John Stokes famous quotes

Christianity sees plants and flowers as created by God to show forth and share with humans the divine goodness, beauty and truth - the purpose of all Creation. In this flowers may be enjoyed simply and directly in themselves as showing forth God's goodness and beauty, or, more fully, as archetypes, signatures, symbols, and bearers of legends, mirroring the revealed articles of Christian faith - thereby serving as means for their teaching, recollection, contemplation and celebration.
-- John Stokes

#Beauty #Christian #Flower

The growth of all the plants of the garden from seeds and roots keep us mindful, in accordance with of the Parable of the Sower, of the need for our loving, mortified reception and cultivation in our hearts and souls of the seeds and roots of the supernatural gifts and virtues necessary for progress in the ascetical/mystical ascent of our souls toward union with God and with the divine will for Creation and Kingdom
-- John Stokes

#Heart #Garden #Roots

I do not wish to die- There is such contingent beauty in life: The open window on summer mornings Looking out on gardens and green things growing, The shadowy cups of roses flowering to themselves- Images of time and eternity- Silence in the garden and felt along the walls.

To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.

Beauty is transient and changes with time.

The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to.

All play aspires to the condition of paradise...through play in all its forms...we hope to achieve a state that our larger Greco-Roman, Judeo- Christian culture has always known was lost. Where it exists, we do not know, although we always have envisioned it as a garden...always as removed, as an enclosed green place...Paradise is an ancient dream...It is a dream of ourselves as better than we are, back to what we were.

When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.

In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.

There is a graveyard in my poor heart - dark, heaped-up graves, from which no flowers spring.

We cannot teach a flower how to grow, we can only learn from it.

Future's the only flower worth tending in this earth, where I sow my words daily: and you know, these good trees bear fruit round the year, discreetly, moving along the waterways and four seasons of the faithful sun.