Gratitude is like breathing in – letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out – sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care.
~ Tara Brach
Lotus – photo by Ange DiBenedetto
For the Ojibwa the world is populated by persons ‘not all of whom are human.’…interactions with certain objects, as well as with features of the landscape must be understood as interactions between persons, or as relationships between persons, even if their intelligence is not outwardly expressed…
If a worldview holds open the possibility of communication with plants, animals, rocks and other features of the natural environment, then it may in turn facilitate just such communications.
~ Jack Hunter
Megalithic Stone Circle, 3000 BCE, Isle of Lewis and Harris, Scotland – photo by 104081267, bigstockphoto.com
In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.
~ Wangari Maathai
African Sunset, Hwange National Park, Matabeleland, North Zimbabwe – photo by Artush, bigstockphoto.com
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Sequoia National Park – photo by Radomir Rezny, bigstockphoto.com
Oh Spirit of the west
In the colorful sunsets that autumn brings
May I see myself as the spirit that I am
In the passing seasons of mother nature
May I know that I am one with her breath
In the crisp sounds of falling leaves
May I become aware of my connection with all lives
And may my heart sing in thankfulness for the bounty of the earth
~ Josiane Antonette
Sunset, Slovakia – photo by 261030685, 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
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah – photo by swisshippo, bigstockphoto.com
This dimension of our ecological crisis, our forgetfulness of the sacred, is hardly recognized, is a hidden tragedy, and yet I believe it is our primary spiritual responsibility at this time: to reconnect with what is sacred all around us, and thus make life both whole and holy. We can no longer afford to live in separation, in isolation, but need to become once again part of the great conversation with the rivers and the winds, the seas and the stars. Then we will reconnect with the Earth and Her ancient wisdom, and together walk into the future that is waiting, a future in which the light in our hearts and our love for the Earth can heal and redeem the wasteland that our culture has created. Together we will find a way to live in harmony with all of life’s multihued unity.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sekumpul, Bali – photo by LightField Studios, bigstockphoto.com
Everything is alive…we come from a culture that doesn’t teach us these things innately, and we have to pursue learning them. All that you might learn from me about communicating with the plants also applies to the rocks, the sky, the wind, the hawk that just flew by, the cloud people. And, something that’s very important to understand about this is that we are all capable of doing that. We wouldn’t be here as human beings if we weren’t able to communicate with the rest of our relatives.
~ Doug Simons
White Mushroom, Tropical Rainforest, Borneo, Malaysia – photo by Stephanscherhag, bigstockphoto.com
You are comprised of: 84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells.
You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth … You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing.
You are not living on Earth. You are Earth.
~ Aubrey Marcus
Earth – photo from NASA
I’ve always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Spring Renewal, Central Park, New York City – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
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.
Your family is all of humanity, all the animals, all beings on earth. Include them all in your heart. Live with gratitude. What the times ask is a change of consciousness—a shift from the fearful, separate consciousness, the consciousness of us versus them, to the consciousness of connection and interdependence.
~ Jack Kornfield
St Mary Lake, Wild Goose Island, Glacier National Park – photo by karnonsky, bigstockphoto.com
Every being has its own voice. Every being enters into communion with other beings. This capacity for relatedness, for presence to other beings, for spontaneity in action, is a capacity possessed by every mode of being throughout the entire universe. So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered…
~ Thomas Berry
Trumpeter Swans, Alaska – photo by Christopher Boswell, bigstockphoto. com
Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that the plant has no mind. I tell them that the plant is alive & conscious. A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive. The channels through which the water & sap move are the veins of the spirit.
~ Pablo Amaringo
Linden Tree, Mohni Island, Estonia – photo by 233858275, bigstockphoto.com
We are all lives in other skins, furs, feathers, or scales, each with different visions and dreams and histories, different kinds of earth intelligence, all of it making for one great whole.
~ Linda Hogan
Great Egret, Florida Everglades – photo by icholakov, bigstockphoto.com
…for thousands of years as we walked the Earth, sang Her songs, learned to pray in a variety of ways. We were all a part of One Living Being that spoke and sang in innumerable voices.
But then, gradually, for the majority of humanity we forgot. We forgot this primordial covenant. We forgot how the patterns of creation were woven both into the Earth and into our own souls. We forgot how we are all a part of this One Living Being, both whole and holy. We began to walk our own path, thinking, believing ourself separate from the world around us, from the ground under our feet. We even believed that we were superior, apart from nature—that we had “dominion over” the Earth. Gradually the light from above and the light from within the Earth no longer met and danced, no longer united within our hearts and souls…
…There is a living future waiting to awaken out of this dying dream. There is a pathway to follow, and signs to lead us there. There is a place where the worlds come together and magic can be born. Not the magic of computers which has dazzled us, but closer to the Earth magic that long ago whispered to us the secrets of creation, the language of the animals, the songs of the birds.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Muir Woods Redwoods, CA – photo by mximkabb, bigstockphoto.com
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