"The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work."
(Patricia Clafford)
Man is not body. The heart, the spirit, is man. And this spirit is an entire star, out of which, he is built. If therefore a man is perfect in his heart, nothing in the whole light of Nature is hidden from him.
Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus 1493-1541)
The utterance of God is a lamp, whose light is these words: Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.
Bahá’u'lláh
Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object.
(Joseph Campbell)
Glory to Thee, O my God! The first stirrings of the spring of Thy grace have appeared and clothed Thine earth with verdure. The clouds of the heaven of Thy bounty have rained their rain on this City within whose walls is imprisoned Him Whose desire is the salvation of Thy creatures. Through it the soil of this City hath been decked forth, and its trees clothed with foliage, and its inhabitants gladdened.
(Bahá’u'lláh)
Hear Me, ye mortal birds! In the Rose Garden of changeless splendor a Flower hath begun to bloom, compared to which every other flower is but a thorn, and before the brightness of Whose glory the very essence of beauty must pale and wither. Arise, therefore, and, with the whole enthusiasm of your hearts, with all the eagerness of your souls, the full fervor of your will, and the concentrated efforts of your entire being, strive to attain the paradise of His presence, and endeavor to inhale the fragrance of the incorruptible Flower, to breathe the sweet savors of holiness, and to obtain a portion of this perfume of celestial glory.
(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah)
How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.
Vincent van Gogh
Each moment of the year has its own beauty ... a picture which was never seen before and which shall never be seen again.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Flowers swung upon her branches like clusters of yellow flame, formed each to a glowing horn that spilled a golden rain upon the ground; and from the blossom of that tree there came forth warmth and a great light.
...as the Valar gazed it put forth blossom in exceeding great profusion, so that all its boughs were hidden by long swaying clusters of gold flowers like a myriad hanging lamps of flame, and light spilled from the tips of these and splashed upon the ground with a sweet noise.
(J.R.R. Tolkien)
I am always hoping to make a discovery here, to express the feelings of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their minglings and their oppositions, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
(Vincent van Gogh)
Whoso hath quaffed of the wine of divine knowledge will indeed be able to answer such questions with clear and perspicuous proofs from the world without and with manifest and luminous evidences from the world within.
(Bahá’u'lláh)
He places a seed in the dust for the reason that it may in the day of distress, give fruit.
(Sa'd, Persian Poet)
...may the Sun of Reality shine upon the east and west. The enveloping clouds shall pass away and the heat of the divine rays will dispel the mist. The reality of man shall develop and come forth as the image of God his creator.
('Abdu'l-Bahá)
life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
(e. e. cummings, Four VII)
Assist the weak ones with the Supreme Energy; shelter the indigent ones near the asylum of Thy Greatest Majesty; strengthen the loins of those souls whose faces radiate with Thy lights and whose tongues become eloquent in the glorification and commemoration of Thy Name; make them the plants of Thy luminous orchard, the blossoms of Thy blessed tree, the leaves of Thy Sadrat-el-Montaha [1] and the flowers of Thy exalted rose-garden!
('Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha)
[1 Sadrat-el-Montaha -- The name of a tree planted by the Arabs in ancient times at the end of a road, to serve as a guide. As a symbol it denotes a Manifestation in His day.]
Through the generative power of His utterance the whole earth hath been made the recipient of the wondrous signs and tokens of Thy sovereignty, and the heavens have been filled with the revelations of Thine incomparable majesty, and the seas have been enriched with the sacred pearls of Thine omniscience and wisdom, and the trees adorned with the fruits of Thy knowledge. (Bahá’u'lláh)
Thumbnail panels:
