It is my hope that all the children, the children of the deer and the wolf, the whale and other marine forms of life; the children of the osprey and the bluebird and the butterfly; the children of the oak and the pine and the dogwood; the children all together with the human children will go into the future in oneness "as a single sacred community." ... The human is less a being on the earth or in the universe than a dimension of the earth and indeed of the universe itself. We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable. Nor do we think of these as isolated from our own individual being or from the human community. We have no existence except within the earth and within the universe.
If we are called to be observers and contemplators, we are also called to nourish, to be nourishers, not consumers. Only a nourisher knows when to stop, not to overeat, overindulge, to draw back. To say no. I have a friend who has a coffee mug with the inscription: DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE ... We often underestimate those who stand there. But I have had to do some new thinking about all this, as I have had to do some new thinking about the sound of the tree falling in the forest. If we are unwilling to practice the gift of contemplation, we are likely to get stuck in one position, and to be fearful of changing it, and so we cling, unable to laugh at ourselves and move on.