The life and passion of a person
leaves an imprint on the ether of a place.
Love does not remain within the heart,
it flows out to build secret tabernacles
in a landscape.
~ John O’Donohue
Crater Lake Natl Park, OR – photo from bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
Pando is a grove of approximately 47,000 quaking aspen trees in Utah. This remarkable group of trees is considered a single organism, because all the trees share a single root system and each tree is genetically identical. New trees are produced by sprouting from the massive parent root system. It is estimated that Pando has been alive at least 80,000 years, making it one of the oldest living things on the planet.
Consider that when this tree colony first sprouted from the ground, humans would still not arrive on North America for another 50,000 years. In some parts of the planet, Neanderthal people were still 30,000 years from going extinct. The 106-acre grove of trees has seen unimaginable changes, living through the ice age and at times being completely burnt down above ground, but surviving and renewing itself below ground.
~ Jocelyn Mercado
Aspens in the Elk Mountains – photo by D. Pennala, bigstock.com, used with permission
Central to Hopi belief is that water is the chief of the elements. Perhaps its time we started to think with our hearts, and return to the natural way to ensure our survival.
~ Jacob Devaney
Lake Tahoe, photo from bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
Were now recognizing that the mind, which is an energetic field of thought which you can read with EEG wires on your brain or with a new process called magnetoencephalography (MEG), which reads the field without even touching the body. So it basically says that when youre processing with your brain, youre broadcasting fields.
~ Bruce Lipton
Cathedral Rock, Sedona, AZ – photo from bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
We are all one. Birds, plants, animals. minerals – we are all different manifestations of the same essential energy.
~Alejandro Lerner
Butterfly, Ecuador – photo by Terra Tirapeli, used with permission
We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As ocean ‘waves’, the universe ‘peoples’. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
~Alan Watts
Wahalla Point, North Rim, Grand Canyon Nat’l Park – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
These apparently static material forms, mountains and water, are the body and blood of a living ecosystem, the Earth, and can never be accurately viewed in isolation from the whole. They make up one complete, living organism.
~ Stephen Buhner
Lake Cushman, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
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
Rainbow, Glossglockner Pass, Alps – photo from bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
The Green Cathedral represents the sacred places, the silent spaces. It elevates the natural landscape to the respectful position it deserves. It replaces doctrine and dogma. The Green Cathedral recognises the ruins of the past as part of present and future narratives. It attempts to recalibrate the senses and reconsider time. It celebrates the joy of the rural reverie. It is in all countries. It is open to everyone.
~ Benjamin Myers
Pacific Northwest Forest – photo by Craig Chanowski, bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to all other forms of life.
~ H.H. the Dalai Lama
Photo by TAO Photography, used with permission
.
LOST
Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.
Listen.
It answers, I have made this place around you.
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows
Where you are.
You must let it find you.
~ David Wagoner
Redwood National Park, CA – photo by pmphoto, bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
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
Rainbow Over Tasman Sea, Entrance to Doubtful Sound, Fiordland National Park, South Island, NZ – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Saguaro Sunset – photo by Glen Loftis, bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
…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 OHanlon
Trees and Ferns – the Lodge at Woodloch, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
The sky was clear – remarkably clear – and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.
~ Thomas Hardy
Milky Way photo from bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
