Insights – Melannie Thomas

Archive for the ‘Health & Healing’ Category

I was spellbound watching a Nova episode celebrating 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope.  I lost my ability to follow the depth and breadth of information when teeny, tiny narrow, oblong spots were pointed out by the narrator.  These are galaxies similar to our own.  This was followed by the mathematical method by which science gauges the number of stars that exist.

I don’t remember the astronomical count.  I just sat and stared at the majestic infinity beyond my mind’s comprehension.  A truly humbling experience.

I invite you to experience this unfathomable creation.  Watch the Nova program; go to http://www.thirteen.org/programs/nova/#invisible-universe-revealed; take a look at http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/; and check out Hubble25th.org for a brief NASA presentation.

“I think it’s very clear that figuring out how to live sustainably within the environmental systems that support us is the defining challenge of our era.  Earth Day is important because it’s about waking up more people to that challenge and committing to engage in it ourselves.”

~Edward Norton

“Gardening is not trivial.  If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way.  You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains.  The fact is, gardening is just the opposite – it is, or should be, a central basic expression of human life.”

~Andrew Weil

“The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s,  smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.”

~Leo Buscaglia

“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 Nietzche.  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 fulfill 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.”

~Herman Hesse

“As you press on up the trail you will always find others who do not know how to find this closeness with the Inner Spirit, and they will tell you of their problems and struggles and will cry out as one indeed having no hope.  Many of these could not, nor would they make the effort to understand how close is the union of Soul and Spirit; how near at hand is Divine help with its attendant peace if they would open their hearts to receive it.  They think of themselves as pure physical body and carry in their heart all the vicissitudes of that same body.  It would be a far step, at this point, for them to know that in reality they are Soul and as such have full control over the body of flesh.”

~Eva Bell Werber, The Journey With The Master

In the Tarot the Wheel of Fortune represents universal cycles; an appropriate symbol for this time of reflection and renewal.   Solstice and Equinox are revered times in human belief systems; ancient and modern.  Methods and means of acknowledging and celebrating these universal cycles are as varied as the vast cultural diversity that exists on Mother Earth.

This year’s Vernal Equinox occurs on Friday March 20.  I invite you to spend some time reflecting on the natural cycles and seasons of your life.  Examine how you are rolling with the punches.  They seem to be coming at warp speed as we move closer to the birth of a New Age.   Now is a good time to plant seeds for an abundant celebration of the Fall Equinox.  Tie up loose ends.  Look for opportunities in the middle of chaos.

Take a mindful stroll in the natural world; the one outside and the one within.

“I feel within me that future life.  I am like a forest that has been razed;  the new shoots are stronger and brighter.  The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of the immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me.  For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse: history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these I have tried.  But I feel I haven’t given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me.  When I go to the grave I can say, as others have said, ‘My days work is done.’  But I cannot say, ‘My life is done.’  My work will recommence the next morning.  The tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thoroughfare.  It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn.”

~Victor Hugo

“A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.”

~Aldous Huxley

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”

~Albert Einstein