THOUGHTS ON SOLITUDE AND THE LAST BUTTERFLIES OF SUMMER

I love to be alone.

I never found a companion

that was so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau

I need to be alone . . . 

I need the sunshine and the paving stones

of the streets without companions, without conversation, 

face to face with  myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

Henry Miller

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone;

and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom;

for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Schopenhauer

I live in that solitude

which is painful in youth, 

but delicious in the years of maturity.

Einstein

Loneliness is the poverty of self;

solitude is richness of self.

May Sarton

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you,

even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,

and from it you will find all paths.

Rilke

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.

It offers me its busyness.  It does not believe 

that I do not want it.  Now I understand

why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Mary Oliver

"Why I Wake Early"

Uncontradicting solitude

Supports me on its giant palm;

And like a sea-anemone

Or simple snail, there cautiously

Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Philip Larkin

In order to be open to creativity, 

one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude.

One must overcome the fear of being alone.

Rollo May

When from our better selves we have too long

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,

Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,

How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

Wordsworth

SOMETHING OF THE MARVELOUS

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Aristotle

Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth
find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Rachel Carlson

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.  It expands
through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.

Aldo Leopold

I think one of the most exciting things is this feeling of mystery,
feeling of awe, the feeling of looking at a little live thing and being amazed by it
 and how it has emerged through these hundreds of years of evolution and there it is perfect and why.

Jane Goodall

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man
if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature
and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

E.B. White

Our task must be to free ourselves . . .
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Einstein

Happiness,
not in another place, but this place . . .
not for another hour, but this hour.

Walt Whitman

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

Keats

BLESSINGS

I recently heard someone speak rather derisively of people who express gratitude for their blessings.  The thrust of the comment was that the very idea of "blessings" is an archaic, theological concept that has no place in the post-Enlightenment world.

While I have a wide tolerance for various theological points of view, I found myself somewhat puzzled by this comment because it seems to me that one can feel genuinely blessed and grateful without having a hardened position about the source of the blessings.  Isn't life itself a blessing, life with all of its infinite possibilities?  And what of the world of our inheritance—not the inevitable pain, frustration, and suffering—but love, beauty, music, art, the opportunity to become one of the co-creators of the world?  Are not these abiding blessings?  I believe they are, and I find that my heart sings in agreement when I read the following passage from John O'Donohue's fine essay, "To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing," which is found in O'Donohue's book, To Bless the Space Between Us.

There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things: it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect.  The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself.  Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves . . . 

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway.  This is the heart of blessing.  To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing. As Rilke says: Heir zu sein ist so viel—to be here is immense.  Nowhere does the silence of the infinite lean so intensely as around the form of a newly born infant.  Once we arrive, we enter into the inheritance of everything that has preceded us; we become heirs to the world.  To be born is to be chosen.  To be created and come to birth is to be blessed. Some primal kindness chose us and brought us through the forest of dreaming until we could emerge into the clearance of individuality, with a path of life opening before us through the world.

The beginning often holds the clue to everything that follows.  Given the nature of our beginning, it is no wonder that our hearts are imbued with longing for beauty, meaning, order, creativity, compassion, and love.  We approach the world with this roster of longings and expect that in some way the world will respond and confirm our desire.  Our longing knows it cannot force the fulfillment of its desire; yet it does instinctively expect that primal benevolence to respond to it.  This is the threshold where blessing comes alive. 

Einstein once suggested that the most important question a person can ask is whether the universe is a friendly place.  The answer, I suppose, would probably vary from person to person, depending on whether one is an optimist, a pessimist, or a downright cynic.  At the very least, however, I feel deeply that our lives enjoy the blessings of what John O'Donohue refers to as "primal kindness" or "primal benevolence."  Each person is free, of course, to provide his or her own theological tag to that kindness and benevolence, but, as always, it's not the label of a thing, but rather its essence, that befriends the questing heart.  We are the most improbable of creatures living on the most improbable of planets, and if we have nothing else, we always have the opportunity to transform ourselves and our world. That, for me, will always be a blessing worthy of my highest gratitude.

