"What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."
- Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915
"Even before I could speak, I remember crawling through
blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our hillsides. I quickly discovered
Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation between Spirit and
Nature. Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be
some kind of separation - that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be
divided and different. However, at my early age it seemed absolutely obvious
that the church of the Earth was the greatest church of all; that the temple of
the forest was the supreme temple. When I went to the sanctuary of the
mountain, I found Earth's natural altar - Great Spirit's real shrine. Years
later I discovered that this path of going into Nature, bonding deeply with it,
and seeing Spirit within Nature - God, Goddess, and Great Spirit - was
humanity's most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and
realization."
- John P. Milton, Sky Above, Earth Below
"In all things of nature there is something
marvelous."
- Aristotle
"The first act of awe, when man was struck with the
beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience."
- Henryk Skolimowski
"When the healthy nature of man acts
as a whole, when he feels himself to be
in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious
ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience
itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its
own becoming and essence."
- Goethe
Spirituality and Nature
Awe and Wonder
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