RON HENGGELER

April 23, 2018
Thoughts and reflections on Earth Day

Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer. Wendell Berry

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Chief Seattle

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. John Muir

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. Albert Einstein

Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have? Jane Goodall

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises. Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. William Blake

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity. John Muir

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. Maya Angelou

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope. Wendell Berry

You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in D.C. in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history. Bill McKibben

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. John Muir

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realise that we can not eat money. Chief Seattle

For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected. Jane Goodall

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. Frank Lloyd Wright

The movers and shakers on our planet, aren't the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalising. Bill McKibben

Sooner or later,  wittingly or unwittingly,  we must pay  for every intrusion  on the natural environment. Barry Commoner

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. Albert Einstein

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. Marshall McLuhan

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. John Muir

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation. Barry Commoner

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. E. B. White

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else. Barry Commoner

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. John Muir

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. Wendell Berry

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clear and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and the man, all belong to the same family. Chief Seattle

Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Wendell Berry

I also think we need unconventional political action, and I increasingly think that there is a need for people of faith to be able to do the kind of things that people of faith did 40 years ago in the heat of the civil rights revolution. This is a moral issue of every bit as much importance requiring every bit as much sacrifice, courage, and energy as that crisis did. Bill McKibben

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. Chief Seattle

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children. John James Audubon

If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way. Barry Commoner

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. William Shakespeare

We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it? Wendell Berry

The technology we need most badly is the technology of community, the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Bill McKibben

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? Robert Redford

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love. John Muir

If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Chief Seattle

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Wendell Berry

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favor compared with the products of nature, the living cell of the plant, the final result of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life. Thomas A. Edison

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more. Lord Byron

Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life. John Muir

Earth does not belong to us; we belong to earth. Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints. Chief Seattle

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds! Henry David Thoreau

Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love. Jane Goodall

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours. Kurt Vonnegut

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented. Barry Commoner

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me. Henry David Thoreau

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore. James F. Cooper

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference. Jane Goodall

We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it. Wendell Berry

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. William Blake

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt. John Muir

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Jane Goodall

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. Mahatma Gandhi

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. Theodore Roosevelt

We are altering the most basic forces of the planet's surface - the content of the sunlight, the temperature and aridity - and that brings out the most powerful questions about who is in charge. If you wanted to give a name to this theological problem, I think you could say that we are engaged in decreation. Bill McKibben

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. John Muir

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau

We are all children of the Great Spirit, we all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die. Chief Seattle

 

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