Quotes About Responsibility

My work as an ecologist, a writer, a mother, as a traveler between scientific and traditional ways of knowing, grows from the power of those words. It reminds me of who we are; it reminds me of our gifts and our responsibility to those gifts. Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging—to a family, to a people, and to the land.

Their dad had just pulled up stakes, left the country—and us. He said that he no longer wanted a life with so much responsibility, so the responsibility was all mine.

Don't buy it." Refusal to participate is a moral choice. Water is a gift for all, not meant to be bought and sold. Don't buy it. When food has been wrenched from the earth, depleting the soil and poisoning our relatives in the name of higher yields, don't buy it.

It reminds the whole community that leadership is rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom.

When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.

We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action.

We have enjoyed the feast generously laid out for us by Mother Earth, but now the plates are empty and the dining room is a mess. It's time we started doing the dishes in Mother Earth's kitchen. Doing dishes has gotten a bad rap, but everyone who migrates to the kitchen after a meal knows that that's where the laughter happens, the good conversations, the friendships. Doing dishes, like doing restoration, forms friendships.

the chain of reciprocity. Living by the precepts of the Honorable Harvest—to take only what is given, to use it well, to be grateful for the gift, and to reciprocate the gift

We are all complicit. We 've allowed the 'market' to define what we value so that the redefined common good seems to depend on profligate lifestyles that enrich the sellers while impoverishing the soul and the earth.

A language teacher I know explained that grammar is just the way we chart relationships in language. Maybe it also reflects our relationships with each other. Maybe a grammar of animacy could lead us to whole new ways of living in the world, other species a sovereign people, a world with a democracy of species, not a tyranny of one—with moral responsibility to water and wolves, and with a legal system that recognizes the standing of other species. It's all in the pronouns.

Being a good mother means teaching your children to care for the world

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.

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

Let us pledge reciprocity with the living world.

Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.

One of our responsibilities as human people is to find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. We can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence.

If we are going to grow good citizens, then let us teach reciprocity. If what we aspire to is justice for all, then let it be justice for all of creation.

Today we have gathered and when we look upon the faces around us we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now let us bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People. Now our minds are one.*

the Honorable Harvest: take only what you need and use everything you take.

there is something like a mycorrhizal network that unites us, an unseen connection of history and family and responsibility to both our ancestors and our children. As

Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion -- until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation.

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

It is the fundamental unfairness of parenthood that if we do our jobs well, the deepest bond we are given will walk out the door with a wave over the shoulder.

Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them.