The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence. And of course the greatest challenge (and gift) is to see the sacred in each other.
~ Alma Luz Villanueva
Sunrise, Yosemite National Park – photo by haveseen, bigstockphoto.com
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
~ Arundhati Roy
Redwood National Park, CA – photo by pmphoto, bigstockphoto.com
Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind, be kind. No exceptions. Don’t confuse kindness for weakness.
~ Kevin Kelly
Pink Lotus – photo by Dilok, bigstockphoto.com
The Universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.
~ Stanley Kunitz
Spiderweb with Frost – photo by Yintan, English Wikipedia
Quantum science suggests the existence of many possible futures for each moment of our lives. Each future lies in a state of rest until it is awakened by choices made in the present.
~ Gregg Braden
Sunset, Siquijor, Philippines – photo by smithore, bigstockphoto.com
What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It’s the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web.
~ David Abram
Tropical Glass Frog, Amazon Rain Forest – photo by kikkerdirk, bigstockphoto.com
When we walk into a forest, we’re not walking into a place that is full of separate interacting individuals…We’re walking into a living network, a place where every creature exists only through relationships with others…Every leaf on a tree has hundreds of species of bacteria and fungi living within its leaves. Without those other species, the leaf cannot function; it gets overrun by pathogens…What is true for a tree is also true for an individual human. Our bodies are made of dozens and dozens of interacting species—not just human cells, but bacterial and fungal cells and viruses and microbial components and so forth, and without the interconnections among all those members of the community, our bodies don’t function.
~ David George Haskell
Living Network of Life – photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com
Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature, and destiny. If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.
~ John O’Donohue
African Savanna Sunset – photo by Oskanov, bigstockphoto.com
I want to remind us all that the world is listening, all the time. How we are ripples out from us into the world and affects others.
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley – photo by Bill45, bigstockphoto.com
when the world
goes mad
be wildly kind
to everyone
everyone
everyone
everyone
~ you can’t control
much
but you control how
you treat others
in these breaking news
heartbreaking times
when nothing feels
certain
let your raw kindness
be a certainty
allow your compassion
to become a North Star
stamped up in
the sky for
others to follow
back home
~ John Roedel
Cala Lilies – photo by Carmen Sorvillo, bigstockphoto.com
In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Swallowtail Butterfly in Tropical Forest – photo by Jag_cz, bigstockphoto.com
We must have the courage to live with paradox. The strength to hold the tension of not knowing the answers and the willingness to listen to our inner wisdom and the inner wisdom of the planet which begs for change.
~ Maureen Murdock
Winter Forest – photo by jenyateua, bigstockphoto.com
We can be of service by bringing some kindness, care, groundedness, and balance to those around us.
~ Sebene Selassie
Mountain Valley, Nepal – photo by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com
Perhaps it is not so much what we learn that matters in these moments of awe and wonder, but what we feel in relationship to a world beyond ourselves, even beyond our own species.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Sunrise, Dominican Republic – photo by Iakov Kalinin, bigstockphoto.com
The difficult magic of animistic perception, the utter weirdness and dark wonder that lives in any deeply place-based relation to the earth, is the felt sense of being in contact with wakeful forms of sentience that are richly different from one’s own—the experience of interaction with intelligences that are radically other from one’s own human style of intelligence.
~ David Abram
Adult Male Waterbuck, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa – photo by bennymarty, bigstockphoto.com
