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Constantly I think of the Universe as one living creature, embracing one being and one soul; how all is absorbed into the one consciousness of this living creature; how it encompasses all things with a single purpose, and how all things work together to cause all that comes to pass, with their wonderful web and texture.
~Marcus Aurelius
Land’s End – Photo by Mark Gray, used with permission
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Photo by Lars van de Goor, used with permission
The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, ‘We are serving the same thing,’ but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civilization.
~ Charles Eisenstein, from The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Kauai, Hawaii – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Mt. Hood on the Horizon, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.
~ Wendell Berry
Costa Rica – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
An Ute Prayer:
Earth teach me quiet ~ as the grasses are still with new light.
Earth teach me suffering ~ as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility ~ as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring ~ as mothers nurture their young.
Earth teach me courage ~ as the tree that stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation ~ as the ant that crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom ~ as the eagle that soars in the sky.
Earth teach me acceptance ~ as the leaves that die each fall.
Earth teach me renewal ~ as the seed that rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself ~ as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness ~ as dry fields weep with rain.
Mt. St. Helens – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
What I love about Deep Ecology is that we are invited to extend our self interest as large as we want and we extend it to include all of life. That is the nature of this time – the exquisite challenge of this planetary crisis is that we can chose to see that our basic identity is a part of the earth. We are unique, there’s nobody else like us, but we draw from and are interdependent with the whole Earth.
~ Joanna Macy
Washington State – photo by Chris Williams Exploration Photography, used with permission
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
Mossman Gorge – photo by Mark Gray Photography, used with permission
Each place its own mind, its own psyche! Oak, Madrone, Douglas fir, red-tailed hawk, serpentine in the sandstone, a certain scale to the topography, drenching rains in the winters, fog off-shore in the summers, salmon surging up the streams all these together make up a particular state of mind, a place-specific intelligence shared by all the humans that dwell therein, but also by the coyotes yapping in those valleys, by the bobcats and the ferns and the spiders, by all beings who live and make their way in that zone. Each place its own psyche. Each sky its own blue.
~ David Abram
Camelrock, photo by Matt Veenendaal
May the stars carry your sadness away.
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty.
May hope forever wipe away your tears.
And, above all, may silence make you strong.
~ Chief Dan George
Sunset – photo by Mirwais Azami Photography, used with permission
Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Garrapata State Beach, photo by Don Smith photography (at Don Smith Photography facebook page), used with permission
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
~ Khalil Gibran
Pebble Beach, CA – photo by Don Smith Photography, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Don-Smith-Photography/371422548082, used with permission
Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.
Their leaves are telling secrets.
Their bark sings songs of olden days
as it grows around the trunks.
And their roots give names to all things.
~ Vera Nazarian ~
Enchanted Forest, courtesy of Lars van de Goor Photography Art, used with permission
Just as real sustainability embraces the biodiversity of the whole planet, it also includes the sacred within creation.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
Many of the tribal peoples of the world recognize that there are four places in nature where you can find deep peace and remember who you really are. One is in the deep woods; one is in the desert; one in the mountains and one near the ocean.
~ Angeles Arrien, “The Second Half of Life” transcript
Yosemite – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Don-Smith-Photography/371422548082
