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Here is part two of “World as Lover, World as Self”:
We call also on the beings of the present: All you with whom we live and work on this endangered planet, all you with whom we share this brink of time, be with us now. Fellow humans and brothers and sisters of other species, help us open to our collective will and wisdom. Aloud and silently we say your names and picture your faces . . .
~ Joanna Macy
Jungle, Southeast Asie – photo by Quickshooting, bigstockphoto.com
Today’s quotation—and what we’ll offer for the next three days—is from “World as Lover, World as Self”, by Joanna Macy. It’s called, The Three Beings. We’ll post one of each of the three beings over the next three days:
We call first on the beings of the past: Be with us now, all you who have gone before. You, our ancestors and teachers, who walked and loved and faithfully tended this Earth, be present to us now so that we may carry on the legacy you bequeathed us. Aloud and silently in our hearts we say your names and see your faces. . .
~ Joanna Macy
Scottsdale, AZ – photo by BCFC, bigstockphoto.com
In the parched deserts of postmodernity a blessing can be like the discovery of a fresh well. It would be lovely if we could rediscover our power to bless one another. I believe each of us can bless.
When a blessing is invoked, it changes the atmosphere. Some of the plenitude flows into our hearts from the invisible neighborhood of loving kindness.
In the light and reverence of blessing, a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way. In a dead wall a new window opens, in dense darkness a path starts to glimmer, and into a broken heart healing falls like morning dew.
It is ironic that so often we continue to live like paupers though our inheritance of spirit is so vast. The quiet eternal that dwells in our souls is silent and subtle; in the activity of blessing it emerges to embrace and nurture us.
Let us begin to learn how to bless one another. Whenever you give a blessing, a blessing returns to enfold you.
~ John O’Donohue
Yosemite Valley Sunrise – photo by lbryan, bigstockphoto.com
Truth be told, the entire world is conscious. The whole Universe is made of consciousness or “God-stuff”, even supposedly inanimate objects like rocks. As more and more people break the shackles of the false selves and realize their true natures, interspecies communication, including both animal communication and plant communication, will become more and more common.
~ Makia Freeman
Gentle Seahorse – photo by lanaid, bigstockphoto.com
We can use the practice of deep listening to go beyond what our ordinary ears can hear, reaching the divine voice that speaks of the loving feminine wisdom that connects us all. To be of ultimate service to the planet we must reconnect to the divine feminine that teaches us the power of change that comes from being, as opposed to doing.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Gentle Mist in Forest Sunrise – photo by panaramka, bigstockphoto.com
What we contemplate here is more than ecological restoration; it is the restoration of relationship between plants and people. Scientists have made a dent in understanding how to put ecosystems back together, but our experiments focus on soil pH and hydrology—matter, to the exclusion of spirit…We are dreaming of a time when the land might give thanks for the people.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Bow Lake, Banff National Park, Canada – photo by roussien, bigstockphoto.com
As the world grows more and more out of balance, we urgently need to regain a relationship with the planet based upon the understanding of the world as a sacred living whole, and to reclaim a consciousness that is centered in that understanding. Only if we redeem the problem at its root can we hope to heal and come back into balance with our environment. Would we rape and pillage the physical world if we understood and respected its sacred nature?
But there is an even deeper, and somewhat darker, side to our forgetfulness of the sacred within creation. When our monotheistic religions placed God in heaven they banished the many gods and goddesses of the Earth, of its rivers and mountains. We forgot the ancient wisdom contained in our understanding of the sacred in creation—its rhythms, its meaningful magic. For example, when early Christianity banished paganism and cut down its sacred groves, they forgot about nature devas, the powerful spirits and entities within nature, who understand the deeper patterns and properties of the natural world. Now how can we even begin the work of healing the natural world, of clearing out its toxins and pollutants, of bringing it back into balance, if we do not consciously work with these forces within nature? Nature is not unfeeling matter; it is full of invisible forces with their own intelligence and deep knowing. We need to reacknowledge the existence of the spiritual world within creation if we are even to begin the real work of bringing the world back into balance. Only then can we regain the wisdom of the shamans who understood how to communicate and work together with the spirit world.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Garden of the Gods, CO – photo by PKimbrow, bigstockphoto.com
…the next time you sit down to eat a meal, think of all the cultures that give gratitude for their meals and consider that almost every piece of food you are likely to eat contains water. What would the image look like if Dr. Emoto took a picture of the water in that food now charged with gratitude? What would the image look like of the water in our body that had come into contact with this water from our gratitude charged food?
The next time you’re cooking soup for a loved one who isn’t feeling well, you could consider singing it a song that warms your heart. When you run a bath for yourself at the end of a long stressful day, consider the affect the epsom salt crystals, the essential oils and music may be having on not only the water in the bath, but the water in your body that makes up approximately 70% of who you are.
~ Jonathan Davis, Uplift
Rainforest Waterfall – photo by yotrak, bigstockphoto.com
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
~ Neil Gaiman
Nature/Elf Being, Iceland – photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
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 Hill
Redwood Forest – photo by volare2004, bigstockphoto.com
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Lake Reflections – photo by keeklers, 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
Milky Way – photo by Ronnachai, bigtockphoto.com
The earth community, the Life Community, is not the property of any one religion or group or part of the world; it is the Commons that embraces us all, our planetary home. And it needs us as never before. It calls to us to become, not heroes but community builders, builders of home, gatherers and embracers, bearers of hospitality, keepers of the shared space that nurtures us all. It calls us not to go forth and come back laden with honors but to honor where we are, who we are, and from that place to reach out to connect to and honor each other in the community of life.
~ David Spangler
Mountain Landscape at Sunset – photo by jenyateua, bigstockphoto.com
We also need this capacity to see that the present moment is not the final word, that there is always the possibility that we can transcend our own limitations—the planet, the Earth, the society can do that.
~ Sister Miriam MacGillis, “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth”
Beech Forest Sunrise – photo by nature78, bigstockphoto.com
Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me, and changed me: Mount Fuji, Mount Shasta, Mount Kailas, the Schreckhorn, Kanchenjunga. Mountains are abodes for ancestor and deity. They are places where energy is discovered, made, acquired and spent. Mountains are symbols, as well, of enduring truth and of the human quest for spirit. I was told long ago to spend time with mountains.
~ Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness
Grand Teton National Park, WY – photo by phdpsx, bigstockphoto.com
