Many runes the cold has told me,
Many lays the rain has brought me,
0ther songs the winds have sung me;
Many birds from many forests,
0ft have sung me lays in concord;
Waves of sea, and ocean billows,
Music from the many waters
Music from the whole creation,
0ft have been my guide and master.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

  - Martha Graham

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science.

   - Albert Einstein

Fonte di Clituno, Italy - G Harrod

When Poems Are Still

It is calm of times now,
poems having disappeared like a mist.
yesterday’s nagging scintillations
that promised a tryst of wordings
now lie content below any saying, any art.

Quite free from poetry is almost any peace
until some brazen poet arrives
to stir up some alphabet soup—
but the very deepest calms, like a sea bottom,
lie mute below all chop of words and wind.

Today let there be rest from poems
and from other twistings of the mind,
for it is calm of times now, free enough
for wordless breath, and breath, and breath.

    - Alan Harris                                                     Lake Trasimeno Italy - G Harrod

Having tasted the sweetness of solitude and of tranquillity, one becomes free from fear and sin while drinking the sweetness of the joy of the Law.

   - Dhammapada

Monte Sibilini Italy - G Harrod

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. 
You talk to your enemies.

- Moshe Dayan 

Forms of service depend upon our creativity, and our creative potential is limitless.

- P.K. Jayaswal, TOS India

It is only when there is realization of our unity with our fellow-beings, and when the only motive is that of giving ourselves in such service as we are capable, that we can fill our lives with rich, helpful and creative action.

- N. Sri Ram

Good timber does not grow under comfortable circumstances; the stronger the wind, the stronger the tree.

- J. Willard Marriott

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Those who would understand the Plains must ascend the Eternal Hills, where their eyes scan infinity. But those who would make use of understanding must descend onto the Plains, where Past and Future meet and human beings have need of them.

- From the Book of Sayings of Tsiang Samdup

Grand Tetons USA. G Harrod 2007

Shoot for the moon.
Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.

- Les Brown

ON LEANING

Some think they leaned upon a stronger will
when all that happened was this will had shone
a flashlight on some girder, deep and strong,
within their own divinely buttressed soul.

Mistakenly, they felt that this other will
support their own, when really, all are leaning
safe upon the same Eternal Strength
which none of us can own, but all may share.

- Alan Harris

Those who aren't interested in their fellow beings have the greatest difficulties in life and also create the greatest damage to others.

- Alfred Adler.

Harmony is unity in diversity.

- N. Sri Ram

Hidden Life

O Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom;
O Hidden Life, shining in every creature;
O Hidden Love, embracing all in Oneness;
May each who feels himself as one with Thee,
Know he is also one with every other.

- Annie Besant 

To a Child

Small service is true service while it lasts:
Of humblest Friends, bright creature! scorn not one;
The daisy, by the shadow it casts,
Protects the lingering dew-drop from the sun.

- William Wordsworth

No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they only who have suffered are able to save.

- Annie Besant

   WALK

I walked with you today –
with you and the One inside you
who beamed light through your eyes.

Your voice seemed more than your voice
and held meaning beyond your meaning.
            Who was in you speaking?

I walked with you and mystery today,
and now I need to learn who dwells in you.
            Perhaps the One inside me knows.

- Alan Harris  

   Meditation for Peace

O God of many names,
Lover of all nations,
We pray for peace:
In our hearts
In our homes
In our nations
In our world.
The peace of Your will
The peace of our need.

    Creation Expresses Divinity

If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter, floating above a field somewhere,
people would come from everywhere to marvel at it.
People would walk around it, marvelling at its big pools of water,
its little pools and the water flowing between the pools.
People would marvel at the humps on it, and the holes in it,
and they would marvel at the very thin layer of gas surrounding it,
and the water suspended in the gas.
The people would marvel at all the creatures
Walking around the surface of the ball,
and at the creatures in the water.
The people would declare it as sacred because it was the only one,
And they would protect it so that it would not be hurt.
The ball would be the greatest wonder known,
and people would come to pray to it, to be healed,
to gain knowledge, to know beauty and to wonder how it could be.
People would love it, and defend it with their lives because they
would somehow know that their lives, their own roundness,
could be nothing without it.
If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter.

    (Author unknown)

One cannot get through life without pain…What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.

  - Bernie S. Siegel

In Me the Light

I went looking everywhere for the light.
I pored over books, thinking there
I would find it;
I sat at the feet of teachers,
Thinking they would show me where it is;
I followed scientific methods,
I practised mystic rites;
Thinking surely it would shine forth
somewhere.
And at last it did.
I quit seeking.  I became still.
I turned within.
And there in me the light began to shine.
Since then, how many light-filled books
I have opened,
And how many shining persons I have met.

   - James Dillet Freeman

My religion is very simple - my religion is kindness.

  - His Holiness The Dalai Lama

A Prayer for the World

Let the rain come and wash away the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that we can see each other clearly,
So that we can see beyond labels, beyond accents, gender or skin colour.
Let the warmth and brightness of the sun melt our selfishness,
So that we can share the joys and feel the sorrow of our neighbours.
And let the light of the sun be so strong that we will see all people as
   our neighbours.
Let the earth, nourished by rain, bring forth flowers to surround us
   with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts to reach upward to heaven.

         - Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Nothing splendid was ever achieved except
by those who dared believe that something
inside them was superior to circumstance.

   - Bruce Barton

We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men;
and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes,
and they come back to us as effects.

   - Herman Melville