Nature is a unity in diversity…a harmony, blending together all created things…one great whole animated by the breath of life.
~ Alexander von Humboldt
Light Fantastic – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.
~ Henry Beston
Alpine Meadow – Mt Rainier National Park, photo by Bob Cameron, used with permission
Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally.
~ David Bohm
Dusk Sky and Yuccas, White Sands National Monument, NM – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and 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
Mossy Grotto, OR – photo by Chris Williams Exploration Photography, used with permission
When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature. We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.
~ Henri Matisse
Waterwheel Falls, Yosemite – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Grandfather,
Sacred one,
Teach us love, compassion,
and honor.
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.
~ Ojibway Prayer
Spirit Falls, WA – photo by Chris Williams Exploration Photography, used with permission
Everywhere water is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dewdrops; singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice-gems till the leaves all seem to turn to living jewels; spreading a golden veil over the setting sun; or a white gauze around the midnight moon.
~ John Ballantine Gough
El Capitan Reflection, Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Traditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature – however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be – is never truly alone. The surroundings are sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must, at every moment, be treated with the proper respect.
~ Richard Nelson
Mouse Creek Falls, NC – photo by Jeff Burcher Photography, used with permission
May your life be like a wildflower growing freely
in the beauty and joy of each day.
~ Native American Proverb
Spring Flowers, New York City, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
~ Carl Sagan
Pinnacles National Park – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
When we forget that we are embedded in the natural world, we also forget that what we do to our surroundings we are doing to ourselves.
~ David Suzuki The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
Hug Falls at Sunset – photo by Sandy’s NW Hiking Photos, used with permission
Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation.
~ Charles Eisenstein, from The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Panther Creek – courtesy of Chris Williams Exploration Photography
Were not going to save our world by sermonizing and preaching to each other. Nor will we save our world out of duty and grim determination, or by winning an argument and persuading other people that theyre wrong. We probably can only save our world through loving it enough.
~ Joanna Macy
Tahiti, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
The trees are our lungs, the rivers our circulation, the air our breath, and the earth our body.
~ Deepak Chopra
Madison Falls, photo by TAO Photography, used with permission
It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said: Being here is so much. It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.
~ John O’Donohue
Rialto Beach – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
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