I've viewed and descended into the magnificent Grand Canyon
I've hiked and journeyed over the valleys and the mountains of the Swiss Alps
I've stood at the base of the towering ancient California Redwoods
I've ridden camels under a full moon along the India and Pakistan boarder
I've rolled down the snow-white sand dunes of New Mexico
I've studied and explored the depths of the Costa Rican tropical cloud forest
I've swum into another world of the Hawaiian coral reefs
I've pilgrimage the Sri Lankan mountain that cast a pyramid on the dawn clouds below
I've floated amongst the calving ice burgs of a melting Alaskan glacier
I've snow shoed and tobogganed the Canadian Taiga forest, just south of the tundra
I've lived with the bears, moose and wolves of Northern Minnesota
But I've never had a moment so moving,
so connected,
so powerful,
As the one on the edge of Iguanzu Falls
along the boarder of Argentina & Brazil
so bright, dizzying, seductive
so much power,
so much...
I don't even know...
I do know I wept
Unable to think or reason - just cry
There was no life or death
No me or you
No time or place
Only the falls and the formless "me"
A moment in time I will never forget
And probably never understand...
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Christmas in the trenches, love bleeds through...
(Not a poem but reflections)
We just saw the movie about WWI 1914. The soldiers along the lines, called a cease-fire and met in the bloody zone in between them. They shared photos of loved ones, sang, worshiped and played soccer with each other on Christmas Eve. It left me in a profound mood, thinking about peace, the Quaker peace testimony and the roots of war. It struck me in both the human world, but also in the relationship between we humans and the care of the earth. These are the musings that emerged
Could I ever kill an Argentinean having now lived, celebrated, studied and cried with them?
To know peoples from other lands is to shed the pretext of war.
To know nature is to shed the mask of indifference and dominance
to feel the trees,
watch birds in flight,
hear whales breath,
taste wild berries
or to smell the moist soil
reveals a path of peace
sure as gravity
and as difficult to see
but knowing calls us to try
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held by stone walls
listening to the wining moan of the aging wind generator
foretelling the end of its productive life,
devouring a sweet juicy apple, picked from the trees covered in the morning dew,
twelve seasons old and just now starting its productive life.
The autumn air, dying fields, crisp blue sky, puffy white clouds
reveals the approaching winter, having cycled again
To work in the forest, past the spilled grain of abundance, past a squirrel
once alive and now dead because we're here.
I am a shadow on this planet,
making my way,
taking my stand,
acting in faith
a moment in time
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Love realized and lost
brings unbearable sorrow!
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The first steps, fearless
the climb, deliberate and structural
up, up, up,
forty feet
sixty feet
eighty feet
winds blowing
view overwhelming
I and the sky are one
carabineer clipped
the leap of faith
when you let go of your hands
you are flying
hanging from metal and two strands of twine
singing
crying
laughing
praying
I'm a bird
eighty feet up
pretty near heaven
peace
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How many times have I come into you out of my
head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting, as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.
by Wendell Berry
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