Spirit Gallery

Japanese

Niwa - pure place is the word for the Japanese Garden. It has its echo in Eden which in the western cosmology was a garden of purity before sin entered into the world. Since sin never entered Niwa, it is still the pure and beautiful place it has always been.
   --Professor Lennox Tierney

Hebrew

When our learning exceeds our deeds we are like trees whose branches are many but whose roots are few: the wind comes and uproots them. But when our deeds exceed our learning we are like trees whose branches are few but whose roots are many, so that even if all the winds of the world were to come and blow against them, they would be unable to move them.
--Oral Torah

Islam - Moslem

Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing:

all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees,

and it never winds down.

Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon;

ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything that is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire,

and the secret of one slowly growing body

Kabir saw that for fifteen secons, and it made him a servant for life.

--Kabir 1440-1558

Tibet

Hindu

Thou, Agni, shining in thy glory through the days, art brought to life from out of the waters, from the stone;

from out of the forest trees and herbs that grow on ground, thou

sovereign lord of men, art generated pure.

By thee, O Agni, all the immortal gods eat with thy

Mouth the oblation that is offered them.

By thee do mortal men give sweetness to their drink.

Pure thou art born, the embryo of the plants of earth.

--From Rig-Veda II

Christian

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more of value than they? And can any of you worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field , how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the over, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
    -- Matthew

Catholic

God is the friend of silence. Trees, flowers, grass grow in silence. See the stars, moon, and sun, how they move in silence. -- Mother Teresa

Native American - Tewa

O, our mother the Earth, O our father the sky,
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you gifts that you love.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
Father the sky!

A Song From the Garden of the House God (Navajo)

Truly in the East
The shite bean
And the great corn-plant
Are tied with white lightning.
Listen! Rain approaches!
The voice of Blue-Bird is heard.
Truly in the East
The white bean
And the great squash
Are tied with the rainbow,
Listen! The rain approaches!