Quotes About Connection

If you didn't know better, you might not recognize raindrops and rivers as kin, so different are the particular and the collective.

Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth.

Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers

If you don't give it respect it will leave us

Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.

Both were women with feet planted deep in the earth, who took pride in a back strong enough to carry a load for others.

Gardens are simultaneously a material and a spiritual undertaking. That's hard for scientists, brainwashed by Cartesian dualism, to grasp.

finding a patch of wild strawberries still touches me with a sensation of surprise, a feeling of unworthiness and gratitude for the generosity and kindness that comes with an unexpected gift all wrapped in red and green.

As the temperature drops, single voices—clear and hollow—replace the keening chorus: the ancient speech of frogs. One word becomes clear, as if spoken in English. "Hear! Hear! Hear! The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family . Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.

The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.

Many of our ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again.

That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to a prayer. The material and the spiritual mingle like grounds mingled with humus, transformed like steam rising from a mug into the morning mist. What else can you offer the earth, which has everything? What else can you give but something of yourself? A homemade ceremony, a ceremony that makes a home.

It's such a simple thing, but we all know the power of gratitude to incite a cycle of reciprocity

There are some aches witch hazel can't assuage; for those, we need each other. My mother and Hazel Barnett, unlikely sisters, I suppose, learned well from the plants they both loved - they made a balm for loneliness together, a strengthening tea for the pain of longing.

When we braid sweetgrass, we are braiding the hair of Mother Earth, showing her our loving attention, our care for her beauty and well-being, in gratitude for all she has given us.

Children hearing the Skywoman story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth.

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

Let us pledge reciprocity with the living world.

The students all demonstrated a deep respect and affection for nature.

They said that nature was the place where they experienced the greatest sense of belonging and well-being.

beings we think of and therefore speak of as persons worthy of our respect, of inclusion in a peopled world.

You wouldn't harm what gives you love.

We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species.

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain 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.