They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.
~ Hermann Hesse
Autumn Leaves and River – photo by silver-john, bigstockphoto.com
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
-J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite Valley – photo by lbomarth, bigstockphoto.com
Nature is not unfeeling matter; it is full of invisible forces with their own intelligence and deep knowing. We need to re-acknowledge the existence of the spiritual world within creation if we are even to begin the real work of bringing the world back into balance.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Autumn Forest, Carpathian, Ukraine – photo by Leopnid Tit, bigstockphoto.com
Since a living presence is felt to be in and through everything, all things are seen and experienced as related. Because everything is connected through the Great Spirit, everything deserves to be treated with respect.
~ Duane Elgin
Arch Rock Canyon, Arches National Park, UT – photo by Bill Perry, 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
Late Autumn Forest – photo by Fototick, bigstockphoto.com
Nature has been experimenting with fungi for a billion years, perfecting a lot of powerful survival tools. We can use these tools in fantastic ways—to revive damaged ecosystems, to help offset global warming, and even to prevent diseases.
~ Paul Stamets
Mushrooms on Tree – photo by MakcouD, bigstockphoto.com
We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.
~ Albert Einstein
Northern Lights over Sweden – photo by contas, bigstockphoto.com
Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth.
~ Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Lakota Sioux
Bison, Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park – photo by Sue Smith, bigstockphoto.com
We are each unique expressions of the one Reality, dwelling in the family of all beings. Our discipline in life is to cooperate with the way the infinite Reality wants to express through us. That is how we take up our rightful place.
~ Ellen Grace O’Brian
African Leopard, Kruger National Park South Africa – photo by bennymarty.bigstockphoto.com
What if there were another system and jurisprudence, based upon the concept that the planet and all of its species have rights — and they have those rights by virtue of their existence as component members of a single Earth community?
~ Thomas Berry
Mountain Stream – photo by digitalphotonut, bigstockphoto.com
Our separation from each other is an optical illusion. When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.
~ Albert Einstein
Baobab Trees and Stars – photo by Mikhail Dudarev, bigstockphoto.com
Western culture has tended to dismiss the idea that humans are part of an earth community, a community filled with intelligence as acute as, but different from, our human intelligence. Because of this, a sense of disconnection from our earth community has become a standard way of experiencing ourselves in industrial societies…when we take in a Western, materialistic interpretation of our place within the earth community, we lose access to an experience of being a participant in a complex earth family, which includes all our more-than-human earth-kin. It doesn’t have to be this way. Humans across all time have lived with a sense of active, reciprocal relationship to the world around them. This perspective is available to us, as well. All we need to do is be willing to wake up to it…
~ Nancy J. Napier
Red Deer, Jasper National Park – photo by 118205273, bigstockphoto.com