Alignment From the Inside Out

Mountain Morning Beauty - Smoke, Clouds, Rays of the Sun

When doctrine ceases to be regarded as something external to one’s inner experience, it becomes at once the living principle of conduct. Kenryo Kanamatsu (quoted in Terry Tempest Williams’ The Glorians)

What might it mean to conduct ourselves in accordance with life, rather than in opposition to life in all its manifestations? It is this kind of natural conduct that I wish to embody in a soul-life supported by faith in the sensorial authority of Earth: what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. I trust the process of life. Some may call this God, some may bow to Allah, others may speak the name of Amida Buddha or Elohim. We can name this force field for ourselves as we celebrate each moment when our interior and exterior landscapes fully meet and merge in a story of humble accomplishment. Terry Tempest Williams, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

I’ve been deeply moved this week by the spectrum of Life that I’ve encountered. Like Williams, I aspire to embody a life of choices aligned with Life as a co-creator.

This week I’ve experienced Life through the senses as I’ve walked each morning. Smoke gathering in the mountains as the Sun rose over the peaks. A bunny literally hopping on the path. A small copper colored dragonfly. Lively birdsong one morning; eerie quiet the next. The smell of smoke from fires scorching parts of the west. The taste of fresh local organic produce. Grandmother Moon in Her fullness hanging in the western sky before dawn. Stuffy nostrils in the extremely low humidity, smoke, and high grass and tree pollen. A fallen nest on the front porch, eggs shattered.

Our senses bear witness to all of Life. As I become more alert and aware as a witness, the question deepens in me, I feel nudges, mostly gentle, to more fully align my daily life and choices with Life. I behold the sacred question: How?

In the midst of a drought that is now categorized as ‘extreme’ and nearby areas categorized as ‘exceptional’, I capture gray water in all my sinks and carry it to a nearby pinon. The same with water in the tub after each very quick shower. If I find myself grumbling about the time and energy expended or thinking ‘well maybe today I won’t …’ I think of those whose access to clean water requires hauling it miles on foot each day. I use minimal water for the basil and a few decorative plants, and I’ve turned over an area seeded with native wildflowers this spring to the bunny who munches there at dawn and dusk.

The car will remain dusty and dirty and a maintenance project that would require a lot of water use is on hold. I’m moving forward with planning to slow down and even retain some water flow when the rains finally come as surely they will.

I share this not to brag, but to sound the call that I believe we can no longer do life in the unconscious ways that most of us have done in the past. My actions don’t seem like much, so I lean into trust that this is enough for now, and that new possibilities will emerge in their time. Something greater than this, than I, is unfolding.

I witness what others are doing to align with Life here in my community and actively look for inspirations in what others are doing in the world. A couple weeks back I noticed a long snakeskin that had been shed near the Stupa down the road, and I saw the hole where the snake enters and exits its den under the Stupa. A few days later, workers installing edging around the perimeter had marked the snake’s home and drilled a hole in the concrete edging so the snake can come and go from its home. For me, that’s the type of awareness and intention that exemplifies aligning with Life.

What is deep in your inner world that may be calling for greater alignment in your daily walk through life?

Thoughtful Alignment in Support of Life

What If We Asked Life?

Smokey Morning Sunrise

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. Jessie Potter

The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. Albert Einstein

Life on our planet is in trouble. … Our planet is sending us signals of distress that are now so continual they seem almost normal. …stern warning signals that we live in a world that can end, at least for conscious life. This is not to say that it will end, but it can end. … Just as lovers seek union, we are apt, when we fall in love with our world, to fall into oneness with it as well. Joanna Macy (World as Lover, World as Self)

This blog morning I wake to quiet, an eerie haze, smoke from fires hundreds of miles away has settled in these mountains and the valley below. I smile, recalling musing several days ago in my journal about learning to read smoke signals, recognizing the possibility that obstacles aren’t placed in our paths just to be overcome, but rather to inform. What might the obstacles be saying? What might they be asking of us?

