Have you ever, as a small child, wandered farther from home than you meant to or were aware of until you found yourself in a place where you had never been before? All at once you realize that YOU are in this strange place. Stock still, not breathing so you can listen, you stare at grey rocks with whorls of lichen on them like faces, tree-roots like snakes, the tress themselves heavy with leaves and silent. Your heart comes into your throat. Quietly, very quietly, you get back onto the path, then you take to your toes for all you are worth. This may have been the first experience of panic fear ... but you met someone there: you met yourself.
~ from "Landscape Inside" by Neil Gunn in A CELEBRATION OF THE LIGHT by John Burns
If we could even for a moment throw away our concepts and see with the inner eye through all the veils of conditioning, we would know there is only one world, one indissoluble whole. We would see that all creatures on earth are part of a sinle system. There is no preferred species; there is no preferred race. In the Eye of Wisdom ... What we do, we must do in this very moment. There is no other preferred moment. When we can accept what is before our eyes, accept it with whole heart, we no longer have anything to fear, anything to long for. All we need to set the world aright is here. We have only to see it.
~ from SEEING THROUGH THE VISIBLE WORLD by June Singer
Uncle explained that the pines and oaks will not spread into the fields to grow and make a new woods, unless we leave the ground unseeded. My uncle envisioned that this barren land was to become a new forest, one of great beauty and repose. "To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy."
~ from THE FAITHFUL GARDENER by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Because nature within us is part of the same great pattern as nature without, to begin the turn-around from "ravaged" land to "reverenced" land, the first step is to take time out to permit our inner patterns to re-align with the greater beings -- the sun and the atmosphere -- which give us our life here on Earth.
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each individual a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
The awareness of the unity and interconnectedness of all beings leads -- if it is consistent -- to an empathy with others. It expresses itself as reverence of life, compassion, a sense of the communion of suffering humanity, and the commitment to heal our wounded earth and its peoples.
~ from DIALOGUES WITH SCIENTISTS AND SAGES by Renee Weber
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
When we feel in us enough safety.
~ from CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES by Thich Nhat Hanh
The earth gives us life. The world around is beautiful and meant to be viewed with respect and wonder... The Sioux holy man, Black Elk, expressed it well when he said that any place you are is the center of the world. This beautiful creation is always speaking to us, it is just that we sometimes do not stop to look and listen. We forget to see as we were meant to see, not just through our eyes, but through the eye of the heart.
~ Joseph Bruchac in SOARING WITH RAVENS by Tim Fizharris
