Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of appreciating small beauties in life that contribute to our overall joy and well-being.
W. E. B. Du Bois encourages us to be aware of the small, often overlooked aspects of life that can bring beauty and joy to our daily experiences. By being mindful of these little things, we can cultivate a greater appreciation for the world around us and foster a positive perspective amidst life's challenges.
In practice
This quote can be used during a workshop on mindfulness and appreciation of nature.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.
We who are gathered here may represent a particular delete, not of money and power, but of concern for the earth for the earth's sake.
The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.
I've always admired gardens. My father was a great nature lover and would always take me for walks. We lived not too far away from huge rhododendron estates and azalea estates, and when they're in bloom in England, they're just riotous.
Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.
The Earth is blue... how wonderful. It is amazing
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