Everything flourishes in the nourishment of our appreciation; plants, people, the Earth, moments. When we live with that appreciation, we flourish.
~ Kristi Nelson
Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park – photo by neillang, bigstockphoto.com
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But the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today. A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods. Scientific research aimed at understanding the astonishing abilities of this partnership between fungi and plant has only just begun.
~ Peter Wohlleben
Redwood Forest, Northern California, US – photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com
We cannot take the rain out of the flower or the oxygen out of the tree. We cannot take anything out of anything else. We are the mountains and rivers; we are the sun and stars. Everything inter-is.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Mount Bromo and Batok Volcanoes, East Java, Indonesia – photo by Mazur Travel, bigstockphoto.com
The water in your body flowed down the Nile, fell as monsoon rain onto India, and swirled around the Pacific. The carbon in the molecules of your cells was mined from the atmosphere by the plants we eat. The salt in your sweat and tears, the calcium of your bones, and the iron in your blood all eroded out of the rocks of Earth’s crust; and the sulphur of the protein in your hair and muscles was spewed out by volcanoes.
~ Lewis Dartnell, astrobiologist
Volcanic Glow – photo by PixieMe, bigstockphoto.com
What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.
~ Ganga White
Zion National Park, UT – photo by nrlphoto, bigstockphoto.com
And now, as we stumble into this present landscape there is an even greater need for a deeper awareness, to be receptive to the spirits of the land and the beings of light who can help to guide us, who are always around despite our censorship of the unseen worlds. We are always part of a fully animate world, even if we have abandoned this knowing. Visions can sing to us, can show us the songlines to follow, the dreams we need. We can no longer afford to remain isolated within our rational consciousness.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Elf Garden, Iceland, Nature Spirit – photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
The obvious choice, then, is to extend our notions of self-interest. For example, it would not occur to me to plead with you, “Don’t saw off your leg. That would be an act of violence.” It wouldn’t occur to me (or to you) because your leg is part of your body. Well, so are the trees in the Amazon rain basin. They are our external lungs. We are beginning to realize that the world is our body.
~ Joanna Macy, Greening of the Self
Amazon Jungle – photo by pxhildalgo, bigstockphoto.com
I have always thought of all creatures – all organisms, really – as relations. Whether wandering alone in deep wilderness or just leaning against a tree growing beside an urban sidewalk, I have had no difficulty feeling, as if in dreamtime, the roots of our relatedness – ecologically, yes, but also with an overlay of the sacred, the holy.
~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Angle Oak, 1500 year old oak, South Carolina – photo by Strobie, bigstockphoto.com
Today you have a choice. You can choose between anger and love, division and unity, frustration and hope, selfishness and giving, turning away and showing up. Choose kindness and the choice is simple. It’s hard to regret being kind.
~ Rachel Maria Martin
Dahlia in Morning LIght – photo by Maglido Photography, bigstockphoto.com