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“Our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents. We are hardwired to affiliate with the natural world - and just as our health improves when we are in it, so our health suffers when we are divorced from it”

Such a phenomenal writer

We develop good morals and strong character that are obvious in a crisis by many individual little courageous acts.

The fading of the flowers is as much God’s doing as is their blooming. Each has a place in his scheme of things. The mood of faith is not a slouch into despondency but standing on tiptoe to see what new good thing God has in store for us just over the horizon of another day.

^^this was convicting! If I thank God for the blooming flowers, should I not also thank Him for the fading ones?

Wisdom is the patience to allow today’s seed to ripen into tomorrow’s fruit without digging it up every few hours to see how it is coming along.

“One of the most valuable clues nature offers us concerning the successful handling of life is this: if you want the good things in your life to prosper, establish the conditions upon which they thrive... Faith flourishes when immersed in things that cannot easily be shaken. It falters and dies when ground in perishables”

while the barest necessities are here, added to them are rich flourishes of loveliness as if the Designer had said, as he fashioned the universe and provided all the essentials, “Now, these are for creation’s sake.” Then, adding beauty, he said, “And this is for love’s sake.”

God has given us a strangely mixed world with hard, sharp facts amidst our joys like thorns amidst roses and with depressing drizzles falling between days of glorious radiance... We find our peace and poise in accepting thorns while rejoicing in flowers, and in accepting rain while delighting in sunshine.

“The solution is ‘Let Them’ so you stay in control….you learn how to make the right decisions, the hard decisions, the ones in your heart you know you need to make even if you know they’re going to upset other people. You maintain your power when you stop taking on the burden of other people’s emotions”

I get the sentiment behind this but it’s a little to “me” centric.

One fascination found in tramping through woods and fields lies in the surprise always awaiting the wanderer just a step beyond.

Happiness is found in fulfillment of one’s real inner capacities: the ability to appreciate and create the beautiful, to know the truth, to develop toward a greater goodness, to make one's place on earth better than it was on one’s arrival.

James Russell Lowell once asked, “Have you ever considered what the ability to read means? It is the key that admits us to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment.” Through literature the power of great lives reaches across space and time and strengthens us; their roots mingle with our own.

One measure of your faith is whether you can look at life’s darkness and yet believe in the Light.

Faith is more honest than pessimism and braver than optimism. It knows darkness but believes in the sun.

Every individual needs such a venturesome spirit if life, for them, is to be vital, vividly real, and authentic.

Nothing is lost that ultimately counts most: personality, spirit, good influences. Something about sorrow snatches the thick veil of externalism from things.

Durable courage is more rare than quick, crisis courage.

All things by immortal power, near or far, Hiddenly to each other linked are, That thou canst not stir a flower without troubling a star.

“Madam, you will not see birds in your yard until you have birds in your heart.”

“Madam, you will not see birds in your yard until you have birds in your heart.”