Pleasure in the pathless

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

   I love not man the less, but nature more."

~George Gordon Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

Come away

Ginkelse Heide, april 2018

"Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while."

~Mark 6:13

Know

"Be still, and know that I am GOD."

~Psalm 46:10

Take hold

Bossen bij Nunspeet

"Fight the good fight of the faith.
Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called"
~1 Timothy 6:12

Loves you as you are

"God loves you as you are, and not as you shòuld be,

for we will never be, as we should be."

~Brennan Manning

Where it cannot be found

"I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love

where it cannot be found."
~Henri Nouwen

Through a forest wilderness

"The clearest way into the Universe is
through a forest wilderness."

~John Muir

All the beauty

Kasteel Prattenburg, Utrechtse Heuvelrug

"All the beauty we have looked for in art or faces or places—and all the love

we have looked for in the arms of other people—

is only fully present in God himself."

~Timothy Keller

Where there is darkness, light

"Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life."

~Francis of Assisi

Behold

"Behold, the day of the Lord comes."

~Isaiah 13:9

I went to the woods

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately..."

~Henry David Thoreau

Come to love it

Hulshorst, Holland

"Nobody tells you, when you get born here,

how much you'll come to love it but how you'll never belong here." 

~Rich Mullins

Into the gateway to joy

"Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, 
to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish.
Real care means the willingness to help each other in making our 
brokenness into the gateway to joy."
~Henri Nouwen

I forget the rest

"The art of art, the glory of expression

and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity."

~Walt Whitman

"We were together. I forget the rest."

~Walt Whitman

Pleasure in the pathless woods

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

   I love not Man the less, but Nature more.."

~George Gordon Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

Dragons can be beaten

"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

~G.K. Chesterton

It plants the flag of truth

"We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains:

It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world...

No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument;

it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion.

But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment.

It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul."

~C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Like deer that find no pasture

All the splendor has departed from Daughter Zion.

Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; in weakness they

have fled before the pursuer.

~Lamentations 1:6

Behind him

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him,

but because he loves what is behind him."

~G.K. Chesterton

Entire army entered the woods

60 m. zoom

"The entire army entered the woods, and there was honey on the ground."

~1 Samuel 14:25