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We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, weve lost our connection to ourselves.
~ Andy Goldsworthy
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
When your inner eyes open, you can
find immense beauty hidden within the
inconsequential details of daily life.
When your inner ears open, you can hear
the subtle, lovely music of the universe
everywhere you go.
~ Timothy Ray Miller
Winter Sunset, Garrapata State Beach, Big Sur Coast – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web “God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,” but it can be known only as love.
~ Joan Borysenko
Eddy in Bear Creek, Pinnacles National Park – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.
~ Lewis Thomas
Tipsoo Lake, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
And, finally, from In Praise of the Earth:
Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.
Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.
That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who choses us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.
~ John O’Donohue
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
Continuing with O’Donohue’s “In Praise of the Earth”:
Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.
The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.
The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.
The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness…
~ John O’Donohue
Portland Japanese Garden, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
The following is from a very long poem by John O’Donohue called “In Praise of the Earth”. We’d like to offer it in parts, beginning with:
Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth.
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.
And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.
When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.
Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies…
~ John O’Donohue
Keyhole Arch – photo by Don Smith Photograpy, used with permission
We all breathe only one air, we all drink only one water, we all live on only one earth. We must all protect it.
~ Chief Raoni
Moonrise Above the Mittens, Monument Valley – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Be aware of the contact between your feet and the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. We have caused a lot of damage to the Earth. Now it is time for us to take good care of her. We bring our peace and calm to the surface of the Earth and share the lesson of love. We walk in that spirit.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
I’m taking off
on my own two feet. I’m going
to clear my head…
to listen to trees and silence,to see if I can still breathe…
I’m going to be alone with
myself, to feel how it feels
to embrace what my feet
tell my head, what wind says
in my good ear.
~Philip Booth
Old Coast Road, Big Sur, CA – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
I caught the happiness virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
~ Hafiz
Milky Way – photo by Mirwais Azami Photography, used with permission
Each experience of love nudges us toward the story of interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of separation.
~ Charles Eisenstein
Grand Canyon Lightening – Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
We can hardly begin to imagine the possibilities born from a shift away from a materialistic view of reality to a more dynamic understanding of life as energy.
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
In Yosemite Valley – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.
~Martha Postlewaite
Middle North Falls, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are the world.
~ Charles Eisenstein
Photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