What does Life need? What does Life want? I’ve been beholding this query perhaps for longer than I’m even aware. It’s embedded in asking my physical body what it needs from time to time when I experience some unfamiliar symptom or the recurrence of something familiar and uncomfortable. The query provides the context and intention in which I walk this land I occupy and steward. And this week, after engaging in several community meetings, I began to wonder what Life is telling us and what Life is asking of us as we dive into the complex problems in our community and our world.

What does Life need? Want?

Thinking of the idea often shared as a quote from Albert Einstein, we cannot solve problems with the same thinking (or consciousness) that created them, I wondered how we might think about community concerns and problems as ‘smoke signals’ or messages from Life that, in our culture and systems of separation, we have forgotten how to ‘read’. In looking for Einstein’s actual quote, I discovered that there’s no record that he spoke or wrote those words, but he did write that, the formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution.

I began to wonder ‘what if we framed our ‘problems’ in the context of Life?’ What if, in the multitude of problems our world is faced with, we begin to ask, ‘what does Life tell us about this concern?’ What if we shift our perspective of obstacles as something to overcome and ask ‘what is Life saying about this?’ What does Life need? Want? In reframing, reformulating problems and creating solutions, what might be possible if we ask, ‘How does this serve Life?’?

What if we invite Life to prioritize and guide us in formulating the nature of the problems we face in community? Might we begin to see these concerns differently and in doing so put Life ahead of our individual ego wants and needs?

What if we remembered that we live in an interconnected web of Life, connect to one another and to All Life? What if we co-created solutions WITH Life?

Deep inside – or perhaps not so deep – I feel Mother Earth and Life calling us, individually and collectively to pause and pivot, to slow down, to listen, to love. What call are you hearing and answering in this chaotic time?

Mountain Evening - Before the Smoke

A New Generation of 'R's - Renew, Restore, Regenerate

Blooming Cacti in Arid Land

We lay down the ancient reflex to dominate what we do not understand.

We lift instead the older instinct – to witness. The Agreement Beneath All Names

 Sitting in the morning quiet this blog day, reflecting on the week behind and the days ahead, I found myself present to having witnessed three generations of ‘the three Rs’. As a kiddo way back in the 1950s my education was focused on learning the three Rs: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic. In the 70s as environmental awareness rose, a new generation of Rs emerged: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. That generation is still engaged today and its legacy lives on as a new generation of Rs emerges and inspires: Renew, Restore, Regenerate – Renewal, Restoration, Regeneration.

We of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ generation have the opportunity AND the responsibility to nurture this new generation of Rs that invites us to transcend and include the best of our generation’s environmental consciousness. It is time to renew, restore, and regenerate our deeper knowing that domination is a product of the false notion of separation. One way we do so is to witness. To observe ourselves, our language, our choices with a commitment to the new three Rs.

This can feel a daunting, even prickly like cacti, task as we are steeped in systems that even today dismiss ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ and instead favor the ways of domination, control, and power over. So, we bring it home, to the spot we occupy, to our local community and trust that our efforts will ripple beyond. As we shift our consciousness, we shift our choices, our ways of being. And this is an invitation to others.

As I speak The Agreement Beneath All Names as part of my daily practice, it deepens in me and I see it in a much larger context than being only about human relationships. The Agreement is about All Life. For, after all, don’t we ‘name’ every Thing?

Giving ‘things’ a name is how we humans communicate. What and how we name things influences how we (be)hold them. The Earth, a sacred, living, breathing Being became ‘earth’, ‘land’, ‘property’. Capital ‘N’ Nature became nature, reducing the essence of life to an object. Our naming reinforced separation. The ancient ones with their deep connection to Mother Earth and to all Beings would not understand our folly.

I shine this little beam of light down this rabbit hole as I reflect on the weekend workshop I engaged in that focused on ‘watershed restoration in our micro-bioregion’, looking at how, individually and collectively we can ‘restore’ the hydrological cycle here by engaging in choices and actions that ‘regenerate’ property, land, Mother Earth, and, most of all – Life.

