On this bright still silent November day, we walk through bare thickets toward the lake like a silver mirror; so calm, so glassy, it holds on its wide surface all the patterns of light and air above. Its silence silences us. Its stillness stops us in our tracks. As I bend to touch a stone, I hear a voice say, "Love the earth". I cock my ear and hear the echo, faint yet unmistakable as ocean sounding in a shell. When I try to summon it once more, only my words come. A great and terrible tenderness breaks over me. Each pebble, each shell, is filled with beauty; each, in this moment, articulate, a word spoken, and I imagine beyond the grasp of hearing the great murmuring of creation beneath my feet. I feel these patient stones lie like an eternal sacrifice, offering me the ground of their existence on which to grind and crunch the pathways of my life ... I haven't begun to love the earth. Does it take the awareness of our death to wake us up to life?
A young Indian boy was auditioning along with some of us for a school play. His mother knew he’d set his heart on being in the play — just like the rest of us hoped, too — and she feared how he would react if he was not chosen.
On the day the parts were awarded the little boy’s mother went to the school on her horse to collect her son. The little boy rushed up to her and her horse, eyes shining with pride and excitement.
"Guess what, Mom," he shouted, and then said the words that provide a lesson to us all, "I’ve been chosen to clap and cheer."