Blossom IX

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“It may be important to great thinkers

to examine the world, to explain and despise it.

But I think it is only important to love the world,

not to despise it, not for us to hate each other,

but to be able to regard the world

and ourselves and all beings

with love, admiration and respect.”

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Hermann Hesse

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“. . . gentleness is stronger than severity,

water is stronger than rock,

love is stronger than force.”

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Hermann Hesse

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

 

Blossom I

Blossom II

Blossom III

Blossom IV

Blossom V

Blossom VI

Blossom VII

Blossom VIII

Silent Sunday: Budding

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“I have no right to call myself one who knows.

I was one who seeks, and I still am,

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but I no longer seek in the stars or in books;

I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood

pulsing within me.

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My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious

like the invented stories;

it tastes of folly and bewilderment,

of madness and dream, like the life of all people

who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

Hermann Hesse

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“This life therefore is not righteousness,

but growth in righteousness,

not health, but healing, not being but becoming,

not rest but exercise.

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We are not yet what we shall be,

but we are growing toward it,

the process is not yet finished,

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but it is going on, this is not the end,

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but it is the road.

All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”

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Martin Luther

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2015

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Beauty Where You Find It

A friend and I were talking about art recently.

 

She and I both love art works in all of their forms.  We love fabric, needlework, sculpture, glass, music, poetry, paintings, mosaics…

The list goes on and on.

We happened to be looking at some old Norman Rockwell paintings, depicting life many decades ago.  The pictures brought back happy memories of our childhood homes, parents and grandparents. 

We were noticing the many small ways that life has changed, including taste in “art.”  These old, realistic paintings went out of fashion, yet we still enjoy them.  They show a more graceful age, a way of life that seems to have passed out of this world-

There is something good and comforting about living with beautiful things around you.  We both have artists in our families and among our friends.  Our homes are full of beautiful things given to us by loved ones and beautiful things we’ve made ourselves.

And yet, beauty is where you find it. 

At best, we only attempt to capture the grace and beauty of nature when we put brush to paper, hand to clay, thread to cloth. 

We went looking for beauty yesterday morning in places one might least expect to find it on a wintery morning.  I searched in a ditch by the road, along the edges of marshes and creeks, among the dried remains of marsh grasses.

And here is what we  found:  beautifully formed ice crystals, perfectly configured where freezing air and Earth met water.

Like Tibetan sand paintings, these ice  mosaics last only a moment.  They melted back into the water from which they came by afternoon.

Priceless, fleeting works of art.

Like all of nature. 

We are invited to participate in its beauty, wherever we can find it.

All Photos by Woodland Gnome 2014

“When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha