A young Indian boy was auditioning along with some of us for a school play. His mother knew he’d set his heart on being in the play — just like the rest of us hoped, too — and she feared how he would react if he was not chosen.
On the day the parts were awarded the little boy’s mother went to the school on her horse to collect her son. The little boy rushed up to her and her horse, eyes shining with pride and excitement.
"Guess what, Mom," he shouted, and then said the words that provide a lesson to us all, "I’ve been chosen to clap and cheer."
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and the body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them... All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.
To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.