the Word

most precious heard

alights like snow

floating down to earth

gently quiet

and packaged tight

covering lands

of grass and stones

with freshness

and moistens

the hardened ground

for Spring

Tis, "Come"

*Devotion and sacrifice do not reduce our energy but intensify it.  Love and compassion toward the other, readiness to accept him as he is, with all his short comings and faults, ailments and old age, help us accept ourselves as well, with all our weaknesses and shortcomings, with a feeling of remorse, of love, and compassion.  Love and compassion are not just private and individual experiences.  Neither are they necessarily impersonal manifestations of a universal, vibrant movement.  In some unexplained way they are both, at one and and the same time.

-Ilam Amit

*Vincent van Gogh's battle with poverty, his alcoholism and psychological torment, and his suicide are widely known.  Yet it was not his suffering and the dark anguish of his life that made van Gogh a great artist. It was his capacity to create extraordinary beauty in the midst of his personal hell.

-Val Thorpe

*What is truly astonishing about his[van Gogh's] story are not his psychological failings but his remarkable vision and hope.

-Val Thorpe

 *Where sympathy is restored, life is renewed.

-Vincent van Gogh