You Have to Love

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” 

~Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Love is Our Purpose

Spring Blooms by Nancy L

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn.
The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices
and the acceptance of love back in our hearts.
Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth.
To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others,
is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things.
Meaning lies in us.”

-Marianne Williamson

Think Like a Tree

Think Like a Tree
Soak up the sun
Affirm life’s magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to
hear your own leaves rustling.

~Karen I. Shragg

We Are All Holy

“The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.
Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves,
the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.”

~Terry Tempest Williams