READING: Inspiring quotations, poems and passages

A collection of quotations, poems and passages about the environment from Judy Moores, UU Congregation of Davis, California, a Green Sanctuary congregation:

“We know the science, we see the threat and we know the time for action is now.”
– Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-California

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all humanity. Job 12:7-10

I live so much in my habitual thoughts that I forget there is any outside to the globe, and am surprised when I behold it as now – yonder hills and river in the moonlight…. What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics, which my eyes behold? There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind, blowing from over the surface of a planet. … I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We walk on earth; we look after, like rainbow sitting on top.
But something underneath, under the ground.
We don’t know. You don’t know.
What do you want to do?
If you touch, you might get cyclone, heavy rain or flood.
Not just here, you might kill someone in another place.
Might be kill him in another country.
You cannot touch him.
– Big Bill Neidjie, Gagadju Man (Australia)

Those that would gain what is under heaven by tampering with it – I have seen that they do not succeed. For that which is under heaven is like a holy vessel, dangerous to tamper with. Those that tamper with it, harm it. Those that grab at it, lose it…. Tao Te Ching, Chapter 29

The great aerial ocean which surround us, has the wonderful property of allowing the heat-rays from the sun to pass through it without its being warmed by them; but when the earth is heated the air gets warmed by contact with it, and also to a considerable extent by the heat radiated from the warm earth because, although pure, dry air allows such dark heat-rays to pass freely, yet the aqueous vapour and carbonic acid (CO2), in the air intercept and absorb them.
– Alfred Russel Wallace, Man’s Place in the Universe (1903)

If … man encroached upon Gaia’s functional power to such an extent that he disable here her would wake up one day to find that he had the permanent, lifelong joy of planetary maintenance engineer…. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the “spaceship Earth,” and whatever tamed and domesticate biosphere remained would indeed be our “life-support system.” – James LoveLock, Gaia

It is inconceivable that humankind, with all its noble achievements, its aspirations and good will, will stay indifferent to the cry of the climate community. The struggle to redress the climate will surely be tackled on several grounds and in such a way as to ensure stability among the climates systems… But most important of all is the fact that we must, imperatively, change our attitudes and agree to live modestly and realistically – all for the sake of the future – which is not our but which we have borrowed from future generations. – Yadowsun Boodhoo, World Meteorological Organization Bulletin

It is among those nations that claim to be the moist civilized, those that profess to be guided by a knowledge of laws of nature, those that most glory in the advance of science, that we find the greatest apathy, the greatest recklessness, in continually rendering impure this all-important necessity of life… – Alfred Russel Wallace, Man’s Place in the Universe (1903)

An Ojibway Prayer
By Art Solomon, Ojibway Elder

Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness. We know that in all creation only the human family has strayed from the sacred way. We know that we are the ones who are divided and we are the one who must come back together to walk in the sacred way.
Grandfather, Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion and honor that we may heal the Earth and each other.

Prayer of Commitment – UN Environmental Sabbath Program

We join with the earth and with each other.
To bring new life to the land
To restore the water
To refresh the air
We join with the earth and with each other.
To celebrate the seas
To rejoice in the sunlight
To sing the song of the stars
We join with the earth and with each other.
To recreate the human community
TO promote justice and peace
To remember our children
We join with the earth and with each other.
We join together as many diverse expressions of one loving mystery:
For the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life.

A Jewish Prayer for God’s Creation
How wonderful, O Lord, are the works of your hands!
The heavens declare Your glory,
The arch of sky displays Your handiwork.
In Your love You have given us the power to behold the beauty of Your world robed in all its splendor. The sun and the stars, the valleys and hills, the rivers and lakes all disclose your presence. The roaring breakers of the sea tell of Your awesome might. The beasts of the field and the birds of the air bespeak your wondrous will. In Your goodness You have made us able to hear the music of the world. The voices of loved ones reveal to us that You are in our midst. A divine voice sings through all creation.

The Four Laws of Ecology:
Everything is connected to everything else.
Everything must go somewhere.
Nature knows best.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
– Barry Commoner

The earth provides for every man’s need, but not for every man’ greed. – Ghandi

As birds have flight, our special gift is reason. We could exercise our reason to do what no other animal can do: we could limit ourselves voluntarily; choose to remain God’s creations instead of making ourselves gods. Such restrain – no genetic engineering or planetary management – is the real challenge, the hard thing. – Bill Mckibbon.

