When I was a kid, my sister and I were always outside. One of our favorite games was to rake the pine needles into a floor plan. We always imagined that my sister and I could take care of ourselves and live off the land. One of us would collect the wool from our pretend sheep, and the pinecones became our household tools. We led complex, rich lives, all while doing our homework! -Beth Murray (CLF)
When has nature been a source of comforting fantasy or dreaming for you?
“So this month I offer you a spiritual practice. Find yourself a bush, a tree, a nook, a path, a place on the edges of life organized by humans. Visit it when you are burned out, and let your attention go deep into the particular life of that place. Visit it when it rains, or when the sun comes out, and see how it responds and grows.” -Darcey Laine
“We don’t escape to nature. Rather, there is no escape from nature; it is within us. We don’t get away to nature. Rather, there is no place to get away from nature; we are forever being drawn into that deep connection.” -James C. Leach
How are you drawn into deep connection with nature?
“Among those few affirmations most central to our existence, one has long been the sense of the sacredness of this planet and its processes, the sacredness of the vastness and order and mystery of the universe, a sense of sacredness of that response in us that is awed or excited or profoundly still or otherwise moved to the core by a glorious sunset or the surf crashing along a beach or a calm mountain lake reflecting autumn-yellow aspens.” -Kenneth Sawyer
What has awed or excited or moved you to the core?
“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within [us] is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal one.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
How do you understand your connection to everything in the universe?
