…no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but subsystems of the biosphere, the Earth’s thin veneer of life, which is ultimately run by bacteria, fungi and green plants.
~ Vaclav Smil
Reshi Mushrooms, Borneo Forest – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The universe is always speaking to us. … Sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.
~ Nancy Thayer
Bay of Elgol, Isle of Skye, Scotland – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Now when you cut a forest, an ancient forest in particular, you are not just removing a lot of big trees and a few birds fluttering around in the canopy. You are drastically imperiling a vast array of species within a few square miles of you. The number of these species may go to tens of thousands. … Many of them are still unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered the key role undoubtedly played in the maintenance of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms, and many of the insects.
~ E. O. Wilson
California Redwood Forest – photo from bigstockphoto.com
There are many ways to experience and participate in…a living oneness. But if I have learned anything after half a century of spiritual practice, it is the power of love. Love comes in so many forms and expressions. There are the simple acts of loving kindness towards friends and family, members of our community, or strangers. Love reaches across boundaries, expressing what is most essential and human: what unites rather than divides. “Small things with great love,” are more potent and powerful than we realize, because they reconnect us with the spiritual roots of life and its transformative and healing energies. Because life is an expression of love, each act of love is a participation and gift to the whole.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sunrise, Varnal, Bulgaria – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, a different vibration of chemical exhalation, a different polarity with the stars; call it what you like. But the spirit of a place is a great reality.
~ D. H. Lawrence
Morniing in Huangshan Mountains, China – photo by AlSereb, bigstockphoto.com
We are now called to respond with compassion and wisdom to meet the challenges of our world, fuelled by sacred energy to act to preserve our planet. This energy, burning in every cell of our hearts and minds, souls, and bodies, will give us the courage and vision to heal and transform the earth.
~ Andrew Harvey
Pha Tat Waterfall, Thailand – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…my being partakes of your being and that of all beings. This goes beyond interdependency—our very existence is relational…therefore, what we do to another, we do to ourselves.
~ Charles Eisenstein
Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona – photo from bigstockphoto.com
To embody a new paradigm of civilization—to learn to think like a planet in order to heal and nurture a planet—is not a typical hero’s task. It is more the task of a gardener. The planet does not offer us challenges to be overcome to prove our worth or individuality; it presents us with a community to understand, a community with disparate needs and identities that are nonetheless intertwined in mutual dependencies.
~ David Spangler
Cedar Forest – photo by Iva Kem, bigstockphoto.com
Every living being is connected intimately, and from this intimacy follows the capacity of identification and as its natural consequences, practice of non-violence… Now is the time to share with all life on our maltreated earth through the deepening identification with life forms and the greater units, the ecosystems, and Gaia, the fabulous, old planet of ours.
~ Arne Naess
Mount Bromo and Batok Volcanoes, East Java, Indonesia – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…the living universe is a paradigm that portrays the universe as buzzing with invisible energy and aliveness, patiently growing a garden of cosmic scale.
~ Duane Elgin
Stars Over Elephant Rock, Valley of Fire, Nevada – photo by Kris Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com
And here lies the crux of the matter: to say that nature is personal may mean not so much seeing the world differently as acting differently—or, to state it another way, it may mean interacting with more-than-human others in nature as if those others had a life of their own and then coming to see, through experience, that these others are living, interacting beings.
~ Priscilla Stuckey, “Kissed By A Fox”
Himalayan Tahr – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…the sacred is not some special, separate category of existence. It is not to be captured and tamed with fixed verbal structures of dogma and belief, or confined in man-made buildings. For sacredness is inherent in the very essence of life and the multiple patterns of its arising. Sacredness is the radiant expansion of the heart, the devotion to life that rises in contemplation of the inexhaustible mystery that is unity in diversity, the One manifesting through the whole of creation.
~ Eleanor O’Hanlon
Lake in Central Russia – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.
~ James Lovelock
Sunrise, Totem Pole, Monument Valley – photo by Dean Fikar, bigstockphoto.com
It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.
~ Albert Einstein
Elf Garden, Iceland – photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
Earth, Teach Me
Earth teach me quiet as the grasses are still with new light.
Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring as mothers nurture their young.
Earth teach me courage as the tree that stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation as the ant that crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom as the eagle that soars in the sky.
Earth teach me acceptance as the leaves that die each fall.
Earth teach me renewal as the seed that rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain.
~ Ute Prayer
Sunset, Lake Te Anau, New Zealand – photo from bigstockphoto.com
