“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say, innocence, with Nature herself . . . I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did.” –Henry David Thoreau

“…please touch the Earth deeply with your feet. Please practice walking meditation. The Earth, our mother, is filled with deep love for us. When we suffer, she will protect us, nourishing us with her beautiful trees, grasses, and flowers.”–Thich Nhat Hanh

We begin this day, Good Friday and Earth Day, with this quote. I hope to post more throughout the day, a busy one, but I’ll see what I can find and post as I have time. Anyone else have pertinent and favorite quotes related to the moment?

“We live in a vastly complex society which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect that we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty. Each person would like to feel that he is an entity, a separate individual capable of independent existence, and this is hard to believe when everything that we eat, wear, live in, drive, use or handle has required the cooperative effort of literally millions of people to produce, process, transport, and, eventually, distribute to our hands. Man simply must feel that he is more than a mere mechanical part in this intricately interdependent industrial system. We enjoy the comfort and plenty which this highly organized production and distribution has brought us, but don’t we sometimes feel that we are living a secondhand sort of existence, and that we are in danger of losing all contact with the origins of life and the nature which nourishes it?” –From Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, copyright 1962

“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“And the Earth tries to absorb into its depths all humanity’s anger, and only when it no longer has the strength to hold it back, that anger explodes in the form of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes… The Earth needs our help. Tenderness and a loving attitude give it strength. The Earth may be large, but it is most sensitive. And it feels the tender caress of even a single human hand. Oh, how it feels and anticipates this touch!” –From The Ringing Cedars of Russia by Vladimir Megré