Gardenmail

“All political rallies, marches, and demonstrations are now banned. Crackdowns will occur for any street gatherings, and the posting or handing out of leaflets is forthwith illegal.”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“Dear God, I love this tree. I love the light filtering through the moss and the leaves. I love all your earth songs—the breeze rustling through the grass, the rhythm of crickets, the beating of wings. I love the rain water in the bird bath and the dragonflies that flit over it. I love the air so laden with moisture that the dew rains out of the tree and bathes my face. I love the artistic little prayers that the spiders weave through the woods. I love the way you blend daylight into darkness, how dusk softens the sharp edges of the world. I love the way the moon changes shape every night. I love the slope of your hills—horizons inside and out. I feel that I’m part of it, that it’s part of me. Here, surrounded and permeated by your creation, I feel you. I feel life. I know myself connected. O God, is there anything you’ve made that can’t pour life and healing into me? When I think of the simplicity and extravagance of creation, I want to bend down and write the word yes across the earth so that you can see it.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions

“but I had reached the point where aches and blisters were so central a feature of my existence that I ceased to notice them.”
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

“I call that in-between place the threshold now (Threshold, the line of the T splitting two empty spaces). Thresholds are dangerous places, neither here nor there, and walking across one is like stepping off the edge of a cliff in the naive faith that you’ll sprout wings halfway down. You can’t hesitate, or doubt. You can’t fear the in-between.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January