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The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world. . . I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side.  The hum of the wind in the treetops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men.
  I am in love with this world. . . I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown.
  I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting if its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

John Burroughs

      

The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something that needs to be extended to the whole of the natural world.  What is needed is the liberation of all things that support life--the air, the waters, the trees--all the things which support the sacred web of life.

Haudenosaunee

  

One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure in the common, the near at hand--to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.

John Burroughs

   

May our walking on earth be gentle as the union of the butterfly and the flower.

traditional Buddhist blessing

   

The planet earth has a life span of eight billion years, give or take a few million.
People have been around for approximately forty thousand years--a virtual
blink in the cosmos.  It is sad that we as a species are ravaging the natural
world so fast that we are jeopardizing our survival.  If we wipe ourselves out,
it would be the height of folly, but the earth will survive even us.  It will eventually
restore itself.  It might take a few thousand years, and it won't be just
as it was before, but its life is stronger than death.


Charlotte Davis Kasl

  

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We are living beyond our means.  As a people we have developed
a lifestyle that is draining the earth of its priceless and
irreplaceable resources without regard for the future
of our children and people all around the world.

Margaret Mead

   
When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.

David Orr
  

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors;
we borrow it from our children.

Native American Proverb

   

Our earth is but a small star in a great universe.
Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet
unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided
by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory.


Stephen Vincent Benet

   
There is enough for all.  The earth is a generous mother;
she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her
children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.


Bourke Coekran
   

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be
through Earth's loveliness.

Michelangelo

  

You must bind up any wounds you give the earth and you must feed her to
replace what you take from her.  Every gift she gives, every tree, every stalk
of grain, costs her.  Only if you repay your debts will she continue to provide.

Morgan Llywelyn

   

How far must suffering and misery go before we see that even
in the day of vast cities and powerful machines, the good earth is
our mother and that if we destroy her, we destroy ourselves?


Paul Bigelow Sears

   

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster
its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

Wendell Berry

   

Being born as humans to this earth is a very sacred trust.  We have a
sacred responsibility because of the special gift we have, which is beyond
the fine gifts of the plant life, the fish, the woodlands, the birds,
and all the other living things on earth.  We are able to take care of them.

Audrey Shenandoah

   

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Leafing idly through The Home Planet, I stop at a picture
of Earth floating against the black velvet of space.
Africa and Europe are visible under swirling white clouds,
but the predominant color is blue.  This was the one
picture from the Apollo missions that told the whole
story--how small the planet is in the vast sprawl
of space, how fragile its environments are.
Seen from space, Earth has no national borders,
no military zones, no visible fences.  Quite the
opposite.  You can see how storm systems swirling
above a continent may well affect the grain yield
half a world away.  The entire atmosphere of the
planet--all the air we breathe, all the sky we
fly through, even the ozone layer--is visible as
the thinnest rind.  The picture eloquently
reminds one that Earth is a single organism.

Diane Ackerman

    

If the Earth does grow inhospitable
toward human presence, it is primarily
because we have lost our sense of
courtesy toward the Earth and its
inhabitants, our sense of gratitude,
our willingness to recognize the
sacred character of habitat, our
capacity for the awesome, for
the numinous quality of
every earthly reality.

Thomas Berry

   
Earth teach me stillness
   as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
   as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
   as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
   as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
   as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
   as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
   as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
   as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
   as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
   as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
   as dry fields weep with rain.

Ute prayer
   
Who is our neighbor:  the Samaritan?  the outcast?  the enemy?  Yes, yes,
of course.  But it is also the whale, the dolphin, and the rain forest.  Our neighbor
is the entire community of life, the entire universe.  We must love it all as ourselves.

Brian Patrick
   

Planet earth is my home, and I am committed to its care.  In gratitude,
I acknowledge the gift I’ve been given and accept my responsibility
to care for it.  The earth and all its bounty are divinely created and
sustained.  Deeply grateful for both bounty and balance, I realize that
planet earth is a gift from God for all people of the world—in
the past, now, and for generations to come.

unattributed

    

  
I do not believe that our relationship to the earth is liable to change for
the better until it gets catastrophically worse.  Our record indicates that
we can walk with our eyes wide open straight into sheer destruction if
there is a profit on the way--and that seems to me to be what we are
doing now.  I have no great expectation that human cussedness will
somehow be quickly modified and turned into generosity or that humanity's
care of the earth will improve much.
But I do go around planting trees on the campus.

Joseph A. Sittler
Grace Notes and Other Fragments
  

When we're in love with someone or something, there's no separation
between ourselves and the person or thing we love.  We do whatever
we can for them, and this brings us great joy and nourishment.  When
we see the Earth this way, we will walk more gently on her.

Thich Nhat Hanh
How to Walk

When we open the door and go out into the fresh air, we can be
immediately in touch with the air and the Earth and all the elements
around us.  When we walk, we know we're not stepping on something
inanimate.  The ground we're walking on is not inert matter.
Understanding the earth in this way, we can walk on the planet
with as much respect and reverence as we would walk within a
house of worship or in any sacred space.  We can bring full
awareness to each step.  Steps like these have the power
to save our lives.

   
Articles and book excerpts on earth:

A Supposed Letter from Chief Seattle

    

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again
to the earth and in contemplation of her beauties
to know the sense of wonder and humility.


Rachel Carson

   

To care for the living earth is to care for ourselves.

unattributed

    

The earth has enough for every person's need,
but not for every person's greed.

Mohandas Gandhi

   

When you learn to take responsibility for yourselves, then you will
start taking responsibility for the planet.  The planet is being destroyed
by your abandonment of responsibility.  You assume that you own the planet.
And ownership confers upon you the right to do as you like.
You do not own this beautiful planet.  You are simply a guest here.

Leonard Jacobson

   

   

"Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve
one's sadness," don Juan said.  "Warriors are always joyful because
their love is unalterable and their beloved, the earth, embraces them
and bestows upon them inconceivable gifts.  The sadness belongs only
to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings."
Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness.
"This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands
every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when
I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom."

Carlos Castaneda

  

A relationship to the earth based only on its use for economic enrichment
is bound to result not only in its degradation but also in the devaluation
of human life.  This is a perversion which, if not soon corrected, will
become a fatal disease of technological societies.

Rene Dubos

   

The grand show is eternal.  It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.  Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

John Muir

   
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.  But I think the
real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize:  a blue sky,
white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child--our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.


Thich Nhat Hanh
  

This we know.  The Earth does not belong to people; people belong to the
Earth.  This we know.  All things are connected like blood which unites one
family.  All things are connected.  Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons
and daughters of the Earth.  People did not weave the web of life; we are
merely strands in it.  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

attributed to Chief Seattle

   

Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her
valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.
For the gifts of life are the earth's and they are given to all, and they
are the songs of the birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear,
and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.

Henry Beston

  
There are many things to be shared with the Four Colors of
humanity in our common destiny as one with our Mother the
Earth.  It is this sharing that must be considered with great care
by the Elders and the medicine people who carry the Sacred
Trusts, so that no harm may come to people through ignorance
and misuse of these powerful forces.

Resolution of the Fifth Annual Meeting
of the Traditional Elders Circle
   

If we see the Earth as just a block of matter lying outside of us, then
we have not yet truly seen the Earth.  We need to be able to see that
we are a part of the Earth, and to see that the entire Earth is in us.
The Earth is also alive; it has intelligence and creativity.  If the Earth
were inert matter, it could not give birth to countless great beings,
including the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, and Moses.  The
Earth is also mother to our parents and to us.  Looking with the eyes
of non-discrimination, we can establish a very close relationship with
the Earth.  We look at the Earth with our heart and not the eyes of
cold reasoning. You are the planet, and the planet is you.  The
well-being of your body is not possible without the well-being of the
planet.  And that is why to protect the well-being of your body we
must protect the well-being of the planet.  This is the insight of emptiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh
The Art of Living

   

     
   

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(Found online images come from a variety of unattributed
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not to share!)

   
   

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.