Declaration of the Four Sacred Things

The Earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standard by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance; only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.

To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.

   --Starhawk

“But the beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.”

― Gwyn Thomas

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
Here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
You would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

- Rumi

Imperfection

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight... When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
-   Helen Keller

Wholeness

"The path to human wholeness is the inner marriage of masculine and feminine values.   When each value system is held in equal esteem, when we love and respect both, harmony within the individual, health in the culture, and peace on the planet become attainable."   Elizabeth Lesser

Parenting

THE WAY WINGS SHOULD

What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
...the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all men and women need to balance
the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty does not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart - how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

~ Rumi ~

Becoming Human

"It took me a long time to decide to become a human being, and look within my own flawed nature for salvation.   It took mistakes, dark nights of the soul, hard work and help from teachers and friends to fashion a spirituality that respected both my divinity and my humanity, my radiance and my shadow.   It took my own combination of religion and psychology, meditation and physical healing, mysticism and science to forge a path that felt genuine and effective."   Elizabeth Lesser

Psychic Energy

"Psychic processes seem to be the balance of energy flowing between spirit and instinct."  Carl Jung

Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is simply returning energy: returning and receiving energy until any warp in the circle is healed, balance restored.   There is no real effort because forgiveness is the natural flow of life.   There is no real loss because the flow is circular, it always returns.   There is sacrifice, a giving back that makes whole, makes holy...to remember our roundness is our first great healing, forgiving act."  Colin Berg

Burn Out

"We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve.   We burn out because we've allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Creativity

"All creativity awakens at the primal threshold where light and darkness test and bless each other.  You only discover balance in your life when you learn to trust the flow of this ancient rhythm."   John O' Donahue

Growth

"When you open your heart to discovery you will be called to step outside the comfort barriers within which you have fortified your life.   You will be called to risk old views and thoughts and to step off the circle of routine and image.   This will often bring turbulence.   The pendulum will fix at times on one extreme, and you will be out of balance.   But your soul loves the danger of growth.   In its own wise trust, your soul will always return you to a place of real and vital equilibrium."     John O' Donahue