
Join with Earth

The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightening and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, – all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.
~Thomas Berry
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Image: Artist unknown
“If half of American lawns were replaced with native plants, we would create the equivalent of a 20 million acre national park – nine times bigger than Yellowstone, or 100 times bigger than Shenandoah National Park.”
~Doug Tallamy
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“What insights about our human psyches appear when we return to Earth, when we remember that we are related to everything that has ever existed, when we reinstall ourselves in a world of spring-summer-fall-winter, volcanoes, storms, surf, bison, mycelium, Moon, falcons, sand dunes, galaxies, and redwood groves?
What do we discover about ourselves when we consent again to being human animals — bipedal, omnivorous mammals with distinctive capacities for self-reflexive consciousness, dexterity, imagination, and speech?
In what ways will we choose to live when we fully remember the naturalness and ecological necessity of death?
Who will we see in the mirror when we face up to the present-day realities of human-caused mass extinction, ecosystem collapse, and climate destabilization?
And what mystery journey will unfold when we answer the alluring and dangerous summons now emanating from the human soul, from the dream of the Earth, and from an intelligent, evolving, ensouled Universe?”
~Bill Plotkin,
Animas Valley Institute
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Photo: High mountain meadow
by Nancy Lankston