If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
~ Mother Teresa
Sacred Connections… Flower, Bamboo, Candle, Stones – photo by a_lisa, bigstockphoto.com
She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.
~ Rudy Francisco
Indonesian Butterfly – photo by Andriyani Widyaninglyas, bigstockphoto.com
…we must remember that in oneness we are connected to all of life on this earth, joined together in a web of life. This means we must live from a place of honor and respect. We are part of nature, not separate from it.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Spires and Cliffs in Monument Valley – photo by TravellingLight, bigstockphoto.com
Once we step outside of the illusion of our own separate self, a radically different picture emerges. Our true nature exists in a dimension of oneness. Unlike the ego, which always looks out for its own self-interest, the Self reflects a vision of unity, in which each individual part is nourished according to its real need. A glimpse of the Self gives us a sense of an interconnected oneness in which nothing is separate: everything is an expression of a oneness that is dynamically alive. Every person, every stone, is this oneness; everything is connected and interdependent. Our individual Self is the Universal Self
and it is all a living organism of light and love.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Preparing for Sunrise – photo by EdVal, bigstockphoto.com
We are organically related to everything around us. On the molecular level. On the chain of change and growth. On the spiritual dance of life. Indigenous wisdom emerges from the recognition of this complex shared relatedness. Our task is not to forge unity by fighting against diversity, but rather to discover that our unity already exists in diversity. We are a single creation, ever moving, ever evolving: a spiritual singularity in the heart of patterns so vast we cannot even comprehend them.
~ Steven Charleston
Violet Sabrewing Hummingbird – photo by LuCaAr, bigstockphoto.com
May I be loving, open, and aware in this moment; If I cannot be loving, open, and aware in this moment, may I be kind; If I cannot be kind, may I be nonjudgmental; If I cannot be nonjudgmental, may I not cause harm; If I cannot not cause harm, may I cause the least harm.
~ Larry Yang
Yellow and White Tulips – photo by Bozhena Melnyk, bigstockphoto.com
We are interdependent with the body of the Earth. The minerals of the soil make up our wheat and our bones, the storm clouds become our drinks and our blood, the oxygen from the trees and forests is the air we breathe. The more consciously we realize this shared destiny, the more compassion arises for the earth itself.
~ Jack Kornfield
Sequoia, Sequoia National Park – photo by travelview, bigstockphoto.com
The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term ‘Gaia’ is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. And the world of bacteria is critical to the details of these feedback processes, because bacteria play a crucial role in the regulation of the whole Gaian system.
~ Fritjof Capra
Banff National Park, Canada – photo by kavram, bigstockphoto.com
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Anasazi Ruins, Canyonlands National Park, UT – photo by rudi1976, bigstockphoto.com
“To be” is always to “inter-be.” Our body is a community, and the trillions of non-human cells in our body are even more numerous than the human cells. There are no solitary beings. The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis.. We do not exist independently. We inter-are. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Forest Stream, Mr. Field National Park, Tasmania – photo by Neale Cousland, bigstockphoto.com
We do not need to plan or devise a “world of the future”; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid “futurology” available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at “the future of the human race”; we have the same pressing need that we have always had—to love, care for, and teach our children.
~ Wendell Berry
Avalanch Gorge, Glacier National Park, Montana – photo by bAllilAd, bigstockphoto.com