"They shed their shoes, followed bear tracks, declared the moon a sister, spoke with sparrows, ground forest nettles into healing salves, bowed before trees, baked bread in clay ovens, and called all of it holy. From them I learned that humans can be conversant with the earth and the sacred in strange, imaginative, wild ways."
"But I believed in the power of sacrament, in very much the way I do today - not as a Catholic but as a human open to the truth that something can be made sacred by the attention we grant it."
"There is clear-sighted hope in a time of despair. Rooted ways to embolden us to remember that with our complex minds we can feel - and live - more than one thing simultaneously."
"All ways of being, from hominid to dandelion to dragonfly to cedar tree, posses a kind of aliveness."
"Where kin are relations of kind, kith is relationship based on knowledge of place - the close landscape, 'one's square mile,' as Griffiths writes, where each tree and neighbor and robin and fox and stone is known, not by map or guide but by heart. Kith is intimacy with a place, its landmarks, its fragrance, the habits of its wildlings. Kithships enlivens kinship."
"It is said that 'if we walk in the woods, we must feed the mosquitoes.' A rooted life is one of reciprocity - the tending of a mutuality enhancing presence within the natural world."
"Moments of enchantment and wonder are typically portrayed as experiences that fall upon us, when in truth they most often require a cultivation of openness to their visitations."
"Hope is 'that virtue but which we take responsibility for the future,' and a quality that gives our actions 'special urgency.'"
"Hope is not a remedy or even a substitute for the despair and anxiety we face in the modern world, but a companion to these things. Mature hope involves a willingness to allow that brokenness and beauty sometimes intertwine."
"Step outside, or lean your head through an open window. Affirm the earth beneath you, let the sky touch your body. Now breathe, and listen. Just listen. It's okay, for now, if only a wisp of a voice reaches your ears. Answer out loud anyway: I am here."
"'When you take off your shoes, you will notice this is holy ground!... because what prevents you from seeing that it's holy ground is the dead skin you have to shed.'... we are always standing upon holy ground."
"Kabat-Zinn adopted Krishnamurti's phrase choiceless awareness to describe this more meandering meditation. The practitioner is encouraged to follow her distractions during meditation and so, ironically, not become distracted by them."
"This biological functioning of our bodies and minds has not caught up with a culture that keeps the earthen vessels of our human forms away from the clay in which we are rooted. This makes so much sense. It is no wonder we are such a mess."
"It is more than mere semantics to recognize that while time in the forest is therapeutic, the forest is not a therapist. Not a pill, not a spa. Not a cog in the capitalist wellness industry."
"Guided forest baths can inspire wonder and love. Yet we must remain alert to the ways we engage this science. The line between commodity and reciprocity may seem thin, but it is profoundly meaningful."
"They unexpectedly discovered that there are a variety of areas that light up only when there are no external distractions. These include highly potent 'self-referential' processes, including the recall of personal memories, emotional states and feelings, and the evaluation of sensory input."
"For most of us, the call for home is a sweet one, and no less wild than the longing for solitude. Time alone enkindles life in the earth community."
"Young invites us to look into our childhood and think about whether there was a place that we went to regularly, just to sit, maybe under a tree."
"Our words (like our wheelbarrows and our magic wands) must point in the way we want our precious life-effort to take us."
"The stuff of the cosmos is woven into our bone branches and wanders in our blood rivers."
"The word obligation sounds burdensome but is rooted beautifully in the Early French ligament - that which binds us together, like a braid of blessing herbs, like a bundle of logs for a warming communal cookfire."
"I speak from entitlement that I have done nothing to deserve, knowing that any step I take toward economic and material simplicity is cradled by a great safety net within my social class and my family, to which I can return at whim."
"Therese created - and lived - a philosophy of spiritual freedom, very much like the Zen tradition (of which she knew nothing), bringing wholeheartedness to every action for the benefit of all, like a bodhisattva, while remianing unattached to the outcome of her 'little works.'"
"An activist dimension arises within this charism of everyday mysticism; to bring generosity and simplicity to every encounter thwarts an economic-political paradigm based on rampant consumption. The heart and life of individual agency has everything to do with broader systemic and ecological change."
"Our individual charism comprises these twin dimensions: the earthen need that summons us, and the gift through which we bring our response to this summons into the world."
