Grateful eyes look at each thing as if they had never seen it before and caress it as if they would never see it again.
~ Br. David Steindl-Rast
Grand Canyon at Dusk – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The accelerating changes of these times offer us increased opportunities to advance in consciousness— by integrating our spiritual heart’s wisdom with our human intelligence into a oneness relationship…caring for ourselves and others is caring for the whole.
~ Doc Childre
Huangshan Mountain Peaks, Anhui Province, China – photo from bigstockphoto.com
There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.
~ John O’Donohue
Sakura Cherry Blossom – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Animal communicators have most likely existed for a long time, probably in every single culture in the world. It is only in our modern Western materialistic culture, which has been influenced by mainstream institutions of religion and science based on perceiving a reality of separateness, that such a possibility seems so outlandish. However…animal communication, also known as interspecies communication, is a very real phenomenon.
~ Makie Freeman
Raccoon, Pforzheim, Germany – photo from bigstockphoto.com
We struggle over words when the slime mold solves the maze, because our concepts don’t fit the data. It is not that nature lacks intelligence, but that our own concepts do.
~ Jeremy Narby
White Mushrooms, Borneo – photo by Stephan Scherhag, bigstockphoto.com
…every act we make, every word we speak, every thought we think is not only affected by the other elements in the vast web of being in which all things take part, but also has results so far-reaching that we cannot see or imagine them.
~ Joanna Macy
Evening in Sedona, AZ – photo from bigstockphoto.com
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
~ David Whyte
Summer Forest – photo by Tatiana Belova, bigstockphoto.com
The earth and all its life forms and processes are sacred. We belong to them and they to us—we are kin. We should, therefore, act lovingly, reverently, and respectfully toward them. We must not unnecessarily injure these beings and processes when we take from them what we need to live. The key to contemporary earth-based spirituality and ethics is, therefore, a felt sense of “connection,” kinship, and loyalty to earth, her life forms, and living systems.
~ Bron Taylor
Merced River, Yosemite – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…if we open ourselves to the possibility that we are all participants in an interconnected web of life, as many indigenous peoples believed and actually experienced things to be, destroying the natural world simply to serve the essentially suicidal infinite economic growth model will be identified for the insanity that it is. If we recognize, as biologist James Lovelock proposed, the Earth as a whole should be looked upon more like a self-regulating organism (Gaia hypothesis), or as mycologist Paul Stamet envisions, that there is a fungi-based internet within the ground connecting all living things on the planet in an information-sharing network, we will be less likely to both perceive and treat the natural world as “other” to be dominated.
~ Sayer Ji
Montana Forest Stream – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Indigenous teachings embrace the divine feminine in a way that is crucial for healing the earth and ourselves. For thousands of years it has been known that everything that exists in this world is alive and has a spirit.
We are connected to a web of life that reflects the impact of the behavior of all that is alive. We can speak to the spirit of the trees, plants, rocks, rivers, animals, birds, insects, and reptiles and perceive their divine nature. As everything that exists is alive, each being also recognizes the divine in us. The earth is alive and is a sacred being. It is time for us to align with the heartbeat of the earth.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley, AZ – photo from bigstockphoto.com
There is a continuous flow of interactive communications in ecosystems, each tiny part a response to the ever-living, never-stopping, always-flowing communications that are coming from all the tightly coupled members of that ecosystem and the environment in which it all is embedded.
~ Stephen Harrod Buhner
Deep Spruce Forest – photo from bigstockphoto.com
There was a time when the distances between our world and those we considered “imaginary” were no further than a bend in the road. Each cavern and hollow tree was a doorway to another world. Humans recognized life in all things. The streams sang and the winds whispered ancient words into the ears of whomever would listen. Every blade of grass and flower had a tale to tell…There was life and purpose in all things and there was loving interaction between the worlds.
Goliath Heron, Kruger National Park – photo by Johan Swanepoel, bigstockphoto.com
~ Ted Andrews
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Horse Head Rock, Bermagui, Australia – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Stories, myths, and legends have existed since the beginning of humanity. They tell us about the world around us and give us a different filter to understand how things came about. For indigenous cultures who hold the longest relationship with life and natural surroundings, everything is alive and divine––even things we consider inanimate. And everything has a story of how they came to be what they are today. Even acorns.
~ John P. Harrington
Russel Falls, Mount Field National Park, Tasmania, Australia – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The subject with which we are concerned is the spirituality of the earth. By this I do not mean a spirituality that is directed toward an appreciation of the earth. I speak of the earth as subject, not as object. I am concerned with the maternal principle out of which we were born and whence we derive all that we are and all that we have. In our totality we are born of the earth. We are earthlings. The earth is our origin, our nourishment, our support, our guide. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived. If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves. The human and the earth are totally implicated each in the other.
~ Thomas Berry
Anasazi Ruins, False Kiva, Canyonlands National Park, UT – photo from bigstockphoto.com
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