MYSTERY AND WONDER

We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.

Annie Dillard

Driven by a desire to be completely liberated from the cultural provincialism of the American south, where I was born and spent my early years, I have dedicated much of my life to the pursuit of knowledge.  Seldom, if ever, have I questioned the metaphorical truth of Shakespeare's observation in Henry VI that "ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven . . . "

Now, however, as I approach the end of my seventh decade, I'm less inclined to see ignorance and knowledge as some kind of binary choice.  Ignorance and knowledge can only be intelligently discussed in relative terms, and they usually walk hand in hand throughout our lives.  Regardless of one's level of education, what one knows is always dwarfed by what one does not know.  Our most profound questions always seem hydra-headed; slay one and two more will arise in its place.  Perhaps Plato's observation still holds true: "The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."

And consider this:  In his recent book—The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality—science historian and writer Richard Panek states that only four percent of the universe consists of matter that makes up you, me, the earth, the stars, the planets, and the galaxies, everything within the ambit of our current knowledge.  The remaining ninety-six percent, referred to by cosmologists as dark matter and dark energy, is unknown.  What's even more stunning, many of the world's most prominent scientists believe that it will continue to remain unknown.

In short—with all of our scientific advancements, with all of our technological discoveries, with all of our penetrations into the worlds of quantum physics—we know only a small fraction of the universe in which we spin our lives.  What we know is wrapped in the larger mystery of what we do not know and may never know.

Set forth below are some interesting observations on the the subject of learning and knowledge on the one hand, versus mystery and wonder on the other.  I have punctuated these quotes with abstract photos in which I have attempted to capture at least a hint of some of the mystery of which I speak.  With the exception of the header photo, all of these images were created by panning my camera at slow shutter speeds across man-made lights against dark backgrounds.  Limited light against a background of infinite darkness seems to be an appropriate metaphor for our place in this mysterious universe.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery.  There is always more mystery.

Anais Nin

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

Henry Miller

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Charles Dickens

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection, is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days if fatal to human life.

Lewis Mumford

Mystery is a resource, like coal or gold, and its preservation if a fine thing.

Tom Cahill

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.

Anne Lamott 

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

Henry Miller

The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery.  Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive.  The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember.  The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?

Wendell Berry

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.  He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead.

Albert Einstein 

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

Dag Hammarskjold 

The final mystery is oneself.
Oscar Wilde

MEDITATIONS ON NATURE

If there is one thing clear about the centuries dominated by the factory and the wheel, it is that although the machine can make anything from a spoon to a landing-craft, a natural joy in earthly living is something it never has and never will be able to manufacture.

Henry Beston

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of the fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Richard Feynman 

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness?  Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

Rachel Carson 

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

 John Muir

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

John Muir 

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.  This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of all . . . There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.

Thomas Merton 

Look!  Look!  Look deep into nature and you will understand everything.

Albert Einstein

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

E.B. White 

The earth laughs in flowers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Socrates

                                         i thank You God for this most amazing

                                         day: for the leaping greenly spirit of trees

                                         and a blue dream of sky; and for everything

                                         which is natural which is infinite which is yes

e.e. cummings

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu

The world will never starve for wonder, but only for want of wonder.

C.K. Chesterton

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains?  Nature remains.

Walt Whitman

Notes on Photos:  All photos were taken in the last couple of days here in coastal South Carolina. 

THE WORLD IN HARMONY

On November 19, 2010, NBC aired a very special movie, "Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World," which was inspired by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and produced by by Stuart and Julie Bergman Sender.  A trailer of the movie can be viewed by clicking on HARMONY and the movie itself can be seen in its entirety by going to the NBC archives video.

