You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
~ Alan Watts
Kauai, Hawaii – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Devadana Sanctuary
Click thumbnail to view larger image.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Yosemite and Full Moon – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
There, on the rock,
where no one will hear,
I will sing the sun up
~ Richard Bear
Fields of Gold – photo by Chris Williams Exploration Photography
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
~ John Muir
Castle Ridge, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.
~ John Muir
Bryce Canyon – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that the plant has no mind. I tell them that the plant is alive and conscious. A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive. The channels through which the water move are the veins of the spirit…
~ Pablo César Amaringo Shuna
Photo by Devadana Sanctuary, used with permission
I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun.
I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening.
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal;
The rose and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation, the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .
I am the soul in all.
~ Rumi
Yosemite Falls Moonbow – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
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
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