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

A Vase

I am always holding a priceless vase in my hands.
If you asked me about the deeper truths
of the the path and I told you
the answers,

It would be like handing sacred relics to you.

But most have their hands tied
behind their
back;

that is, most are not free of events their eyes have seen
and their ears have heard
and their bodies have felt.

Most cannot focus their abilities
in the present, and
might drop what I said.

So I'll wait; I don't mind waiting until
your love for all
makes luminous
the now. 

Sacred

"Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred."

Hafiz

Spirtual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.  Id didn't want to become anything more than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.  I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world -a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Now Is The Time

Now is the time to know



That all that you do is sacred.



Now, why not consider



A lasting truce with yourself and God.



Now is the time to understand



That all your ideas of right and wrong



Were just a child’s training wheels



To be laid aside



When you can finally live



With veracity



And Love.



Hafiz is a divine envoy



Whom the Beloved



Has written a holy message upon.



My dear, please tell me,



Why do you still



Throw sticks at your heart



and Soul?



What is it in that sweet voice inside



That incites you to fear?



Now is the time for the world to know



That every thought and action is sacred.



This is the time



For you to deeply compute the impossibility



That there is anything but Grace.



Now is the season to know



That everything you do is sacred.

Spiritual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.   I didn't want to become anything other than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.   I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world - a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Commitment

This word "commitment" is considered sacred by some and healthy by others but perhaps it is little more than sentimental.  An alternative is to offer your love and companionship freely, refreshing your attachment every day.   You may love in a hundred different ways without feeling committed.  Many people go through deep and dark torment either because they can't commit themselves to another or because the one they love won't 'make a commitment'.  Maybe the lesson from all the pain is to give the idea of commitment all together.  It isn't rich, free and genuine enough to be worth all the attention."  Unknown

Owning your Shadow

"To own your own shadow is to reach a holy place - an inner center - not attainable any other way."  Robert A. Johnson

Sacred Feminine

"A rediscovered language of sacred sisterhood can change the world.  One way to begin this work is to re-establish and claim the lost feminine traditions of spiritual practice: to know ourselves, and mirror each other, without blaming our brothers.   In fact, the brotherhood should no longer be our standard of focus.   In the way that the women's movement began with rightful outrage, it is now moving into a more visionary period in which women re-imagine the feminine as distinct and powerful in itself."   Brenda Peterson, Sister Stories

Ritual

"Life can become habit, something done without thinking.  Living life in this way does not awaken us.  Yet any of our daily habits can awaken us.  All of life can become ritual.  When it does, our experience of life changes radically and the ordinary becomes consecrated.   Ritual doesn't make mystery happen.  It helps us see and experience something which is already real.   It does not create the sacred, it only describes what is there and has always been there, deeply hidden in the obvious."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Holiness

"Perhaps the wisdom lies not in the constant struggle to bring the sacred into daily life but the recognition that there may be no daily life, that life is committed and whole and despite appearances, we are always on sacred ground."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Sacred Marriage

This is the sacred marriage; the coming together of two who have each met themselves on the road."   Oriah

Sensuality

"If we come home to our own sensuality and if we let go of all the awful, brutalizing notions of sin and guilt with which we were inflicted and we recognize and recover the lyrical innocence of our own bodies then we will come into the sacred within us.   It will also in another way relieve us of the crass, harsh brutality the modern idea of Eros, which is very voyeuristic and driven and lacks the textured gentleness of loving sensuality."  John O' Donahue

Dance Your LIfe

"When you enter in fully and awaken all the dimensions of your heart and live out of the robustness of the divine difference that is in you and dance your life you're really on sacred ground."  John O' Donahue

Sacred

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions
in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas --uncertainty,
progress, change -- into crimes. --Salman Rushdie

Addictive Thinking and Ego

"A succinct definition of addictive thinking is believing that you must have something external to yourself in order to avoid suffering..   The ego wants you to think/feel that you are incomplete so that it can keep you striving for something instead of looking within and knowing the peace and harmony of the sacred self."  Wayne Dyer

Change

"It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than the idea of will.   Too often people try to change their lives by using will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape.   The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape.   This way of approaching the sacredness of ones own presence is externalistic and violent.   It brings you falsely outside yourself, and you can spend years lost in the wilderness of your own mechanical, spiritual programs.   You can perish in a famine of your own making."   John O' Donahue