I am reprinting here a passage from the book THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE by Ursala Goodenough.  My husband Andy Schmookler published this passage on his site www.NoneSoBlind.org awhile back.  This passage feels especially appropriate for TheEarthConnection because it embodies what I believe is the appropriate response to nature–awe, not superiority. 

Remember, remember the circle of the sky
the stars and the brown eagle
the supernatural winds
breathing night and day
from the four directions.

Remember, remember the sacredness of things
running streams and dwellings
the young within the nest
a hearth for sacred fire
the holy flame of fire.
–a Pawnee prayer

     The outpouring of biological diversity calls us to marvel at its fecundity. . .[A]ll of us humans are but a tiny part of an enormous context.  We are one of perhaps 30 million species on the planet today, and countless millions that have gone before.  We occupy, temporarily, the very last moment of the animal radiation;  our species appeared only some 130,000 years ago and the cave painters 35,000 years ago.  And while we animals were radiating, so too were all the other lineages of the biosphere, generating a veritable sunburst of the biosphere.

    We are called to acknowledge our dependency on the web of life both for our subsistence and for countless aesthetic experiences:  spring birdsong, swelling tree buds, the dizzy smell of honeysuckle.  We are called to acknowledge that which we are not:  we cannot survive in a deep-sea vent, or fix nitrogen, or create a forest canopy, or soar 300 feet in the air and then catch a mouse in a spectacular nosedive.

     Most religious traditions ask us to bow and tremble in deference to the Divine, to walk humbly with thy God.  Religious naturalism asks that we locate such feelings of deference somewhere within the Earthly whole.

     Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, conveyed this concept to an assembly at the United Nations:

I do not see a delegation for the four-footed.  I see no seat for the eagles.  We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation.  We must continue to understand where we are.  And we stand between the mountain and the ant, somewhere and there only, as part and parcel of the Creation.  It is our responsibility, since we have been given the minds to take care of these things.”

    

    

   

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Celebrating our beautiful Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.