Click thumbnail to view larger image.
There is a new story waiting to be born, waiting to redeem the planet and nourish our souls. It is a story of a oneness that includes the diversity of creation in a self-sustaining whole, a story that can bring back the magic within nature that is needed to heal our damaged planet.
…honoring spirit is accomplished as we quiet ourselves, illuminating the chatter of our doubting minds so that we can hear our heart pulsing with gratitude for the sacred gift that is life.
The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.
This is the Earth, healed again, growing green and blue. I want you to remember this exactly as it is, and then go and tell the people that if enough of us hold this image in their minds, we can heal the Earth and make it like it was a long time ago.
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others…for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.
We live in all things. All things live in us. . . . We are grateful. We rejoice in all life.
Mystical experience of nature can be of particular relevance to our troubled age, bringing deeper into our consciousness and emotions the logic that nature sustains humanity and humanity must, in turn, sustain nature. Rationality alone, however, cannot be our guide in the task of restoring our environment. A spiritual connection to nature must inspire the emotional commitment that is the yin, complementing the yang of intellectual understanding.
For Indigenous peoples, land cannot be owned, bought, or sold. She does not belong to us, we belong to her. We are born out of this land; we spend our lives on this land as her guests; and after death we go back to that same land. . . . Although Indigenous peoples around the world vary widely in their customs, traditions, rituals, languages, and so on, land is considered by all as the center of their universe, a parent, a giver of life, the core of our cultures, rituals, and traditions.
To reenchant nature is not merely to gain a new perspective for its integrity and well-being; it is to throw open the doors to a deeper level of existence.
Great Spirit, all things belong to you – the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air, and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other. The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross, and where they cross, the place is holy.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
The forces of nature, no matter how seemingly random, from storm clouds and lightning, to blowing snow and high winds, ultimately determine our well-being. All of Natures forces gift the surface of the Earth with subtle energy. All we have to do is touch it and become truly alive.
In stillness the world is restored.
