Reflecting the Source
“All life down to its smallest element, can, if rightly approached, be seen as a reflection of the infinite source of holiness, which is God.”
–Huston Smith (Chinese-born American Religious Studies Scholar and Emeritus Professor at Syracuse University, 1919-)
The Living Earth
“The earth is not a dead body, but is inhabited by a spirit that is its life and soul. All created things, minerals included, draw their strength from the earth spirit. This spirit is life.”
–Basilius Valentinus (a.k.a. Basil Valentine, German 15th Century Alchemist and Canon of the Benedictine Priory of Sankt Peter in Erfurt, Germany)
“The Way of the Earth: Encounters With Nature in Ancient and Contemporary Thought” (T. C. McLuhan)
The Breath of Life
“God blesses equally every beast of the field and every living creature, in the water as in the air, and He endows them all with life, which is a breath of His own Spirit.”
–Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Russian Author, Translator and Founder of the Theosophical Society, 1831-1891)
“Isis Unveiled (Volumes 1 and 2)” (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky)
Sensing the Fabric of Life
“The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings.”
–Rachel Carson (American Biologist and Writer, 1907-1964)
Life Is God’s Novel
“Life is God’s novel so let him write it.”
–Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Writer and, in 1978, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1904-1991)
Cooperation and Creativity
“Life is a triumph of cooperation and creativity. Indeed, since the creation of the first nucleated cells, evolution has proceeded through ever more intricate arrangements of cooperation and coevolution.”
–Fritjof Capra (Austrian-born American Physicist, Futurist and Writer, 1939-)
“The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems” (Fritjof Capra)
Life Is Progress
“Life is progress, and ceasing to progress is death.”
–Hazrat Inayat Khan (Indian Founder of Universal Sufism and the Sufi Order International, 1882-1927)
Life Endures
“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away – an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost the sense of something that lives and endures beneath the eternal flux. What we see is blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into the transitory one.”
–Carl G. Jung (Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, 1875-1961)
Written By God’s Fingers
“Every man’s life is a fairy tale, written by God’s fingers.”
–Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author, 1805-1875)
Everything That Lives Is Holy
“For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life”
–William Blake (English Poet, Painter and Mystic, 1757-1827)
