Create The Art of Earth Activism

We enter as pilgrims, as wayfarers—knowing there is something we are seeking, something nameless, beautiful, waiting, wanting. Something that will change us so thoroughly that our cozy slippers will no longer fit, that our cat will, at first, hiss upon our return, our hair tinted green with lichen, sweet root tendrils among our toes. We enter

Inspiratus is the creative wind, the divine breath. And to be inspired? To be inspired is to be breathed upon.

Biomechanists and exercise scientists demonstrate that walking shoeless on varied outdoor terrain strengthens muscles, corrects bunions, and increases grace and ease in movement of all kinds—a physical intelligence accessed from the ground up.

Bodies touching. For beloved Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, hugging is a spiritual practice, one that extends to all beings—people, animals, and trees. “When we hug, our hearts connect and we know we are not separate beings.” Nhat Hanh contemplates those whom we hug: You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of

wild hearts breed love and protection of a wild earth.

Reading to trees.

I discovered this visionary definition in a Benedictine monastery library some years ago: Hope is “that virtue by which we take responsibility for the future,” and a quality that gives our actions “special urgency.”

Wonder and enchantment require us to disengage from culturally constructed norms of rationality for adult humans and allow ourselves to be affected by the astonishing world that enfolds us always.