England has her Stratford Scotland has her Alloway and America too has her Dresden. For there on August 11 1833 was born the greatest and noblest of the Western World an immense personality -- unique lovable sublime the peerless orator of all time and as true a poet as Nature ever held in tender clasp upon her loving breast and in words coined for the chosen few told of the joys and sorrows hopes dreams and fears of universal life a patriot whose golden words and deathless deeds were worthy of the Great Republic a philanthropist real and genuine a philosopher whose central theme was human love -- who placed the holy hearth of home higher than the altar of any god an iconoclast a builder -- a reformer perfectly poised absolutely honest and as fearless as truth itself -- the most aggressive and formidable foe of superstition -- the most valiant champion of reason -- Robert G. Ingersoll.

The secret of seeing is then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all although it comes to those who wait for it it is always even to the most practiced and adept a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon alleluia

I breathe in the soft saturated exhalations of cedar trees and salmonberry bushes fireweed and wood fern marsh hawks and meadow voles marten and harbor seal and blacktail deer. I breathe in the same particles of air that made songs in the throats of hermit thrushes and gave voices to humpback whales the same particles of air that lifted the wings of bald eagles and buzzed in the flight of hummingbirds the same particles of air that rushed over the sea in storms whirled in high mountain snows whistled across the poles and whispered through lush equatorial gardensair that has passed continually through life on earth. I breathe it in pass it on share it in equal measure with billions of other living things endlessly infinitely.

Ive come down from the skylike some damned ghost delayedtoo longTo the abandoned fieldsthe trees returned and grew.They stand and grow. Time comesTo them time goes the treesStand the only placeThey go is where they are.Those wholly patient onesThey do no wrong and theyAre beautiful. What moreCould we have thought to ask...I stand and wait for lightto open the dark night.I stand and wait for prayerto come and find me here. Sabbaths 2000 IX

Or I would be the rain itself wreathing over the island mingling in the quiet of moist places filling its pores with its saturated breaths. And I would be the wind whispering through the tangled woods running airy fingers over the islands face tingling in the chill of concealed places sighing secrets in the dawn. And I would be the light flinging over the island covering it with flash and shadow shining on rocks and pools softening to a touch in the glow of dusk. If I were the rain and wind and light I would encircle the island like the sky surrounding earth flood through it like a heart driven pulse shine from inside it like a star in flames burn away to blackness in the closed eyes of its night. There are so many ways I could love this island if I were the rain.

Its stranger than every strangenessAnd the dreams of all the poetsAnd the thoughts of all the philosophersThat things are really what they seem to beAnd theres nothing to understand.

I think about this not like someone thinking but like someone breathingAnd I look at flowers and I smile...I dont know if they understand meOr if I understand themBut I know the truth is in them and in meAnd in our common divinityOf letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleepAnd not have dreams in our sleep.

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes somewhere in its heart of hearts is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake with my eyes closed when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead I guess in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long curved band of color. As I came closer I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a womans tweed scarf the longer I studied any one spot the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length I started to look for my time but although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric I couldnt find my time or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldnt make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time all the individual people I understood with special clarity were living at the very moment with great emotion in intricate detail in their individual times and places and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people one by one like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band that was a good time then a good time to be living.And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing one by one in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running waterI saw may apples in forest erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean and I seemed to be in the ocean myself swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks under which wilds ducks flew and called one by one and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space and I recalled the oceans shape and the form of continents saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet Yes thats how it was then that part there we called France. I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.

It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either signifies nothing or has only a negative significance.If on the other hand we believe that we are living souls Gods dust and Gods breath acting our parts among other creatures all made of the same dust and breath as ourselves and if we understand that we are free within the obvious limits of moral human life to do evil or good to ourselves and to the other creatures - then all our acts have a supreme significance. If it is true that we are living souls and morally free then all of us are artists. All of us are makers within mortal terms and limits of our lives of one anothers lives of things we need and use...If we think of ourselves as living souls immortal creatures living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious and if we see that everything we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves for others and for the world then we see why some religious teachers have understood work as a form of prayer...Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity. pg. 316 Christianity and the Survival of Creation