Quotes About Connection

despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us

For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place nears living as if your children's future mattered

Through reciprocity the gift is replenished. All of our flourishing is mutual.

Yawe—the animate to be. I am, you are, s/he is. To speak of those possessed with life and spirit we must say yawe. By what linguistic confluence do Yahweh of the Old Testament and yawe of the New World both fall from the mouths of the reverent?

suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own.

a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship.

to see you kids eating my berries." I knew the difference: In the fields behind my house, the berries belonged to themselves.

spill over into the world and the world spills over into us

While city folks may be separated from the sources of what they consume, they can exercise reciprocity through how they spend their money. While the digging of the leeks and the digging of the coal may be too far removed to see, we consumers have a potent tool of reciprocity right in our pockets. We can use our dollars as the indirect current of reciprocity.

Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself - its tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river. All things that were will come again.

I came to know that it wasn't naming the source of wonder that mattered, it was wonder itself.

What if you were a teacher but had no voice to speak your knowledge? What if you had no language at all and yet there was something you needed to say? Wouldn't you dance it? Wouldn't you act it out? Wouldn't your every movement tell the story? In time you would be so eloquent that just to gaze upon you would reveal it all. And so it is with these silent green lives.

It has become a place of inspiration and solitude for writers, writers who could be the restoration ecologists of relationship.

I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers.

not 'What can we take?' but 'What can we give to Mother Earth?' That's how it's supposed to be

However alluring the thought of warmth, there is no substitute for standing in the rain to waken every sense - senses that are muted within four walls, where my attention would be on me instead of all that is more than me.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

to be indigenous is to protect life on earth

One thing I've learned in the woods is that there is no such thing as random. Everything is steeped in meaning, colored by relationships, one thing with another.

tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger, when it is belonging that we crave

This was an exercise in personal forestry. But it was also an exercise in the creation of personal art. I could have been painting a landscape or composing a cycle of songs.

for we are storymakers, not just storytellers

I suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.