I have been so moved by this movie and its message that I want to recommend it to all who visit this site on a regular basis.  Lest you have any doubt, this is not a movie about Prince Charles.  It is a movie about how we can return to sustainable environmental practices that will preserve the earth for our children, grandchildren, and future generations.  Feeling passionately about this subject, I could write about it endlessly, but I think it's best to let the movie speak for itself.  I hope you will not only enjoy it, but conclude in the end, as I did, that we must all do more to protect the fragile resources that we have been allowed to use for our limited years on earth.

To give you a flavor of some of the topics discussed in the film, I am setting forth a few quotes from Prince Charles, as well as some relevant quotes from other thinkers such as Einstein, Gandhi, E.F. Schumacher, and Stephen Jay Gould.  May you find the same inspiration that I have found.

Remember that our children and grandchildren will not ask what our generation said, but what it did.  Let us give an answer, then, of which we can be proud.

* * *  

We have lost something very precious.  That is an understanding of our interconnectedness with nature and a world beyond the material.

* * * 

Carrying on as if, fundamentally, it is "business as usual" is no longer an option.  We cannot solve the problems of the 21st Century with 20th Century solutions.

* * * 

Visionary people have a vital role to play in helping the world to find the strength needed to address its problems. 

 HRH The Prince of Wales 

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.

Einstein 

The best friend on earth of man is the tree.  When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on earth.

Frank Lloyd Wright

We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us.

E.F. Schumacher

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Gandhi 

Our world has enough for each person's need, but not for his greed.

Gandhi

Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the people of the earth.  Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.

Chief Seattle

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock.  Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history.  Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

Stephen Jay Gould

For those who are interested in pursuing these ideas further, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World is also available in book form (see header photo) and can be purchased from either Amazon or the Harmony movie website.

A JOYFUL AND PEACEFUL WEEK TO EVERYONE!

EVERYDAY MIRACLES

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and Skipper on Mimosa

Einstein once said that there are only two ways to live your life.  "One as though nothing is a miracle.  The other as though everything is a miracle."  Let it be said that I belong to the second group.  When I look in any direction, I am left in awe and wonder at the miracles of life.  They rise from the earth, they dance upon the wind, they sparkle in the night sky, they are anywhere and everywhere.  They are freely given, they are manifestations of grace, and they ask nothing of us in return, except perhaps that we find time to pay attention to their resplendent, life-affirming beauty.

During the past couple of days, I have tried to slow down and pay more attention to the miracles occurring moment to moment in my own backyard and places nearby.  What I have discovered is nothing less that miraculous — life unfolding in more colors and more varieties than one can ever quite imagine.  Enjoy!

Common Buckeye

"The world is full of wonders and miracles but man takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing."

Israel Baal Shem 

Blue Dasher Dragonfly on Arm 
of Chair Against Background of Blue Bucket

"To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

Walt Whitman 

Common Buckeye

"You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one.  Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own.  It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle."

Paul Coelho 

Sugar Tyme Crabapples

"The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Silver Spotted Skipper

"The visible mark of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of creation."

John Locke 

Ruby Throated Hummingbird (Female)

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.  But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on the earth.  Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes.  All is a miracle."

Thich Nhat Hanh 

Skipper

"Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand; life itself is the miracle of miracles."

George Bernard Shaw 

Great White Egret

"There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done once."

John Donne 

Skipper

"All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every second."

Thoreau 

I still haven't identified this creature, which appears to be on its way to becoming a butterfly.  Any help would be most appreciated.

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."

Buddha

 Zebra Swallowtail
"The age of miracles is forever here."
Thomas Carlyle

 Silver Spotted Skippers

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

Albert Einstein 

Great Blue Heron

"Everything is a miracle.  It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar."

Picasso

 American Bumble Bee

"Thy life's a miracle.  Speak yet again."

Shakespeare,
King Lear

Common Buckeye

Have a wonderful day
and
expect miracles!