Quotes About Harmony

a way that contributes to the good of the whole.

but by the rules of reciprocity none can take more than she gives.

Every one of them is beautiful. Every one of them is different and yet every one of them began in the same tree. They are all made of the same stuff and yet each is itself. That's the way it is with our people, too, all made of the same thing and each their own kind of beautiful.

with a bond physical, emotional, and spiritual.

when three hundred voices all joined together, all those voices, in measured cadence, from the gray-haired school nurse's to the kindergarteners', made me feel part of something. It was as if for a moment our minds were one.

made me feel part of something. It was as if for a moment our minds were one.

In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies.

we are rooted in cultures of gratitude.

Perpetual growth is simply not compatible with natural law

We know that appreciation begets abundance.

The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective.

Einstein himself said that "God doesn't play dice with the universe." What is the source of this pattern? Why is the world so beautiful? It could so easily be otherwise: flowers could be ugly to us and still fulfil their own purpose. But they're not.

But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.

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

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.

we make a grave error if we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole.

It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness"—estrangement from the rest of Creation.

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

When I ask my elders about the ways our people lived in order to keep the world whole and healthy, I hear the mandate to take only what you need. But we human people, descendants of Nanabozho, struggle, as he did, with self-restraint. The dictum to take only what you need leaves a lot of room for interpretation when our needs get so tangled with our wants.

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.

Clumsy at first, from generations of sitting on the sidelines, we stumble until we find the rhythm. We know these steps from deep memory, handed down from Skywoman, reclaiming our responsibility as cocreators. Here in a homemade forest, poets, writers, scientists, foresters, shovels, seeds, elk, and alder join in the circle with Mother Cedar, dancing the old-growth children into being. We're all invited. Pick up a shovel and join the dance.

Are all the pieces of the ecosystem still here and doing their duty?

We tend to respond to nature as a part of ourselves, not a stranger or alien available for exploitation.

How generously they shower us with food, literally giving themselves so that we can live. But in the giving their lives are also ensured. Our taking returns benefit to them in the circle of life making life, the chain of reciprocity...We reciprocate the gift by taking care of the grove, protecting it from harm, planting seeds so that new groves will shade the prairie and feed the squirrels.