Oh how our values fail us!
Beauty doesn't come from a package.
It shines as a whole.
Love doesn't come from a greeting card.
It dwells in the heart, radiating the soul.
~ Basilla E. Neilan
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.