I keep pestering my friend, Marjorie, to get a blog spot and share her pearly wise words, but no luck so far.. In the meantime, she has relented and allowed me to publish her response to my last post as a "guest blogger". Enjoy!:

Carpe Diem, not a bad philosophy. I think Jesus had a slightly different take, but something similar - "consider the lilies, (and the Buddha's lesson on the Golden Flower sort of echoes the idea), some poetry quotations with echoes:


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour. (William Blake)

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. (Tennyson)

Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Shed not tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu--I fly--adieu! (John Keats)


The secret of the flower, which both Jesus and Buddha tried to teach each in their own way, is that the outward life and beauty we find in nature and in ourselves is transitory and fleeting, but real nonetheless.

We cannot hold onto life and beauty by grasping and clutching it to ourselves, that way leads to endless anxiety and bottomless greed. So seize the day, but hold it lightly and gently, it can't last, the only lasting beauty is beauty of the soul, because that's eternal.