FINDING COMMON GROUND  

When you are really struggling with someone, and it’s someone you’re supposed to hate because of ideology or belief, move in. Get curious. Get closer. Ask questions. Try to connect. Remind yourself of that spiritual belief of inextricable connection: How am I connected to you in a way that is bigger and more primal than our politics?
Brené Brown, in conversation with Krista Tippet, On Being
 

That way of knowing the earth

I don’t presume to grasp Aboriginal knowledge fully. It comes from a way of knowing the earth—an epistemology—different from that of my own culture. It speaks of being attuned to the blooming of the bitterroot, the running of the salmon, the cycles of the moon. Of knowing that we are tied to the land—the trees and animals and soil and water—and to one another, and that we have a responsibility to care for these connections and resources, ensuring the sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations and to honor those who came before.  Suzanne Simard, "Finding the Mother Tree

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Nature's Sensuality 

The color of sky, the rush of waves -- every aspect of the earthly sensuous could draw us into a relatiosnhip fed with curiosity and spiced with danger. Every sound was a voice, every scrape or blunder was a meeting -- with Thunder, with Oak, with Dragonfly. And from all of these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished. Today, we participate almost exclusively with other humans and with our own human-made technologies. It is a precarious situation. The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram

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We're all connected
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”Cosmologist Carl Sagan 

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The forest is our original university 

“To study true knowledge, you need to go into the forest. The trees are connected to everything. The tree breathes, drawing water, to have strength to share. It breathes so that other beings can breath. All is interconnected in life cycles of the earth, between earth and animal – that’s spirit.”  Moises Pyanko, healer, teacher and the son of the chief of the Ashaninka tribe in the Amazonian state of Acre (speaking at Aniwa Gathering, NY, 2018)

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Being a good ancestor 

“Our human connectedness goes beyond present relationships. We are inextricably related to our ancestors, who continue to live in present generations as guiding spirits.  Ubuntu, the recognition that “I am because you are,” is the horizon of possibility before us. We need to continue this journey and travel deep into our beings, where we are connected to one another and to those who have gone before. We need to pay due reverence to the spark of life inside each of us, and continually raise our consciousness to the sacred light of life within us. This sacred light calls us to reflect deeply on our collective responsibility to shape a future worthy of those yet to be born.
 

Mamphela Ramphele, South African human rights activist, physician, social anthropologist, and businesswoman

 

Sacred Sense 

IIn the modern world, we’ve lost that all-important sense of the sacred. It’s taken such a long time for people, finally, to be aware of the catastrophe that has been engineered by not listening to [indigenous] wisdom and knowledge.” - Prince Charles, speaking at a post-COP26 Indigenous Listening Session 

 

Common Roots​

"I don’t presume to grasp Aboriginal knowledge fully. It comes from a way of knowing the earth—an epistemology—different from that of my own culture. It speaks of being attuned to the blooming of the bitterroot, the running of the salmon, the cycles of the moon. Of knowing that we are tied to the land—the trees and animals and soil and water—and to one another, and that we have a responsibility to care for these connections and resources, ensuring the sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations and to honor those who came before."  --Suzanne Simard, "Finding the Mother Tree"

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​​A River Is Given New Life 

After 140 years of negotiation, Māori tribe wins recognition for Whanganui river, meaning it must be treated as a living entity. “We can trace our genealogy to the origins of the universe,” said Albert. “And therefore rather than us being masters of the natural world, we are part of it. We want to live like that as our starting point. And that is not an anti-development, or anti-economic use of the river but to begin with the view that it is a living being, and then consider its future from that central belief.”  Gerrard Albert, the lead negotiator for the Whanganui iwi [tribe].  The Guardian newspaper, March 2017

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The Magic of Water

"We carry magic. But then, so does everyone. It lies in water. Human beings are mobile wells of mildly salty water. As every schoolchild knows, our bodies contain roughly the same percentage of water that covers the Earth’s surface. Such harmonies are no mystery. We are water animals born onto a water planet. Water is everywhere and nowhere. It is a restless element—unstill, on the move, always shifting its physical state from gas to liquid to solid and back again."   Paul Salopek, National Geographic Aug 2020: Walking India - Out of Eden 

 

We’re in this together

We’re not superior beings, we’re part of the web of life, we’re part of creation. It’s so important that all aspects are cared for and catered to sustainability.  It’s all about being linked rather than ranked.  We’re in it together, we live or die together. Our planet goes forward or backward depending on how we care for each other and all of creation. Sister Rita, Solas Brigid (excerpt from interview at Solas Brighid in Kildare, Ireland).

 

Getting in tune

How can we save the earth we depend on? It’s up to us to realize and be a harmonious element.
“We have to adjust to the lake, to the mountain. We need to adjust to each element.”   Aniwa - Nana Marina Cruz: Mayan

 

The trees are talking

“There is now compelling evidence that our elders were right — the trees are talking to one another. They communicate via pheromones, hormone like compounds that are wafted on the breeze, laden with meaning. Scientists have identified specific compounds that one tree will release when it is under the stress of insect attack….There is so much we cannot yet sense with our limited human capacity.Tree conversations are still far above our heads.”Laura Wall Kimmerer, from “Braiding Sweetgrass

Protecting the sacred sites
We are eager to protect our sacred sites because these sites are like the eyes, ears, lungs, arms of nature. Each site is a Being; a mother or father spirit who is alive and has a spirit.  Our rivers are like the veins that run from the head in the glacier peaks thru the body of the mountain.  If these things are destroyed, it will bring an end to our indigenous culture, it will destroy us as a people.
Jose de Los Santos Sauna, Kogi Cabildo Governor.  From Teyuna Foundation blog:Jose de Los 

 

The mountains are fountains
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains — beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.  John Muir (April 21, 1838–December 24, 1914) c

Nature's aura
Nature herself must and does possess an aura, a mental atmosphere no less than man. Whoever is at all sensitive feels it, absorbs it and is consequently influenced by it. I write that statement not as a poet, but as a scientist. Where can one find a more powerful manifestation of this aura, I reflect, than in the Himalayas, one of nature’s supreme attempts to express herself on a cyclopean scale?    Paul Brunton, excerpt from “Hermit in the Himalayas”. (1937)