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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love, and then we return home.
~ Aboriginal Australian Proverb
The Twelve Apostles, Australia, at Sunset – photo by kavram, bigstockphoto.com
“One important distinction between awe and other emotions (like inspiration or surprise) is that awe makes us feel small — or feel a sense of “self-diminishment” in science-speak. And that’s good for us”, [Jennifer] Stellar explains.
We spend a lot of our time thinking about what’s going on in our world and what’s affecting us directly. “Awe changes that, making us see ourselves as a small piece of something larger.”
Feeling small makes us feel humbled (thereby lessening selfish tendencies like entitlement, arrogance, and narcissism). And feeling small and humbled makes us want to engage with others and feel more connected to others, [Amie] Gordon adds.
“All of that is important for wellbeing,” she says.
~ Sarah DiGiulio, in an article, “Why Scientists Say Experiencing Awe Can Help You Live Your Best Life”
Lagoon Nebula – Photo from Hubble Telescope, NASA
Robin Wall Kimmerer, in an On Being interview, spoke about how she grew up spending time in the woods. Instead of human elders, she had plant elders. She says, “We are at the edge of a revolution of understanding the intelligence of other beings,” and seeks out alternative pronouns to “it” when referring to non-human life. Her preferred pronoun, at this point, is “kin”, as in “kin is coming”, “kin is there”.
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us.’”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Rainforest, Southeast Asia – photo by Quickshooting, bigstockphoto.com
No living thing is unitary in nature; every such thing is a plurality. Even the organism which appears to us as an individual exists as a collection of independent living entities.
~ Goethe
Sunrise, Lake Wanaka, New Zealand – photo by pranodhm, bigstockphoto.com
Many shamans say we are dreaming the wrong dream. We live with the illusion that we are separate from nature, separate from the spiritual realms, and that we are victims of our life and our environment…As we begin to change our consciousness and get in touch with the light inside us, we can effect great changes in our outer world. It is who we become that changes the world.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Bryce Canyon National Park, UT – photo by Bill45, bigstockphoto.com
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Blessing is not a technique we perform but a presence we embody. It is not an act we do to someone or something, but a relationship we form with them that enables us all to be embraced in the presence of an unobstructed world.
~ David Spangler
Yangshuo Guilin, China – photo by kenny001, bigstockphoto.com
The air that wraps Earth is a single entity, the matrix that holds us all. It is a global commons from which we draw a crucial element of life, sharing as we do molecules that have been breathed in and out of every living thing that has ever breathed on Earth. Molecules that pass through us have passed through brontosaurs, neolithic hunters, Roman emperors, hummingbirds, snails.
~ David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
Green-Crowned Hummingbird – photo by Watch the Birdy, bigstockphoto.com
…if we are all swimming in the same ocean of subtle aliveness, then it makes sense that we would each have a direct experience of communion with, and concern for, the well-being of others. If we share the same matrix of existence, then the rest of life is already touching me, co-creating the field within which I exist.
~ Duane Elgin
Rainbow, Grossglockner Pass, Alps – photo by Mr. Smith, bigstockphoto.com
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
~ John O’Donohue
Daybreak, Gaswell Bay, Gower PPeninsula, Swansea, Wales – photo by Leighton R, bigstockphoto.com
If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear, people who can open to the web of life that called us into being, and who can rest in the vitality of that larger body.
~ Joanna Macy
Sunset at Garda Lake, Lazise Veneto, Italy – photo by Alberto SevenOnSeven, bigstockphoto.com
Modern peoples…have mainly forgotten that we live in relationship as brothers and sisters with all the beings and forces of the natural world. Our scientific redefinitions of the “unseen” as the “unreal” have caused us to forget that we are all luminous strands in a giant web of belonging.
~ don Oscar Miro-Quesada, “Lessons in Courage”
Misty Hills at Sunset, Guatemala – photo by Lucy Brown, bigstockphoto.com
No living thing is unitary in nature; every such thing is a plurality. Even the organism which appears to us as an individual exists as a collection of independent living entities.
~ Goethe
Tree Life in Singapore – photo by Dmitry Polonsky, bigstockphoto.com
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
~ Howard Zinn
Dawn of A New Day, Hvitserkur Basalt Stack, Iceland – photo by jojjik, bigstockphoto.com
There is one thing that we are certain about and that is that we are all surrounded by a profound mystery. And in some strange way we are asked to participate in this mystery and to collaborate with it.
~ Cecil Collins
Inside A Cave – photo by triocean, bigstockphoto.com
The use of the heart as an organ of perception and communication, to weave us once again inextricably into the life web of the Earth, to gather knowledge from the heart of the world, and to help us live a whole and fulfilled life, to become who we are meant to be…
~ Stephen Buhner
Sun’s Rays Through Redwoods – photo by Kent Weakley, bigstockphoto.com
