bible the exclusive foundation for all that we do. It is rooted in the belief that man’s notions for how to live must be set aside for God’s clear directives as found in His inspired, written revelation, and that God’s people are to limit themselves to obedience to His revealed will.[4] I progressively realized that modern youth ministry had largely developed from traditions, cultural preferences, statistical surveys, and the opinions of creative leaders, rather than biblical principles. If All I Had Was Scripture It finally occurred to me that if I began with Scripture alone, I would have no reason for age-segregated Christianity. In other words, if all I had was the Bible, it would be difficult (if not impossible) to establish the credibility of this practice. I was humbled to learn that God’s vision for training young people is powerful, profound, and comprehensive, standing in sharp contrast to the man-centered, culture-bound model I once advocated.

You can tend to a garden every day for 20, 30 or 40 years. But if one day you stop giving it loving attention and care it will rapidly deteriorate. Weeds will start to grow, and in a relatively short period of time the garden will become a jungle. On the other hand, it is much easier to turn things around and start cultivating the garden again if it has flourished in the past. The same is true with the human mind and respectively the actions we take every day. If we cultivate our life with dedication, positive thinking, and consistent actions, it will be much easier to turn away from destructive behavior, however far we stray away from our original course.

Your thoughts are certain kinds of seeds in your life. You can water them and allow them to grow on fertile soil. Or, you can let them diminish and wither amongst the weeds. Be careful that your seeds are not contaminated as they begin to take root.

Children Are a Gift Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. —PSALM 127:3 NASB     In a recent women’s Bible study, the teacher asked the group, “Did you feel loved by your parents when you were a child?” Here are some of the responses. • “A lot of pizza came to the house on Friday nights when my parents went out for the evening.” • “I got in their way. I wasn’t important to them.” • “They were too busy for me.” • “Mom didn’t have to work, but she did just so she wouldn’t have to be home with us kids.” • “I spent too much time with a babysitter.” • “Mom was too involved at the country club to spend time with me.” • “Dad took us on trips, but he played golf all the time we were away.” So many of the ladies felt they were rejected by their parents in their childhoods. There was very little love in their homes. What would your children say in response to the same question? I’m sure we all would gain insight from our children’s answers. In today’s verse we see that children are a reward (gift) from the Lord. In Hebrew, “gift” means “property—a possession.” Truly, God has loaned us His property or possessions to care for and to enjoy for a certain period of time. My Bob loves to grow vegetables in his raised-bed garden each summer. I am amazed at what it takes to get a good crop. He cultivates the soil, sows seeds, waters, fertilizes, weeds, and prunes. Raising children takes a lot of time, care, nurturing, and cultivating as well. We can’t neglect these responsibilities if we are going to produce good fruit. Left to itself, the garden—and our children—will end up weeds. Bob always has a smile on his face when he brings a big basket full of corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans into the kitchen. As the harvest is Bob’s reward, so children are parents’ rewards. Let your home be a place where its members come to be rejuvenated after a very busy time away from it. We liked to call our home the “trauma center”—a place where we could make mistakes, but also where there was healing. Perfect people didn’t reside at our address. We tried to teach that we all make mistakes and certainly aren’t always right. Quite often in our home we could hear the two

Gdmng, Sunshine! Just your daily dose of “wisdom” (because who doesn’t love a little dose of encouragement, inspiration or motivation in the morning)? Deep down, we all have the potential to be great. But let’s be honest, some of us planted those “greatness seeds” years ago & are enjoying a tree overflowing with awesome fruits. The rest of us? Still staring at a bag of seeds, wondering if the season is good & afraid of putting hands in dirt. Darling listen – those seeds won’t magically sprout into a self-watering garden of success. You gotta get your hands dirty (metaphorically…, unless you’re actually planting something today, then get dirty for real). Here’s the deal: Everything you do today is a seed for tomorrow. Remember, every thought, word & action counts. Shocking, I know.. but it has always been that way & it will always be that way. Sweetheart, ask yourself: While the universe is on your side, are you on your side? Because the universe is not here to do the weeding. That’s on you. May your metaphorical seeds blossom into a life-changing orchard. Keep Doing The Stuff, Keep Smiling, Stay Blessed & Enjoy your day!

No matter which flowers you cultivate in your garden, you're also welcoming weeds, but the real problem begins when you invite neglect which in turn will allow the unwanted guests to overtake your garden.

Ya gotta pull some weeds if ya want flowers in your life.

Every inventor, every man of originality has been religious and even fanatically so. Perverted by irreligious skepticism, the human mind is like waste land that produces nothing or is covered with weeds useless to man. At such a time even its natural fertility is an evil, for these weeds harden the soil by tangling and intertwining their roots and moreover create a barrier between the sky and the earth. Break up these accursed clods; destroy these fatally hardy weeds; call on every human aid; drive in the plow; dig deep to bring into contact the powers of the earth and the powers of the sky. Here, gentlemen, is the natural analogy to human intelligence opened or closed to divine knowledge. The natural sciences themselves are subject to the general law. Genius does not rely much on the slow crawl of logic. Its gait is free, its manner derives from inspiration; one can see its success, but no one has seen its progress....

Troubles are like weeds, and the longer you avoid them, the bigger they grow

Honor He Wrote Sonnet 11 You wanna get laid? Get laid, but with consent. You wanna jump off a cliff? Just jump, with an active brain. You wanna try booze? Try it, but with moderation. You wanna smoke weed? Do it, but with self-regulation. Try out everything you wanna try, Figure out right 'n wrong for yourself. It is your life, test it to its limits, but, Be sure not to harm others in the process. Get it all over with, for plenty work remains. Live to build a world, not to pamper shallow tenets.

Fraudulent unions, like weeds among the wheat, choke the life from genuine love, suffocating trust and devouring hope. These counterfeit marriages masquerade as truth, yet their hollow hearts betray the sacred vows, leaving behind a barren landscape of shattered dreams and broken promises.

I don’t think we’re always lucky enough to understand our purpose before we’re forced to face it, or at least start it. But that’s what filters out the real leaders, the heroes even, because only they are the ones that can walk into the uncertain and leave as its master.