"There is always the next step on the journey...After the awareness of oneness comes the station of servanthood. How can this awareness be used in service to the whole? Be used in service to life?" —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Spiritual ecology..

For me, gardening is a form of prayer. Most people have an awareness of life and death, but few have an an awareness of life, death, and life again. Gardeners do though.

Bulbs come up every spring. Then in winter, it looks like there's nothing there, no hope for life ever again. Then, Hallelujah! Next spring they're back even fuller. Perennials - same thing.

Annuals have a slightly different lesson. Annuals really do die, but they broadcast seeds before they go. Where there was only one calendula the year before, there will be ten this year, and one day, they will fill every empty space in your garden. Annuals are a lesson in the difference one living thing, plant or person, can make, and how their presence resonates long after they're gone. There again, the effects are not immediate. There is always the winter. And when you consider the garden as a whole, well, winter is a time to reflect, a time to dream. It gives you time to ask the big questions...

Gardening is an affirmation of divine timing. Some years, in early spring, my enthusiasm takes an ugly turn, and I seemingly believe I can make spring happen earlier than it normally would, if I just work hard enough, if I till enough, compost enough, harden off seedlings earlier than I normally would. In the end, I wind up with twelve flats of dead seedlings. Then I direct seed a couple months later, and with much less effort, everything grows into the full glory it was destined to encompass. To everything there is a season. Amen.

—Kaya McLaren
Painting by Silvia Pastore

"Despair touches me every day. I am no less affected by the wound of Separation than the next guy. Recently I have begun to see that the despair is sometimes an escape from what really wants to be felt, which is grief. Despair is paralyzing, while grief gives birth to courage, truth, and purpose. One reason our society is able to persist in its delusion that the suffering it creates is acceptable is that we don't allow the experience of grief, especially in the public realm. Grief needs to be held in community. Herein lies one of the areas of convergence between the political and the spiritual (if you want to call it that). The environmental movement will never succeed through rational arguments and invocations of doom." — Charles Eisenstein

"We are a part of the Earth and it is through her great generosity that we are nurtured and nourished, eating her food, drinking her waters, clothed in her fabric. Even as we deplete her, she continues to give and give. Her generosity is a lesson for us all. Each morning on my walk I pass a gnarled old apple tree. I watch her boughs become heavy with fruit, slowly reddening as late summer turns to fall. I marvel at how she gives with such abundance without wanting anything in return. Now, in this "season of giving," if we can remember the constant stream of gifts we receive from her, and be appreciative in our hearts." —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Spiritual ecology

"I teach organic gardening and permaculture with at risk youth in public housing in San Francisco and every day we're in the garden I'll say something like, "Today we're going to pick some lettuce to eat," and a kid will say, "We ain't gonna eat some shit that grows in the dirt! " I don't know whether to laugh or cry!

There's such a deep disconnect to understanding where our food comes from, where life comes from. It's taken me weeks and weeks to encourage them to put their hands in the soil without gloves, to feel the earth. Human beings actually have a role to play in the natural world that we need to fulfill. We have awareness and the ability to use tools, to do amazing things that the earth really needs us to do, to clean up the mess we've made and restore the balance.

The earth will survive without us one way or another no matter how badly we mess up, ultimately the bacteria will sort it all out. But I don't particularly want the world to go back to it's bacterial roots and have to start all over. I believe that the earth is calling to us and that we are here to serve the planet as a whole by our ability to appreciate, to give gratitude and praise, to become ecstatic with wonder for the earth."

— Starhawk