Quotes About Renewal

Few things appeal so much to the heart of a man as a fresh start.

Shame off you. Grace on you.

When it comes to God] We can't run out of second chances...only time.

Dig a small hole in the earth. Ask Mother Earth to help you as you release your grief (the grief can be over a specific thing or a general feeling that is weighing you down). Cry over and into the hole in the earth for as long as you need to. Feel her receive your tears without judgment.

Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life.

If time could run backward, like a film in reverse, we would see this mess reassemble itself into lush green hills and moss-covered ledges of limestone. The streams would run back up the hills to the springs and the salt would stay glittering in underground rooms.

until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving 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 earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness again as a basket. A basket knows the dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new whole. The journey of a basket is also the journey of a people.

As Gary Nabhan has written, we can't meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without "re-story-ation.

It is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

I cherish a witch hazel kind of day, a scrap of color, a light in the window when winter is closing all around.

Your hands itch to pull out invasive species and replant the native flowers. Your finger trembles with a wish to detonate the explosion of an obsolete dam that would restore a salmon run. These are antidotes to the poison of despair.

Firewood warms you twice

Images of Skywoman speak not just of where we came from, but also of how we can go forward.

But most mosses are immune to death by drying. For them, desiccation is simply a temporary interruption in life.

One day, after I'm a daffodil, I will be able to photosynthesize. It's something to look forward to.

Puhpowee, she explained, translates as "the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.

How we approach restoration of land depends ... on what we believe that "land" means. If land is just real estate, then restoration looks very different than if land is the source of a subsistence economy and a spiritual home. Restoring land for production of natural resources is not the same as renewal of land as cultural identity.

There ain't hardly no hurt the woods don't have medicine for.

I hadn't realized that I had come to the lake and said feed me, but my empty heart was fed.

We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don't have to avert our eyes with shame, wo that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgement of the rest of the earth's beings.

But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

Leave this place better than you found it," she admonished. And so we did. We also had to leave wood for the next person's fire, with tinder and kindling

ceremony brought the quiescent back to life