relationship with nature

We have tried to relate to the world around us through only the left side of our brain, and we are clearly failing. If we are to re-establish a viable relationship, we will need to rediscover the wisdom of these other cultures who knew that their relationship to the land and to the natural world required the whole of their being.

Most important of all, perhaps, during rituals we have the experience, unique in our culture, of neither opposing nature or trying to be in communion with nature; but of finding ourselves within nature, and that is the key to sustainable culture.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.” ― Hubert Reeves

There is a stone on top of a stone. There is a stone with a hole in the center, and a drop falling and piercing, slowly, and crossing it from side to side. Algae, fungus, yeast. Rust and lichen. On the rock, hairy and ceramic, the liquid mixes before becoming hard. The drop keeps falling and repeats the fall. The drop falls. One after another... See more

Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side. ― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People... See more

To have fur, to detect fast movements, to be afraid, to breathe underwater, to see in the dark, to carry precious stones, to be aerial, to make silver trails, to drink from the lake, to care for your offspring, to live in song, to play, to create micro crevices on the ground, to know death, to move with the moon, to cure with herbs, to be... See more

Language can be a gift, and language can be a tool of colonialism.

The western point of view, the dominant materialist worldview, holds that land is the source of ecosystem services, land as property, as capital, as natural resources. Sustainability defined as how we can continue to use and to take. Whereas the indigenous perspective honors land

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