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Trees...

The rolling hills of Oregon
with their peaceful giant trees
reach out to touch
the skys white clouds
and yawns with gentle ease.

A clearing here for a deer to run
an opening there by a stream,
when I chanced upon
a raped mountain side
a place you could hear the Earth scream.

A few trees stood between the road
and the scar which marked this place.
As if that should serve to sooth the heart
which ached for the ravaged face.

The wood is needed––this I know
But I’d hope there’s a gentler hand
which could look upon this rich, green Earth
with a vision of love for the land.

––©1989 Joann M. Turner

Dedicated to Julia Butterfly Hill, who in 1997, climbed 180 feet up into a thousand year
old Redwood tree, named Luna. Her feet did not touch the ground for two years (through some of California’s worst storms ever)––not until she was satisfied with Pacific Lumber’s
covenant of protection for Luna and the area around her beloved tree.
Please see this month’s Book Reviews, Women of Spirit.

"We can accomplish only
what we can first imagine."
––Albert Einstein

"It's not love's going (that) hurts my days
But that it went in little ways."
––Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Spouses often point out each
other's deficiencies. Instead, we
should be each other's motivator.
My wife touches my spirit,and I try my best to motivate her, too."
––Kenneth Hartley Blanchard

Zen Meditation

Zen meditation is a trickily simple affair, for it consists only in watching everything that is happening, including your own thoughts and your breathing, without comment. After a while thinking, or talking to yourself drops away, and you find that there is no 'yourself' other than everything which is going on both inside and outside the skin. Your consciousness, your breathing, and your feelings are all the same process as the wind, the trees growing, the insects buzzing, the water flowing and the distant prattle of the city. All this is a single, many-featured 'happening,' a perpetual now without either past or future, and you are aware of it with the rapt fascination of a child dropping pebbles into a stream. The trick––which cannot be forced––is to be in this state of consciousness all the time, even when you are filling out tax forms, or being angry.
––Alan Watts
(Thanks Roy Gibbons)

"Nothing real
can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God."
––A Course in Miracles

"The changes in our life
must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according
to the demands of our conscience. . . not from our mental resolution
to try a new form of life."
––Leo Tolstoy

Trust
by Mary Carr Melkonian

Let me carry you just this little while.
You are safe with me.
Bury your sadness under the boulder there.
It will await your return.

Dust off the demons of doubt.
Time to retire from the terrors,
Just this little while.
The arms of the Universe await.

Trust is not trampled here.
The wounded heart needs solace.
Joy and laughter await.
Guilt and regret need not apply.

There is always time
To return to the boulder,
Roll back the great burden
And witness the reality of the risen Spirit.

We must not banish joy
For that is the road to madness.


Excerpted with permission from:
Sunrise On a Full Moon Day
©2001 Mary Carr Melkonian
www.martytish • martytish@socal.rr.com

“If my heart could do my thinking and my head begin to feel ,
I would look upon the world anew and know what’s truly real.”
––Van Morrison

"Thoughts lead on to purposes;
purposes go forth in action;
actions form habits;
habits decide character;
and character fixes our destiny."
––Tyron Edwards

"Reasonable people
adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people
attempt to adapt the world
to themselves.
All progress, therefore,
depends on unreasonable people."
––George Bernard Shaw

"Don't cry because it's over.
Smile because it happened."
––Dr. Seuss

"What a new face courage puts on everything!"
––Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Always bear in mind
that your own
resolution to succeed
is more important
than any one thing."
––Abraham Lincoln

"Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest
you still have survived,
But what torments of grief
you endured,
From evils which never arrived!"
––Ralph Waldo Emerson

May today there be peace
within you. May you trust God
that you are exactly where
you are meant to be.
"I believe that friends
are quiet angels who lift us
to our feet when our wings
have trouble
remembering how to fly."
(Thank you David Lintner)

Always remember, "Life is full of temptations...try not to miss any." Thanks to my sis, Dee

"If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things,
even though they fail."
––Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-65AD)

"Hold up to him his better self, his real self, that can dare
and do and win out . . .
People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts."
––Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920) Pollyanna.