I’m taking off
on my own two feet. I’m going
to clear my head…
to listen to trees and silence,to see if I can still breathe…
I’m going to be alone with
myself, to feel how it feels
to embrace what my feet
tell my head, what wind says
in my good ear.
~Philip Booth
Old Coast Road, Big Sur, CA – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
I caught the happiness virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
~ Hafiz
Milky Way – photo by Mirwais Azami Photography, 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
Grand Canyon Lightening – Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
We can hardly begin to imagine the possibilities born from a shift away from a materialistic view of reality to a more dynamic understanding of life as energy.
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
In Yosemite Valley – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.
~Martha Postlewaite
Middle North Falls, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are the world.
~ Charles Eisenstein
Photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate, sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth home. My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.
~ Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut
Double Rainbow, Yosemite Valley – Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
A consciousness that looks to the whole is far more expansive and powerful than one caught within the fragmented image of an insular identity…A global consciousness gives us access to a different level of awareness and support. It also demands that we take responsibility for the whole.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
photo by Gary Hart 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
The Bend – Photo by Chris Williams Exploration Photography, used with permission
Its not merely that what we sow comes back to us for good or bad later, the concept is deeper than that. We are related to everything, and everything is related to us.
~ John Perkins
Columbia River Gorge – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Matter is not dead, however we may treat it. It is part of a living organism like the cells in our own body. And this living organism is an embodiment of spirit. We have to bring together spirit and matter, heal the split that has wounded our world.
~ Llewelleyn Vaughan-Lee
Crescent Moon – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Another human cannot possibly provide all of the outrageously diverse and vital nourishment that we once got from being in relationship with dragonflies and swallowtails and stones and lichen and turtles. Its just not possible. We used to carry on personal relationships with the sun and the moon and the stars!
~ David Abram
Happy Creek – North Cascades, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
I caught the happiness virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
~ Hafiz
Meteor Through Milky Way, photo by Mirwais Azami Photography, used with permission
It is especially important in this discussion to recognize the unity of the total process, from that first unimaginable moment of cosmic emergence through all its subsequent forms of expression until the present. This unbreakable bond of relatedness that makes of the whole a universe becomes increasingly apparent to scientific observation, although this bond ultimately escapes scientific formulation or understanding. In virtue of this relatedness, everything is intimately present to everything else in the universe. Nothing is completely itself without everything else. This relatedness is both spatial and temporal. However distant in space or time, the bond of unity is functionally there. The universe is a communion and a community. We ourselves are that communion become conscious of itself.
~ Thomas Berry
Tree of Peace, photo by Mark Gray, Australia, used with permission
We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.
~ Starhawk
Among Giants – photo by Chris Williams Exploration Photography, used with permission
