What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Wood Stork, Everglades National Park – photo by photogallet1976,bigstockphoto.com
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…every act we make, every word we speak, every thought we think is not only affected by the other elements in the vast web of being in which all things take part, but also has results so far-reaching that we cannot see or imagine them.
~ Joanna Macy
Yulong River. Guilin, China – photo by Jason YU, bigstockphoto.com
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
Full Moon, Wilderness, and A Wolf – photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com
All living things are individual instruments through which the Mind of the Universe thinks, speaks and acts. We are all interrelated in a common accord, a common purpose, and a common good. We are members of a vast cosmic orchestra, in which each living instrument is essential to the complementary and harmonious playing of the whole.
~ J. Allen Boone
Snow Monkeys, Onsen Hot Springs, Nagano, Japan – photo by BlueOrange Studio, bigstockphoto.com
When we think in terms of relationships, we realise that we need to develop good relationships with the other persons in our ecosystem—prosperous, mutually beneficial relationships. A relational worldview makes us aware of our own interconnected and interdependent relationship with the world around us. So, even if we don’t believe that the tree in our garden is a person, or the river in our village, or the sky above our heads, we can still behave as if they are—our actions can be informed by a relational ecocentric perspective, rather than a purely anthropocentric one.
~Jack Hunter
Trees and Waterfall, Yosemite National Park – photo by alpenart, bigtockphoto.com
To perceive the soul of the Earth requires a sense of what Taoists call the way of life, the fact that everything in our world is in relationship to everything else, that nothing is itself without everything else, and that anything that seems to be a distinct thing is actually an element or strand in a larger pattern.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Snowy Yosemite – photo by Andy777, 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