Ja Keffer

“In the rose garden, the flowers are maneuvering toward the winter sunshine and the alluring sound of the koi pond’s waterfall makes you think it has a crush on you. You offer no resistance—you are done (at least temporarily) with the “regular” world.”
― Tom Hillman, Digging for God

“This isn’t a one-and-done thing for me. So, if you think you’re going to use me to scratch an itch, then you’d better think again.”
― Lotchie Burton, Gabriel's Fire

“Mycelium?” Joey asked. “What is that?”
 
Water explained, “It is a huge organism made up of very, very small fibres or filaments of fungus. The fungus grows underground, and it connects all the roots of the trees together. Its flower is a mushroom. Do you like to eat mushrooms?”
― Ellen J. Lewinberg, Joey and His Friend Water

“Stephen felt himself overtaken by a climactic surge of feeling. It frightened him because he thought it would have some physical issue, in spasm or bleeding or death. Then he saw that what he felt was not an assault but a passionate affinity. It was for the rough field running down to the trees and for the path going back into the village where he could see the tower of the church: these and the forgiving distance of the sky were not separate, but part of one creation, and he too, still by any sane judgement a young man, by the repeated tiny pulsing of his blood, was one with them. He looked up and saw the sky as it would be trailed with stars under darkness, the crawling nebulae and smudged lights of infinite distance: these were not different worlds, it seemed now clear to him, but bound through the mind of creation to the shredded white clouds, the unbreathed air of May, to the soil that lay beneath the damp grass at his feet. He held tightly on to the gate and laid his head on his arms, in some residual fear that the force of binding love he felt would sweep him from the earth. He wanted to stretch out his arms and enfold in them the fields, the sky, the elms with their sounding birds; he wanted to hold them with the unending forgiveness of a father to his prodigal, errant but beloved son. Isabelle and the cruel dead of the war; his lost mother, his friend Weir: nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness. As he clung to the wood, he wanted also to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world's creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it. His body shook with the passion of the love that had found him, from which he had been exiled in the blood and the flesh of long killing.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong