42 quotes found
“To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”
“Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.”
“The word ecology is derived from the Greek oikos, the word for home.”
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to those who take care of us.”
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
“That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage.”
“With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”
“When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world. Tom says that even wor...”
“Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection species lonelinessa deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our hum...”
“Swept away with the idea, he said it felt like an awakening to him. More like a remembering, I think. The animacy of the world is something we already know, but the language of animacy teeters on e...”
“We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species. But imagine the possibilities. Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the ...”
“Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world.”
“A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaato be a bayreleases the water from ...”
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to hea...”
“What we contemplate here is more than ecological restoration; it is the restoration of relationship between plants and people. Scientists have made a dent in understanding how to put ecosystems bac...”
“caring is not abstract. The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack.”
“Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love itgrieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in...”
“The ceremonies that persistbirthdays, weddings, funerals focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. []We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But im...”
“In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on topthe pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creationand the plants at the bottom. But in Nat...”
“Plants are also integral to reweaving the connection between land and people. A place becomes a home when it sustains you, when it feeds you in body as well as spirit. To recreate a home, the plant...”
“Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.”
“Had the new people learned what Original Man was taught at a council of animalsnever damage Creation, and never interfere with the sacred purpose of another beingthe eagle would look down on a diff...”
“Instead I just stand there, tears running down my cheeks in nameless emotion that tastes of joy and of grief. Joy for the being of the shimmering world and grief for what we have lost. The grasses ...”
“All powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation.”
