Closer to home

Wild cherry in October.

Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.

~ Munia Khan

We’re all—trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria—pluralities. Life is embodied network. These living networks are not places of omnibenevolent Oneness. Instead, they are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship. Because life is network, there is no “nature” or “environment,” separate and apart from humans. We are part of the community of life, composed of relationships with “others,” so the human/nature duality that lives near the heart of many philosophies is, from a biological perspective, illusory.

~ David George Haskell, The Songs of Trees

(Not quite) Wordless Wednesday

The Walktober reminders:  This year’s dates are October 14th through the 28th.  I hope you’ll find the time to walk and participate.  (If you need more time, all you have to do is let me know.  If you’re unfamiliar with Walktober, you’ll find a link to a post about it in the sidebar, over there to the right.  Or, if you’re using your phone, maybe it’s at the bottom somewhere.)  I will probably do the round-up of the posts/walks on November 1.  That date depends on whether or not anyone needs and asks for more time.

The Official Walktober Post, the one that you should link to for pingbacks (or you can leave a link in the comments), is this one:  A Monday meander: The Walktober Post.  No worries if you leave your link on one of my other posts.  I’ll be on the lookout for them.

A walk in the woods

A late September day.

When no one is watching Mother Earth, and most of the time no one is, she sings softly to herself.

~ Sharon Weil, Donny and Ursula Save the World

A Monday meander: The Walktober post

On the Bell Island Trail at Pemberton Historical Park.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, that the Earth is only the environment. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it, realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Not to cut the tree not to pollute the water, that is not enough.

We need a real awakening, enlightenment, to change our way of thinking and seeing things. When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born. That is the meaning of love, to be at one.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The songs of wind and rain

Looking out the kitchen window on a rainy day.

The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination- an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfilment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the water in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain?

~ Arundhati Roy, Broken Republic: Three Essays

When hot and cold meet

Last Thursday on the beach. Cape May, New Jersey.

Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve.

~ Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything 

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

~ Arundhati Roy