The love that you search for everywhere is already present within you. It may be evoked by any number of people or events. A mountain can evoke this love. A sunset can evoke this love. But finally, you must realize you are this love. The source of all love is within you.
~ Pema Chodron
Crystal Springs Garden, Portland OR – photo by jpidesigns, bigstockphoto.com
Inside each of us there is a noble heart. This heart is the source of our finest aspirations for ourselves and for the world. It fills us with the courage to act on our aspirations. Our nobility may be obscured at times, covered over with small thoughts or blocked by confused and confusing emotions. But a noble heart lies intact within each of us nonetheless, ready to open and be offered to the world.
~ The Karmapa
Lotus – photo by Ange DiBennedetto
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
~ Melody Beattie
Blooming Aster – photo by puripat, bigstockphoto.com
Oh Eagle, come with wings outspread in sunny skies. Oh Eagle, come and bring us peace, thy gentle peace. Oh Eagle, come and give new life to us who pray. Remember the circle of the sky, the stars, and the brown eagle, the great life of the Sun, the young within the nest. Remember the sacredness of things.
~ Pawnee Prayer
Bald Eagle, Homer, Alaska – photo by EEI_Tony, bigstockphoto.com
Earth is not a platform for human life. It’s a living being. We’re not on it but a part of it. Its health is our health.
~ Thomas Moore
Central Park, New York City – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
Practice One
Ask for forgiveness as a representative of the human race—for all our harm to the Earth, its rapidly shrinking biodiversity and the cruelty and violence we do to each other. Act as a surrogate for the whole human race: this is a practice of representing universal responsibility.
Practice Two
From the same whole humanity perspective affirm the flowering of the conscience and consciousness to heal Earth and all its peoples. Let your heart open as a representative of all hearts opening across the planet.
We are holograms of the whole: let us pray as such.
~ James O’Dea
Earth – photo by Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, NASA GSFC
How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Forest and Sunbeams – photo by lostbear, bigstockphoto.com
For us to transform as a society, we have to allow ourselves to be transformed as individuals. And for us to be transformed as individuals, we have to allow for the incompleteness of any of our truths and a real forgiveness for the complexity of human beings.
~Angel Kyodo Williams
Lotus Blossom – photo by AnaFidalgo, bigstockphoto.com
People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.
~ Richard Rohr
Springbok Antelope, Kalakari Desert, South Africa – photo by EcoShot, bigstockphoto.com
To love.
To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch.
To try and understand.
To never look away.
And never, never, to forget another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
~ Arundhati Roy
Alaskan Meadow – photo by Andrushko Galyna, bigstockphoto.com
I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not to refuse to do the something
that I can do.
~ Edward Everett Hale
Nuggets Point, Otago Coast, New Zealand – photo by kavram, bigstockphoto.com
Gratefulness…is an overall orientation to life. When we wake up in the morning and feel grateful just for the blessing of being alive, we open our heart and senses to the gifts and opportunities of another day, a day that was never guaranteed. This approach to gratitude is more radical since it isn’t contingent on a transaction—on something good happening to us—but is rather a way of living.
~ Kristi Nelson
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley, AZ – photo by Bill45, bigstockphoto.com
People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is – just be a little kinder.
~ Aldous Huxley
Waterfalls, Plitvice National Park, Croatia – photo by twindesigner, bigstockphoto.com
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
~ John O’Donohue
Sunlight on Ocean Waves – photo by Lynne Williamson, bigstockphoto.com
The whole world is a series of miracles, but we are so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things.
~ Hans Christian Andersen
Cerulean Geyser – photo by Kris Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com
