7 & 7: Balanced vs. Frenzied

REFLECTION:

Speed is not the essence. A gentle pace allows observation and learning. Nature is the great buffer, balancing back the extremes of our acids and bases, drawing life together, advancing harmony. Life is learned by modeling. All forms of life and all living are formative. We pay a price in our own development for the way we treat – positive or negative – the world and her inhabitants. To walk lightly is to listen closely to the teachings. Some may be heard, others only felt. Material needs must be fulfilled, but they alone cannot fill a person up, nor replace the sensation and penetration of beauty’s presence. Look to nature and to children for your instruction and model their lessons throughout your entire life. Understand that storms must be allowed to rage and pass, that you will still be here, and the question still will be the same. “Why the haste? To what end?” You are interrelated. Trust life. Trust health. Trust yourself.

MUSES:

I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.
Abraham Lincoln

No house should ever be on a hill, or on anything. It should be of the hill. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.
Revelation 7:3

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as other creatures do.
1972 Only One Earth Conference

Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.
Job 12:8

When you only have two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other.
Chinese proverb

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

Life has to be lived – that’s all there is to it. At seventy, I would say the advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that ‘this too shall pass!’
Eleanor Roosevelt

The more haste, the less speed.
John Haywood

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.
Barry Commoner

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
William Wordsworth

The first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo Emerson