As we dove into films, discussion, and field observation of both creeks and areas dry and eroding, I thought how in our naming and the choices we make within those names that we tend to pit opposites against one another – to dominate or eliminate that which we label as ‘bad’. We do so without recognizing its ‘good’. Water in the form of flood destroys. While a gentle rain nourishes the Earth. Oceans and rivers provide habitat for many forms of life. All a part of the greater cycles of Life.

In the separation that follows such labeling, we tend to pit Earth’s elements against one another, to dominate what our names and labels separate us from understanding and from what we’ve forgotten about the cycles of Life.

For example, our primary approach to fire danger is preventative mitigation and fighting actual fire with water and chemicals. But what if we worked with fire as Indigenous wisdom did. What if we became tenders of the Earth using fire in appropriate areas and ways to create conditions less favorable to combustion and massive fire? What if we worked with Nature, with Mother Earth, with Life to renew, restore, and regenerate life-giving, life-enhancing, life-thriving conditions?

This is the new generation of Rs bringing forward new ways grounded in ancient wisdom. Let us renew, restore, regenerate the deep knowing in each of us that recognizes we are One with All Life so that we can witness and co-create from that sacred place.

We will each embark on the journey with different paths and approaches. Here briefly is the path I’m engaging:

• Daily practice of gratitude and remembering that all life is connected in the web of Life – I speak The Agreement Beneath All Names and I express thanks at every meal for ‘the plants, the animals, the soil, the water, the sun, the earth, the air, and all the hands that brought this food to my table’.

• I’m immersed in learning about regeneration and bioregional approaches - exploring who is involved, what their perspective is and what they are up to, and observing where I feel called to engage. Exploring globally to discover what can be applied locally.

• I endeavor to bring awareness to each choice as I make it – especially spending choices – asking ‘how is this choice a vote aligned with my values for renewal, restoration, regeneration? For Life?

Daunting, yes. And the antidote to what is breaking down and to the poison of separation is to build the new, not from the consciousness that created it, but from the ancient wisdom that we are all One. Find your local tribe of the Renew, Restore, Regenerate generation and join the heartbeat of co-creation with Life! Raven invites us to this transformation!

Raven Cawing for Transformation

Nurturing The World Beyond Separation

Mountain Morning Beauty

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Glorians are reaching out to us inviting us to dream a new world into being. Terry Tempest Williams

She saw beyond what is and generously nurtured what is possible in a world where all know that we are not separate from one another, from Nature, from Life.

What to do with this time of chaos and dissolution, of conflict both personal and global, and of difficulty discerning what is true is a question that lives in all of us on some level.

For far too many it is a question of survival. Of finding safety in a war zone. Of having enough food. Of surviving through unwarranted detention. Of access to medical resources. Of having access to shelter. For the very few at the other extreme, it seems to be of fueling the chaos to accumulate more – money, power, control.

What about we who find ourselves somewhere between these extremes? Extremes resulting from generations of systems and choices built on the false notion that we are separate from one another and from Life. Colonization. Property ownership. Artificial borders and boundaries with no relationship to the natural world. And so much more.

How do we awaken the latent knowing that we are not separate from Life? How do we live in greater alignment with this truth? These questions have become my exploration and personal quest in recent years, and this week I began to sense it as the legacy I wish to leave behind when this incarnation is complete.

I generally don’t think of my legacy as I make choices about what to attend to each day. Mostly I simply aim to be more aligned with Life. But the convergence of several things including reading Terry Tempest Williams The Glorians and a conversation with a leader in my local community in which he shared how he wishes to be remembered inspired me to reflect on just that.

‘Might doing so deepen my commitment?’ I wonder as I emerge from an extended period of hibernation and ‘hermiting’. In this emerging, I observe what attracts my attention and interest: regenerative systems and projects; watershed restoration; local food sovereignty and security. Even in the enjoyment of tenderly caring for plant beings as I move them outdoors (they hibernate inside with me in winter!) and being awestruck at the beauty that greets me each morning as I walk a nearby trail, I notice a familiar thread: the possibilities for a world where separation is no longer a driver in life’s systems – individually and collectively.

