#nature

Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our fallen nature. Right things are rare flowers that need cultivation. ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#sin #nature

Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#nature-as-church #numinous #our-place-in-the-universe #revelation #spirituality

Halakha, as the human way of life in accordance with the Torah, does not aim at absolute truth, nor does it run after the fata- morgana of universal truth. Neither of them is accessible to human beings. Its aim is “earthly truth” that the human intellect is able to grasp and for whose pursuance in life man must accept personal responsibility. ↗

— Eliezer Berkovits

#torah #nature

Maifest Wie herrlich leuchtet Mir die Natur! Wie glänzt die Sonne! Wie lacht die Flur! Es dringen Blüten Aus jedem Zweig, Und tausend Stimmen Aus dem Gesträuch, Und Freud und Wonne Aus jeder Brust. O Erd, o Sonne! O Glück, o Lust! O Lieb', o Liebe, So golden schön, Wie Morgenwolken Auf jenen Höhn; Du segnest herrlich Das frische Feld, Im Blütendampfe Die volle Welt. O Mädchen, Mädchen, Wie lieb' ich dich! Wie blickt dein Auge! Wie liebst du mich! So liebt die Lerche Gesang und Luft, Und Morgenblumen Den Himmels Duft, Wie ich dich liebe Mit warmem Blut, Die du mir Jugend Und Freud und Mut Zu neuen Liedern Und Tänzen gibst! Sei ewig glücklich Wie du mich liebst! ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#maifest #natur #nature

We are used to the idea of giving witness to one’s life as an important and noble counterpoint to being unheard, especially when applied to people in certain disadvantaged, oppressed or unacceptable situations. But in a slightly more pathological way, I’m not sure that we aren’t seeing the emergence of a society in which almost everyone who isn’t famous considers themselves cruelly and unfairly unheard. As though being famous, and the subject of wide attention, is considered to be a fulfilled human being’s natural state—and so, as a corollary, the cruelly unheard millions are perpetually primed and fired up to answer any and all questions in order to redress this awful imbalance. ↗

— Chris Heath

#nature

No one has yet determined the power of the human species . . . what it may perform by instinct, and what it may accomplish with rational determination. ↗

— Brian Herbert

#nature

Man must spend much more time in extraordinary natural places to grasp much better how remarkable our planet is and to realise what a great privilege and what an enormous joy to be living here! ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#nature

When you're fat, people naturally assume you aren't committed. They think you're not disciplined because if you were disciplined you wouldn't let yourself get fat. A + B = C. ↗

— K.L. Going

#nature

When I feel clumsy or lost, I remind myself that nature, including me, was created by a a far wiser mind than mine. There is something in the cosmos - God, Spirit, Consciousness, Life Itself, call It what you will - that created and orchestrates nature, and did a pretty good job of it. Nature might just know what It's doing. Even when I don't. ↗

— Jeffrey R. Anderson

#god #mind #nature #spirit #nature

The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for’, as Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions. ↗

— Philip Yancey

#nature