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Garden of Spirit
Japanese
Niwa
- pure place is the word for the Japanese Garden. It has its echo in Eden
which in the western cosmology was a garden of purity before sin entered
into the world. Since sin never entered Niwa, it is still the pure and
beautiful place it has always been.
Professor
Lennox Tierney
Hebrew
When
our learning exceeds our deeds we are like trees whose branches are many
but whose roots are few: the wind comes and uproots them. But when our
deeds exceed our learning we are like trees whose branches are few but
whose roots are many, so that even if all the winds of the world were to
come and blow against them, they would be unable to move them.
Oral
Torah
Islam - Moslem
Between
the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing:
all
earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees,
and
it never winds down.
Angels,
animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon;
ages
go by, and it goes on.
Everything
that is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire,
and
the secret of one slowly growing body
Kabir
saw that for fifteen secons, and it made him a servant for life.
Kabir
1440-1558
Hindu
Thou,
Agni, shining in thy glory through the days, art brought to life from out
of the waters, from the stone;
from
out of the forest trees and herbs that grow on ground, thou
sovereign
lord of men, art generated pure.
By
thee, O Agni, all the immortal gods eat with thy
Mouth
the oblation that is offered them.
By
thee do mortal men give sweetness to their drink.
Pure
thou art born, the embryo of the plants of earth.
From
Rig-Veda II
Christian
Therefore
I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you
will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than
food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they
neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not more of value than they? And can any of you worrying
add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field , how they grow; they neither toil nor
spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like
one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive
today and tomorrow is thrown into the over, will he not much more clothe
you, O you of little faith?
Matthew
Catholic
God
is the friend of silence. Trees, flowers, grass grow in silence. See the
stars, moon, and sun, how they move in silence.
Mother
Teresa
Native American -
Tewa
O,
our mother the Earth, O our father the sky,
Your
children are we, and with tired backs
We
bring you gifts that you love.
Then
weave for us a garment of brightness;
May
the warp be the white light of morning,
May
the weft be the red light of evening,
May
the fringes be the falling rain,
May
the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus
weave for us a garment of brightness
That
we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
O
our mother the earth, O our father the sky!

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Japan |
Hebrew
Islam
Hindu
Christian
Native American
Photos and text copyright
© Maureen Gilmer
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