Stephan Baker

“We carry the ocean within us; our veins mirror the tides.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“School Prayer'

In the name of daybreak
And the eyelids of morning
And the wayfaring moon
And the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
My soul with hatred,
But offer myself humbly
As a guardian of nature,
As a healer of misery,
As a messenger of wonder,
As an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors . . .
And the uttermost night . . .
And the crowning seasons
Of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
---wherever and in whatever form
It may dwell---on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.”
― Diane Ackerman

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is every- where.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander