Quotation Saturday ~ Nurture the Soul

Jonah 2:5 "The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head."

WEEDS

“Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgement," Dietrich answered, "so one finds both good men and bad in the Church. By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves. I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds.” 
― Michael Flynn

“Don't let the tall weeds cast a shadow on the beautiful flowers in your garden.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“A man of words and not of deeds, 
Is like a garden full of weeds.” 
― Benjamin Franklin

“The strongest and most mysterious weeds often have things to teach us.” 
― F.T. McKinstry

ROOT

“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.” 
― Francis Bacon

“If we are the trees, words are our roots; and we grow as we write” 
― Munia Khan

“Spiritual counselling is helping people find the deep root of stillness in themselves, which is also a connection to everything else.” 
― Jay Woodman

“Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.” 
― Vera Nazarian

NURTURE

“Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.” 
― Marvin J. Ashton

“the seriousness of emotional deprivation:

It is not difficult to understand how children who have suffered from malnutrition or starvation need food and plenty of care in their bodies are to recover so they can go on to lead normal lives. If, however, the starvation is severe enough, the damage will be permanent and they will suffer physical impairments for the rest of their lives. Likewise, children who are deprived of emotional nurturing require care and love if their sense of security and self-confidence is to be restored. However, if love is minimal and abuse high, the damage will be permanent and the children will suffer emotional impairments for the rest of their lives.” 
― Mark Z. Danielewski

“Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatever he does. He is in fact a wilderness advocate of a certain kind. It is when he respects and nurtures the wilderness of his soil and his plants that his garden seems to flourish most. Wildness, he has found, resides not only out there, but right here: in his soil, in his plants, even in himself...
But wildness is more a quality than a place, and though humans can't manufacture it, they can nourish and husband it...
The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.” 
― Michael Pollan

“By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.” 
― Vernon Howard

NOURISH

“Suffering is imposed on us time and again so that one day we would become brave wise masters. That is, a strong being who is confidently aware of their intended direction in life, and fearlessly adding value to the world and their future.” 
― Suzy Kassem

“In many ways, life is about managing your delusions; keeping the ones that nourish and eliminating the ones that poison.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“I believe that all things are connected; that we’re interdependent on one another. I just like feeling the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and the earth under my feet. It all nourishes me; my soul anyway.” 
― J.M. Northup

“Don't forget to pause and nourish yourself a bit along the way. When you're born to help others sometimes you forget to help yourself.” 
― Paula Heller Garland

SOUL

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.” 
― Rumi

“The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.” 
― Daniel Defoe

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ” 
― Leo Tolstoy

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” 
― Marcus Aurelius

Weeds

Proverbs 21:3 (NIV) “To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” 

Weeds

Now that Spring has arrived after the drenching rains it is time for the weeds to pop up through newly green grass that is calling out for a good mowing. You see, with such a mild winter, the grass really didn’t have a chance to go dormant. With warm weather mixed with a good two or three inches of rain the grass has shown signs of overflowing in greenery.

That greenery has called out to its friends the weeds to show up in abundance. A lot like life, we need to sort through the weed negative influences to get to the good greenery stuff that makes the air fresher and the lawn more beautified.

The thing is, is that the weeds are strangling the lawn and not allowing the grass to surface in many places and so my lawn looks like a patchwork quilt, grass here, weeds there all so suffocating. 

The only good thing is that the weeds are a pretty disguising purple, then there is the over abundance of beautiful sunshiny dandelions that certainly brighten the green. I’ve been reading lately about the health benefits of dandelions. 

While I say that my facebook is riddled with weeds, I can see a little teensy bit of beauty in the woven patchwork of posts. While the negative posts try to suffocate me there ARE means of getting rid of the dastardly demon non-do-gooders. The only health benefits I find in the negativity swell of weeds taking over the place is that I learn a lot of what NOT to be like as a person. 

Weeds are strangling the earth as I write. People are seen clinging to the negative affect of fellow weeds not wanting to be in the greener pastures with the few who are trying to save this world from imminent destruction. You see them every day wallowing in hate, spitting out ugliness, clinging by the root to the destructive weeds that invade the good green earth. Don’t be fooled by the little purple or yellow flowers that they toss out in disguise. 

People use God as a means to an end. Families are fleeing the church in record numbers because of these weeds that put on a pretty show but in reality are destroying the green trying to come up with the rain.

Galatians 6:8 (NIV) “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

Are you a sower or a reaper? Are you a shepherd or a sheep? A sower just takes and takes and fills his bag with the hate that has accumulated in his life. The anger at the world and the hate that has accrued over a lifespan have the sower replanting all the weeds he can so that everyone feels suffocated. A shepherd is a leader, one that will guide the lost sheep to safer grounds where they can eat the abundance of good, pure greenery that might be left. 

I might ask, are you a weed? Are you the one feeding the germination of decline that is crippling the world? Are you the spore that is repressing the possibility for new growth? Are you the man or woman who is a follower of animosity as opposed to the leader of replenishment? True colors come out in the actions that are prevalent in your life. If you continue to be a weed, then consider yourself among the community that is slowly depleting the earth of any significant life.

I see you cheering on the lessening of lives. You put people in their place and stand on a high platform with fist raised in enjoying the moans and grumbles that applaud you in your uncaring fashion of spewing YOUR logic.

Spock says, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Captain Kirk answers, “Or the one.”

Yeah, I went there. Now let me change it up a bit. “The weeds to the many outweigh the weeds of the few or the One!” You see, the seeds of weeds you feed to the many are outweighing the seeds of the One who is trying to resuscitate the earth. Your hate is depleting the earth of vital growth and until you see that picture as whole and it touches you so immensely you’ll continue in your weed garden. 

Do the many need to hear your hate mongering? Are we now the world that accepts underhanded backstabbing, knife grinding, bait dangling as a means to accomplish a goal? Is this what we’ve come to? 

As I walk through the shadow of the darkness that is Earth, my very last words on my tongue will be of Him who will save me. To the non-believer I say, I would much rather carry the words of love on my breath than the world, filled with hate and destruction on my lips that everyone seems to carry on theirs.

Are you a weed or a seed? Think about that. 

“We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings, we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.” 
― Chögyam Trungpa

Quotation Saturday

GARDENS

It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas, Down Shoe Lane

There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.
~Mirabel Osler
 
Science, or para-science, tells us that geraniums bloom better if they are spoken to. But a kind word every now and then is really quite enough. Too much attention, like too much feeding, and weeding and hoeing, inhibits and embarrasses them. 
~Victoria Glendinning

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.
~Abram L. Urban

WEEDS

A weed is but an unloved flower. 
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place. 
~Donald Culross Peattie

I learn more about God
From weeds than from roses;
Resilience springing
Through the smallest chink of hope
In the absolute of concrete....
~Phillip Pulfrey
 
You must weed your mind as you would weed your garden. 
~Terri Guillemets

SPRING

Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.
~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard
 
Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer. 
~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

Where man sees but withered leaves,
God sees sweet flowers growing.
~Albert Laighton

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

SOUL

The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
~John Greenleaf Whittier, My Psalm

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other. 
~Henry David Thoreau

A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.
~Plato
 
With all your science - can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?
~Henry David Thoreau

The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on. 
~Josiah Gilbert Holland