Quotes About Relationship

When he laces his fingers through mine, my heart does its now familiar panicked flight, bumping painfully against my ribs. My shoulder twitches as if to pull my hand back, but my heart overrules it.

there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

Friendship is mutual blackmail elevated to the level of love.

After all, he had secrets to keep about his sexual identity and behavior, and having a wife made him look more 'normal' than not having one. I guess that was what he meant when he said he needed me.

In the beginning, the call of God was not propositional. It was experiential. (p. 10)

Your immune systems are comprised of all parts of the eco-system you know as yourself, and include not only every part of you, from your conscious and subconscious thoughts to your physical body systems, but also how you live and function in relationship with the larger ecosystems that surround you.

It's not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land.

What we contemplate here is more than ecological restoration; it is the restoration of relationship between plants and people. Scientists have made a dent in understanding how to put ecosystems back together, but our experiments focus on soil pH and hydrology—matter, to the exclusion of spirit. We might look to the Thanksgiving Address for guidance on weaving the two. We are dreaming of a time when the land might give thanks for the people.

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

The exchange between plants and people has shaped the evolutionary history of both. Farms, orchards, and vineyards are stocked with species we have domesticated. Our appetite for their fruits leads us to till, prune, irrigate, fertilize, and weed on their behalf. Perhaps they have domesticated us. Wild plants have changed to stand in well-behaved rows and wild humans have changed to settle alongside the fields and care for the plants—a kind of mutual taming.

Is the land a source of belongings, or a source of belonging?

But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people.

So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world.

To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen.

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

the thriving of one in the best interest of the other. This, to me, sounds a bit like love.

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.

A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate - once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.

The ultimate reciprocity, loving and being loved in return.

Black ash and basket makers are partners in a symbiosis between harvesters and harvested: ash relies on people as the people rely on ash. Their fates are linked.

People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, "Plant a garden." It's good for the health of the earth and it's good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.

Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection "species loneliness"—a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship

A gift is different from something you buy, possessed of meaning outside its material boundaries. You never dishonor the gift. A gift asks something of you. To take care of it. And something more. I