The first time I entered into a redwood forest I dropped to my knees and began crying because the spirit of the forest just gripped me.
~ Julia Butterfly Hil
Sequoia National Park – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
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What should be our response to the generosity of the more-than-human world? In a world that gives us maple syrup, spotted salamanders, and sand hill cranes, shouldnt we at least pay attention? Paying attention is an ongoing act of reciprocity, the gift that keeps on giving, in which attention generates wonder, which generates more attention – and more joy. Paying attention to the more-than-human world doesnt lead only to amazement; it leads also to acknowledgment of pain. Open and attentive, we see and feel equally the beauty and the wounds, the old growth and the clear-cut, the mountain and the mine. Paying attention to suffering sharpens our ability to respond. To be responsible.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Monument Valley – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Basic to the Celtic tradition is the acceptance of personal responsibility and realization that all of us constantly shape and affect the land on which we live.
Intrinsic to this notion is the Celtic interrelationship with the Otherworld and its inhabitants. DONE 2/10/15 – The Celtic worldview is a magical one, in which everything has a physical, mental and spiritual aspect and its own proper purpose, and where our every act affects both worlds.
~ Nicholas R. Mann-The Isle of Avalon
Giant Cypress in Fall, Garner State Park, TX – photo by Richard McMillin, bigstockphoto.com
So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.
~Derrick Jensen
Yosemite National Park – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Can we not also speak to these powers, and listen for their replies? Can we not cry out to the winds, whisper to the river and the deer, offer our tears to a tree, challenge the mountain with our questions? Outrageous as it may seem, such animistic (or participatory) modes of discourse are simply necessary, I believe, if we wish to really enact a respectful relation to these other beings, to remember the wild alterity of the waters, the winds, and the breathing land itself. If, finally, we wish to ensure an ethic of restraint in our human engagements with the more-than-human earth.
~ David Abram, “Between the Body and the Breathing Earth”
Aspen Forest, Alaska – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The world is not decided by action alone. It is decided more by consciousness and spirit; they are the secret sources of all action and behavior. The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.
~ John O’Donohue
River Sunrise – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their mutual interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.
~ Fritjof Capra
Lower Falls of Yellowstone River – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The ancient human-Earth relationship must be recovered in a new context, in its mystical as well as in its physical functioning. There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment.
~ Thomas Berry
Russel Falls, Mount Field National Park – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
~ Joan Halifax
Giant Redwoods, Muir Forest, San Francisco, CA – photo from bigstockphoto.com
To the Western mind, participation with the non-human Others and with the numinous might suggest mysticism, or something unavailable to ordinary people. Yet this kind of participation is, even now, an everyday mode of being for at least some people indigenous and others who have not entirely succumbed to the age of reason.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Black Sand Beach Sunset, Iceland – photo from bigstockphoto.com
We cannot assume the sacredness nor spiritual livingness of the earth or accept it as a new ideology or as a sentimentally pleasing idea We must allow it to shape us, as great spiritual ideas have always shaped those who entertain them It is an invitation to initiation, to the death of what we have been and the birth of something new.
~ David Spangler
Sunset, Sedona, AZ -photo from bigstockphoto.com
The Green Cathedral represents the sacred places, the silent spaces. It elevates the natural landscape to the respectful position it deserves.
It replaces doctrine and dogma. The Green Cathedral recognises the ruins of the past as part of present and future narratives. It attempts to recalibrate the senses and reconsider time. It celebrates the joy of the rural reverie. It is in all countries. It is open to everyone.
~ Benjamin Myers
Green Moss, Milford Sound, NZ – photo by Mawardi Bahar, bighstockphoto.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
The Dark Hedges, Northern Ireland – photo by VanderWolf Images, bigstockphoto.com
There is a pressing need to heal ourselves and the Earth – a call to return to a place of reverence, a way of living that honors life and all of its inhabitants. But first we need to rest in our busy lives and find silence.
Silence draws us inward, away from the clutter and distractions of our outer life, to the deeper roots of our being. Here our soul nourishes us, here we can be replenished, and here we can help replenish our world.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Erawan Waterfall, Kachanaburi, Thailand – photo from bigstockphoto.com