Good Timber

Credit: photosforyou @ Pixabay

The tree that never had to fight

For sun and sky and air and light,

But stood out in the open plain

And always got its share of rain,

Never became a forest king

But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil

To gain and farm his patch of soil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease,

The stronger wind, the stronger trees,

The further sky, the greater length,

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars

Whose broken branches show the scars

Of many winds and much of strife.

This is the common law of life.

~ Douglas Malloch

Confidence

Source: Unknown

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do. 

~ Eleanor Roosevelt 

Helen Keller

Credit: Helen Keller Foundation

She,

In the dark,

Found light

Brighter than many ever see.

She,

Within herself,

Found loveliness,

Through the soul’s own mastery.

And now the world receives

From her dower:

The message of the strength

Of inner power.

~ Langston Hughes

Quote: Strength

Photograph: Steve Satushek/Getty Images

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

~ Joss Whedon

Quote: Strength

Photograph: Steve Satushek/Getty Images

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

~ Joss Whedon

Quote on strength of human beings

Source: Tumblr/Favim

Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

~ John Irving

Quote on strength of human beings

Source: Tumblr/Favim

Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

~ John Irving

Quote on living

Source: Tumblr/Favim

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.

~ Andrew Solomon

Quote on living

Source: Tumblr/Favim

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.

~ Andrew Solomon

Quote on trees

Photo credit: demondimum from morguefile.com 

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

~ Hermann Hesse

Quote on trees

Photo credit: demondimum from morguefile.com 

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

~ Hermann Hesse

False Notions, Fears, And Other Things Of Wood

Source: Unknown/Favim

Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me

bears up like stone,

beneath some ritual I see:

the blinding axe

swings up, holds,

that moment of its weightlessness

inscrutable

till I confirm the arm is mine;

I will it, grip,

feel moist the swelling handle,

the shudder rude,

the difference fallen.

Toward that chopping block

I carry in me woodthings—

infectious undergrowth

pretending upwards

through each stem and branch of me—

all so certain of themselves

they practice, like pains,

the craft of being.

They try to wrench away

before we reach that stump,

my woodthings and I,

they weakening

in its brightness,

in my luminous saying

"I must go, must go

to the chopping block."

They know the brutal business

of my thinking;

I know they have no charity nor memory

to return the way they came—

came not from wilderness,

nor forest,

nor living trees.

Their craft and strength I test—

and mine—

at the chopping block.

~ James A. Emanuel

_________________________________

Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.
~ Abigail Adams

False Notions, Fears, And Other Things Of Wood

Source: Unknown/Favim

Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me

bears up like stone,

beneath some ritual I see:

the blinding axe

swings up, holds,

that moment of its weightlessness

inscrutable

till I confirm the arm is mine;

I will it, grip,

feel moist the swelling handle,

the shudder rude,

the difference fallen.

Toward that chopping block

I carry in me woodthings—

infectious undergrowth

pretending upwards

through each stem and branch of me—

all so certain of themselves

they practice, like pains,

the craft of being.

They try to wrench away

before we reach that stump,

my woodthings and I,

they weakening

in its brightness,

in my luminous saying

"I must go, must go

to the chopping block."

They know the brutal business

of my thinking;

I know they have no charity nor memory

to return the way they came—

came not from wilderness,

nor forest,

nor living trees.

Their craft and strength I test—

and mine—

at the chopping block.

~ James A. Emanuel

_________________________________

Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.
~ Abigail Adams

Quote on strength

Source: Facebook

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.

I realized, through all that, that…

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against, me, within me, there’s something stronger—something better, pushing right back.  

~ Albert Camus

Quote on strength

Source: Facebook

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.

I realized, through all that, that…

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against, me, within me, there’s something stronger—something better, pushing right back.  

~ Albert Camus

Fatigue

Credit: Natasha Veselaya

Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,

Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,

Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,

Bow down my head lest I behold a star.

Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities

Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,

Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences

Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.

Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,

Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,

Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,

Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.

Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,

Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;

Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --

The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.

~Amy Lowell

Fatigue

Credit: Natasha Veselaya

Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,

Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,

Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,

Bow down my head lest I behold a star.

Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities

Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,

Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences

Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.

Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,

Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,

Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,

Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.

Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,

Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;

Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --

The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.

~Amy Lowell