How do we care for all the children of all the species for all time? – William McDonough

At this turning point in our relationship with Earth, we work for a revolution: from dominance to partnership; from fragmentation to connection; from insecurity to interdependence.
– David Suzuki (from Declaration of Interdependence)

I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something,
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
– Edward Everett Hale

A person will worship something – have no doubt about that.
We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

People say, what is the sense of our small effort,
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.
Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.
There’s too much work to do. – Dorothy Day

Sermons seldom hinder us from pursuing our self-interest, so we need to be a little more enlightened about what our self-interest is. It would not occur to me, for example to exhort you to refrain from cutting off your leg. That wouldn’t occur to me or to you, because your leg is part of you. Well, so are the trees in the Amazon Basin; they are our external lungs. We are just beginning to wake up to that. We are gradually discovering that we are our world. – Joanna Macy

When we tug at a single thing in Nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world. – John Muir

What the world desperately needs is information and heightened consciousness, the awareness of the fact that the global environmental crisis is the primary and most crucial issue the world currently faces. That crisis should constitute the primary agenda item for all our institutions – from the churches to the government. Indeed, it may be argued that the current pathology of all our institutions – including the churches – is evidence in their refusal, for a variety of reasons, to make the environmental issue their principal agenda item. … I would argue that the greatest service the churches could render the world at this time is providing education concerning facts of the environmental crisis, the ingredients in our thinking and action that have contributed to the crises, and the resources we already have available to us for altering our way of thinking and action in constructive ways. –Douglas Bowman

The sacred itself is impossible to describe because it transcends all of our categories and the very conditions of our perceptions and our language. Nevertheless, the immediate experience of its presence is so real that it makes everything else look wispy and evanescent in itself, though real in the sense that everything alive is an “ark” for the sacred. When I perceive myself as such a vessel, I become able to see the sacred in every living creature.
From The Breathing Cathedral, Martha Heyeman

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. … We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words “Too late.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is nothing more tragic in all this world than to know right and not to do it.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma, 1965

My first view – a panorama of brilliant deep blue ocean shot with shades of green and gray and white – was of atolls and clouds. Close to the window I could see that this Pacific scene in motion was rimmed by the great curved limb of the Earth. It had a thin halo of blue held close, and beyond, black space. I held my breath, but something was missing – I felt strangely unfulfilled. Here was a tremendous visual spectacle, but viewed in silence. There was no grand musical accompaniment: no triumphant, inspired sonata or symphony. Each one of us must write the music of this sphere for ourselves. – Charles Walker, astronaut

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more that a moment to full realize this is Earth… home. – Edgar Mitchell, astronaut

My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity. – Edgar Mitchell, astronaut

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light – our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance. – Ulf Merbold, Astronaut, Federal Republic of Germany

The first day we all pointed to our own countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.
– Prince Sultan bin Salman al-Saud, astronaut

U.N. Environmental Sabbath Program: Prayer for Forgiveness

We have forgotten who we are.
We have alienated ourselves from the unfolding of the cosmos
We have become estranged from the movements of the Earth
We have turned our backs on the cycles of life.
We have forgotten who we are.
We have sought only our own security
We have exploited simply for our own ends
We have distorted our knowledge
We have abused our power.
We have forgotten who we are.
Now the land is barren
And the waters are poisoned
And the air is polluted.
We have forgotten who we are.
Now the forests are dying
And the creatures are disappearing
And humans are despairing.
We have forgotten who we are.
We ask forgiveness
We ask for the gift of remembering
We ask for the strength to change.
We have forgotten who we are.

UN Environmental Sabbath Program – Prayer of Commitment

All: We join with the earth and with each other.
To bring new life to the land
To restore the water
To refresh the air
We join with the earth and with each other.
To celebrate the seas
To rejoice in the sunlight
To sing the song of the stars
We join with the earth and with each other.
To recreate the human community
To promote justice and peace
To remember our children
We join with the earth and with each other.
We join together as many diverse expressions of one loving mystery:
For the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life.
We join with the earth and with each other.