#Living earth near me how to
#Living earth near me full

Anishinaabe leader Winona LaDuke says we cannot continue to use more than our share and expect to be sustainable. The statistic is well known: less than 20% of the world's people are now consuming more than 80% of the world's resources. 'For however great is the divide between the very rich and the rest of this country, the gap between the industrialized nations and the rest of the world is far, far greater.

#Living earth near me how to

Remembering the radically communitarian nature of life on Earth, which means remembering how to share. Relearning the rhythms of give-and-take, in our own bodies as well as our relationships with others. It will involve remembering how to listen - to the land as well as to one another. Look at the seasons, the weather, the animals, our own inner rhythms. Snyder went on to say, 'The planet, if we notice, takes care of itself.

#Living earth near me full

If we learned how to be better people, we would be doing good work.' The room full of activist sat in stunned silence, trying to absorb his words. Snyder thought for a moment and said, 'The planet doesn't need us to save it. At the end of his reading, she says, a member of the audience asked Snyder how people can be inspired to save the planet. 'My friend Annette recently heard the poet Gary Snyder speak. Hearing the speech of Earth may be easy when one is overcome with awe in, but it is much harder in the hubbub of the mundane. Remember the radiance that suffuses each heart, and polish your own mirror until you can reflect it clearly. 'Sufis often call this surface tarnish the 'rust of otherness.' Clean your mirror of all that is not love, Rumi was saying. What is needed, Rumi said, is to polish the heart like a mirror.ĭo you know why the mirror does not reflect?īecause the rust is not removed from its surface.* But to read him that way goes against what Rumi yearned for above all - for every heart to be struck open by divine longing, for love to pierce every breast. 'Rumi,' notes Stuckey, ' is often taken to mean that only mystics can hear the earth speak - and that mystics are a strange kind of bird. The speech of water, the speech of earth, and the speech of mudĪre heard by those who listen with the heart.* The passage begins with a quote from the 13th century Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: Lasts week's posts on the 'nature mysticism' to be found in the works of Elizabeth Goudge reminded me of the following passage from Priscilla Stuckey's fine book, Kissed by a Fox - for although Goudge wrote from a distinctly Anglican perspective, while Stuckey draws on a very wide range of world religions and philosophies, both share a love of the earth, a delight in the numinous, and an unsentimental belief in the good in human nature.