We may differ widely in environments, education, learning, knowledge, or lack of it, and in our personalities, our likes and dislikes. But if we set ourselves the task, we'll find a meeting place somehow and somewhere.

I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful--as a child is--for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.

The shadow of fear and uncertainty lies over most of us; for us the future seems far from being as clear and open as we believed it would be.

In my belief, a harvest is also a legacy, for very often what you reap is, in the way of small miracles, more than you consciously know you have sown.

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping.