Essence.

“When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.” – Mitch Albom

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Canyon de Chelly National Monument

http://georgehhhuey.photoshelter.com/image/I0000yLFEeGJsem4

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“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – Paul Coelho

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Canyon de Chelly Autumn by Josh Elliott Oil

http://joshelliott.fineartstudioonline.com/dataviewer.asp?keyvalue=1893&subkeyvalue=381120&page=WorksZoom

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“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” – Louise Erdrich

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Fall cottonwoods Canyon De Chelly photo by Gary Fillmore

http://www.bluecoyotegallery.com/LookingforJimmySwinnertonPartIII.htm

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“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” – John Lennon

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Canyon de Chelly, sunset by George Huey

http://georgehhhuey.photoshelter.com/image/I0000zYnMIQihi7g

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“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

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Navajo horses Canyon de Chelly

http://miraimages.photoshelter.com/image/I0000r7xzwalZPXQ

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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C.S. Lewis

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