"Oh, Great Spirit ...."

Oh, Great Spirit

Whose voice I hear in the winds,

And whose breath gives life to all the world,

hear me, I am small and weak,

I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold

the red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things you have

made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things

you have taught my people.

Let me learn the lessons you have

hidden in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother,

but to fight my greatest enemy - myself.

Make me always ready to come to you

with clean hands and straight eyes.

So when life fades, as the fading sunset,

my Spirit may come to you without shame.

Chief Yellow Lark, Lakota tribe

"I stepped from plank ...."

I stepped from plank to plank

So slow and cautiously;

The stars about my head I felt,

About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next

Would be my final inch.

This gave me that precarious gait

Some call experience.

Emily Dickinson

Too much thinking

Too much thinking

Too much fear

Too much care –

A living lost.

"...The consistent care necessary ...."

 … The consistent care necessary to keep the body machinery functioning in spite of age and deterioration is mandatory.  A lifetime of training is required.  It’s so easy to blame the terrain, so to speak, or the light and wind for our failures and backsliding. But where the body is concerned there is not time for self-pity…. living as we do in society that wants to put old people to bed.  You can hardly get wisdom out of someone who is lying around during his last years.  Actuality is needed right up to the end….It’s a matter of testing your capacities and preparing for the next level.  Old age demands that we garner and lean on all previous experience.

from “A Walk on the Beach”, Joan Anderson

"There are four things ...."

“There are four things certain in life:

life

death

happiness

sadness”

from The Orphan of Zhao