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
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
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
Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.
~ Alice Meynell
Bryce Canyon photo from bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Jasper National Park, Alberta Canada – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
What does it mean to say that nature is personal? In the broadest sense, it means choosing a different paradigm from the Western idea of nature as machine It means holding the possibility that all things on Earth, even rocks and mountains, have their own will and intention.
~ Ursula K. LeGuin
Cascade Canyon, Grand Tetons – photo by Kim Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com, used with permission
“Plants distribute all along the body the functions that in animals are concentrated in single organs. Whereas in animals almost the only cells producing electrical signals are in the brain, the plant is a kind of distributed brain in which almost every cell is able to produce them.” Underestimating plants can be very dangerous, he says, “because our life depends on plants and our actions are destroying their environments.”
~ Stefano Mancuso
Fern Woods, The Lodge at Woodloch, PA photo by Devadana Sanctuary