Quotes About Renewal

The best and easiest way to get a forest to return to any plot of cleared land is to do nothing—nothing at all, and do it for less time than you might think.

For there is hope of a tree, if it goes down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender branches will not cease. Though the root grows old in the earth, and the stock dies in the ground, at the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs. But man, man wastes away and dies and gives up the ghost, and where is he?

Trees fall with spectacular crashes. Planting is silent and growth invisible.

Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

Way too late in life, Els learned that the time to concentrate yourself was right before sunrise.

The boy thinks: Something slow and purposeful wants to turn every human building into soil.

Trees give it all away, don't they?

Maybe it's useful to think of forests as enormous spreading, branching, underground super-trees.

a simple machine needing no fuel and little maintenance, one that steadily sequesters carbon, enriches the soil, cools the ground, scrubs the air, and scales easily to any size. A tech that copies itself and even drops food for free. A device so beautiful it's the stuff of poems.

The tree is saying things, in words before words. It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering. It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.

great truth comes over him: Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

A forest takes care of itself, even as it builds the local climate it needs to survive.

We're sorry. We didn't know how hard it is for you to grow back.

The hills cast a shadow on themselves, bruise-blue turning to forgetful black. High up, [...] rocky outcrops crawl with manzanita, shedding their curling, crimson barks. Bay laurels rim the logger-made meadows. Canyons thicken with orange madrone peeling to creamy, clammy green. Coast live oaks [...] gather on the crags. And down in cool ripatian corridors smelling of silt and decaying needles, redwoods work a plan that will take a thousand years to realize [...]

Teaching is like photosynthesis: making food from air and light. It tilts the prospects for life a little.

Nothing anyone can do for anyone, except to recall: We are every second being born.

Noisy aspens and remnant birches, forests of cottonwoods and poplars, take up the chorus: The world is turning into a new thing.

the ordeal of developing new selves will not be seriously entertained, much less embarked upon, until [people] are forced into it by the partial destruction of their former selves.

Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.

Once you have met your own soul, you know that you are being guided. You are being led from within, and even the inexorable wheel of life is your teacher. It is the cycle of failure and renewal that slowly lowers you into the arms of a very safe God.

People who have been initiated broke through in what felt like breaking down.

Resurrection" is another word for change, but particularly positive change—which we tend to see only in the long run. In the short run, it often just looks like death.

Each generation has to appropriate its deepest beliefs for itself. We used to say it this way: "God has no grandchildren." Each generation must itself be realigned with God and discover the mystery for itself.

New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.