In relation to the earth we have been autistic for centuries. Only now have we begun to listen with some attention and with a willingness to respond to the earth's demands that we cease our industrial assault, that we abandon our inner rage against the conditions of our earthly existence, that we renew our human participation in the grand liturgy of the universe.

We must now understand that our own well-being can be achieved only through the well-being of the entire natural world around us.

The success or failure of any historical age is the extent to which those living at that time have fulfilled the special role that history has imposed upon them.

As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth.

What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation...Our task at this critical moment is to awaken the energies needed to create the new world and to evoke a universal communion of all parts of life.

We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can't see the stars at night.

The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live.