Re-posting from a Friend
Jun. 8th, 2011 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wwcitizenThis puts me in a peaceful mindset for the evening (thanks for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ironranger1 posting this!):
"Here is what I believe: that the natural world - the stuff of our lives, the world we plod through, hardly hearing, the world we burn and poke and stuff and conquer and irradiate - that THIS WORLD (not another world on another plane) is irreplaceable, astonishing, contingent, eternal and changing, beautiful and fearsome, beyond human understanding, worthy of reverence and awe, worthy of celebration and protection.
If the good English word for this combination of qualities is "sacred", then so be it. Even if we don't believe in God, we walk out the door on a sacred morning and lift our eyes to the sacred rain and are called to remember our sacred obligations of care and celebration.
And what's more, if the natural world is sacred, and "sacred" described the natural world; if there are not two worlds but one, and it is magnificent and mysterious enough to shake us to the core; if this is so, then we - you and I... - are called to live our lives gladly. We are called to live lives of gratitude, joy, and caring, profoundly moved by the bare fact that we live in the time of the singing of birds.
Gladness lifts the natural world out of the merely mundane and makes it wonderful, and reminds us that when we use the sacred stuff of our lives for human purposes, we must do so gratefully and responsibly, with full and caring hearts. That's what I want to say."
Taken from Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean Moore, 2010.
ironranger1 posting this!):"Here is what I believe: that the natural world - the stuff of our lives, the world we plod through, hardly hearing, the world we burn and poke and stuff and conquer and irradiate - that THIS WORLD (not another world on another plane) is irreplaceable, astonishing, contingent, eternal and changing, beautiful and fearsome, beyond human understanding, worthy of reverence and awe, worthy of celebration and protection.
If the good English word for this combination of qualities is "sacred", then so be it. Even if we don't believe in God, we walk out the door on a sacred morning and lift our eyes to the sacred rain and are called to remember our sacred obligations of care and celebration.
And what's more, if the natural world is sacred, and "sacred" described the natural world; if there are not two worlds but one, and it is magnificent and mysterious enough to shake us to the core; if this is so, then we - you and I... - are called to live our lives gladly. We are called to live lives of gratitude, joy, and caring, profoundly moved by the bare fact that we live in the time of the singing of birds.
Gladness lifts the natural world out of the merely mundane and makes it wonderful, and reminds us that when we use the sacred stuff of our lives for human purposes, we must do so gratefully and responsibly, with full and caring hearts. That's what I want to say."
Taken from Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean Moore, 2010.
