Quotes About Interconnectedness

Now we move out again, the horses slipping down off the knoll, following the People, who follow the buffalo, who follow the grass, which springs from the earth.

Our challenge for the future is that we realize we are very much a part of the earth's ecosystem, and we must learn to respect and live according to the basic biological laws of nature.

Everything is a metaphor for everything else.

What an irony it is that these living beings whose shade we sit in, whose fruit we eat, whose limbs we climb, whose roots we water, to whom most of us rarely give a second thought, are so poorly understood. We need to come, as soon as possible, to a profound understanding and appreciation for trees and forests and the vital role they play, for they are among our best allies in the uncertain future that is unfolding.

Place yourself in the egg of light and practice Metta for at least two people whom you will be coming in contact with today or this week.

All beings, including each one of us, enemy and friend alike, exist in patterns of mutuality, interconnectedness, co-responsibility and ultimately in unity.

Thomas Berry, in The Dream of the Earth,

Speaking in Creation's tongues, hearing Creation's voices, the boundary of our soul expands. Earth has many voices. Those who understand that Earth is a living being know this because they have translated themselves to the humble grasses and old trees. They know that Earth is a community that is constantly talking to itself; a communicating universe. And whether we know it or not, we are participating in the web of this community.

The obvious choice, then, is to extend our notions of self-interest. For example, it would not occur to me to plead with you, "Don't saw off your leg. That would be an act of violence." It wouldn't occur to me (or to you) because your leg is part of your body. Well, so are the trees in the Amazon rain basin. They are our external lungs. We are beginning to realize that the world is our body. The

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature. — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

By inviting in these experiences of interconnectedness we can enhance our sense of belonging to our world. This mode of being widens and deepens our sense of who we are.

Here is a version that I have adapted for use in the West. Close

In the past, changing the self and changing the world were often regarded as separate endeavors and viewed in either-or terms. But in the story of the Great Turning, they are recognized as mutually reinforcing and essential to one another.

We're part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother's garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We're all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is. Your mother and sisters don't have that awareness. Not yet, anyway. They believe they're contained in their bodies, in the biographical facts of their lives.

We're not separated from the world by our own edges." Charlie set down his beer glass, empty now, and rubbed his hand up and down his arm, as an example of one of his edges. "We're part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother's garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We're all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is.

This vast life - the real, interior one in which we remain linked to the dead (because the dream inside us ignores trivialities like breath, or absence) - this vast life is not under our control. Everything we have seen and everyone we have known goes into us and constitutes us, whether we like it or not. We are linked together in a pattern we cannot see and whose effects we cannot know.

Tutto quello che abbiamo visto e tutti quelli che abbiamo conosciuto entrano in noi e ci costituiscono, che ci piaccia o no. Siamo collegati in un disegno che non possiamo vedere e di cui non possiamo conoscere le conseguenze. Un'imperfezione qui, un punto saltato là, una bozza tra le fibre, e l'intera stoffa sarà diversa una volta che è intessuta.

Life lines are entangled: candy cane and matsutake; matsutake and its host trees; host trees and herbs, mosses, insects, soil bacteria, and forest animals; heaving bumps and mushroom pickers. Matsutake pickers are alert to life lines in the forest; searching with all the senses creates this alertness. It is a form of forest knowledge and appreciation without the completeness of classification. Instead, searching brings us to the liveliness of beings experienced as subjects rather than objects.

It's not easy to know how to make a life, much less avert planetary destruction. Luckily there is still company, human and not human.

First, all that taming and mastering has made such a mess that it is unclear whether life on earth can continue.

Yet fungal eating is often generous; it makes worlds for others.

Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic?

O dia e a noite (...) As sombras e a luz. A vida e a morte. Tudo isso faz parte do desenrolar dos dias, Morag. Tudo isso faz parte do mundo. Uma vida pode impedir outra de existir. As ervas daninhas podem espalhar-se e não deixar espaço para as outras plantas crescerem. É importante ir-se ceifando aqui e ali.

The Hmong have a phrase, hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means "to speak of all kinds of things." It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem to be connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point; and that the storyteller is likely to be rather long-winded.