Our planet is a dancing creature of spirit and matter spinning on an axis of love in an infinite living universe.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Cannon Beach, OR – Mirwais Azami Photography, used with permission
The mountains, I become a part of it
The herbs, the fir tree, I become a part of it.
The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering waters,
I become a part of it.
The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen
I become a part of it.
~ Navajo Chant
North Fork Skokomish River, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
~ Wendell Berry
Yosemite and full moon – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?
~ Luci Anneu Seneca
Olympic National Park – Elwha Valley – photo by TAO Photography, used with permission
I thank you God/Goddess for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
~ e.e. cummings
Bryce Canyon, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
I paused to listen to the silence. My breath, crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze gentler than a whisper. The wind vane pointed toward the South Pole. Presently the wind cups ceased their gentle turning as the cold killed the breeze. My frozen breath hung like a cloud overhead. The day was dying, the night being born – but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence – a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man’s oneness with the universe.
~ Richard Evelyn Bird
Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.
~ Thomas Cole
Murhut Falls, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
Grandfather Great Spirit
All over the world the faces of living ones are alike.
With tenderness they have come up out of the ground
Look upon your children that they may face the winds
And walk the good road to the Day of Quiet.
Grandfather Great Spirit
Fill us with the Light.
Give us the strength to understand, and the eyes to see.
Teach us to walk the soft Earth as relatives to all that live.
~ Sioux Prayer
Zion Narrows, photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness of natural force and instinct. The farm must yield a place to the forest, not as a wood lot, or even as a necessary agricultural principle but as a sacred grove – a place where the Creation is let alone, to serve as instruction, example, refuge; a place for people to go, free of work and presumption, to let themselves alone.
~ Wendell Berry
Duckabush River Area – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dunes these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.
~ Henry Beston, “The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod”
Rialto Beach – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.
~ Linda Hogan, “Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
Photo by Devadana Sanctuary
Honor the sacred.
Honor the Earth, our Mother.
Honor the Elders.
Honor all with whom we share the Earth:-
Four-leggeds, two-leggeds, winged ones,
Swimmers, crawlers, plant and rock people.
Walk in balance and beauty.
~ Native American Elder
Yosemite, photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
~ Wallace Stegner
Early Morning in the Elwha – photo by TAO Photography, used with permission
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
~ John Muir
Big Sur Coast, photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
In its oldest form, prayer consists simply in speaking to the world, rather than solely about the world. We should recognize that it is lousy etiquette to speak only about the other animals, only about the mountain forest and the black bears and the storms, since by doing so we treat such entities as totalizeable objects, able to be comprehended and represented by us, rather than as enigmatic powers with whom our lives are entwined and to whom we are beholden.
Can we not also speak to these powers, and listen for their replies? Can we not cry out to the winds, whisper to the river and the deer, offer our tears to a tree, challenge the mountain with our questions? Outrageous as it may seem, such animistic (or participatory) modes of discourse are simply necessary, I believe, if we wish to really enact a respectful relation to these other beings, to remember the wild alterity of the waters, the winds, and the breathing land itself. If, finally, we wish to ensure an ethic of restraint in our human engagements with the more-than-human earth.
~ David Abram, “Between the Body and the Breathing Earth”
Clearing Storm Reflection, photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 244
- 245
- 246
- 247
- 248
- …
- 302
- Next Page »