Observing this thread, I’m reminded of a verse in The Agreement Beneath All Names:

We do not begin with treaties.

We do not begin with borders.

We begin beneath language,

where breath remembers breath.

Here the Earth is not divided –

She is listening.

 I’ve been speaking The Agreement each evening outdoors since I received it in early January. Now many mornings as I sit in the dawn light looking at Crestone Peak, I speak it to The Mountain. In the cold of winter, it kindled that place in me that knows we are not separate. Now the daily practice nurtures and feeds that same place. Deepening my knowing that I am not and we are not separate. From one another. From Nature. From All Life.

In deepening my remembering of this Truth, I ask ‘what is mine to do that will nurture its manifestation on Mother Earth for All Beings, All Life?’ Perhaps that is legacy in the making.

Raven Waking and Watching

Embracing All As Sacred

The Sacredness of Place - Yucca, Stupa, San Luis Valley

The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence. And of course the greatest challenge (and gift) is to see the sacred in each other. Alma Luz Villanueva

Empty is a beginning. Sue Bender (Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home)

Recently I’ve found myself present to the idea, perhaps belief, that everything is sacred. It landed deeply in me as I found myself mindlessly pushing to complete sorting through lots of things with the intention of passing lots of them along. Letting go, releasing books, family and personal keepsakes, and personal items no longer in use to find new homes. How might this push, this chore become more enjoyable for me? How might I become mindful in engaging in the choices of what to release?

Enter the Sacred. I recognized that I wanted not just to clear things out, but to create both physical and energetic space in my home and my life for the sacredness of place, this place to enter more fully. At the same time I recognized that the things I was choosing to release were sacred as well.

I woke one morning thinking about the energy of our ‘stuff’, family and personal things that I was sorting through deciding what I was ready to release. As I became aware that each and every ‘thing’ at some time was a treasure either to me or to a departed family member I hold dear, a sense of the sacred, their sacredness, joined me. The ‘chore’ became ritual; the drudgery and push, joy and flow.

When we embrace everything as sacred and recognize its energetic holding not as a ‘thing’ but as a treasure dear to another beloved, we engage in a ritual of flow. I began to honor and respect each ‘thing’ as something created at another point in time by someone and later treasured either myself or a beloved friend or family member. I became more mindful, respectful, and tender in this letting go, trusting the process as sacred, divine flow. Remembering that the sacred is in everything and that emptying creates the space for beginning.

I know not what beginnings are before me as I complete this phase of release, but I do know that I’m more deeply present to the sacredness of place. Home, the woods out back, and the paths and trails nearby. Sacredness is not only in the sacred structures like the nearby Padmasambhava Stupa and Ziggurat but in the ground I walk and the grasses growing along way. Sacredness in the birdsong, the morning raven on a post, and the community of hummingbirds that gather at the feeder. With eyes to see and heart to feel, sacredness is indeed all around.

Wild grasses in the Morning Light

The Call to Beauty

Shrouded Mountain Morning

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Rumi

In a sense, all the contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty. … When we address difficulty in terms of the call to beauty, new invitations come alive. Perhaps for the first time, we gain a clear view of how much ugliness we endure and allow. … Much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. Internally, the mind becomes coarse and dull if it remains unvisited by images and thoughts which hold the radiance of beauty. … the Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence and unity. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

This blog morning finds my eyes kissing the beauty of wet ground, mountain fog, and lichen robust with moisture. Thankful for the blessed rain that fell much of the day yesterday, as my ears embraced the beauty of abundant drops falling on the roof.

In the early dawn I resist flipping the light switch and settle into this writing spot gazing toward the shrouded peak. My familiar friend is behind a foggy veil. Beauty to behold. Stress-dissolving, heart opening, pure, radiant Beauty.

Beauty calls too in the birdsong as the woods slowly waken, basking not in morning rays of sunlight, but in the infrequent moisture of our arid climate.

I wonder what other beauty is stirring unseen beneath the ground, and I’m drawn to pause the pen and venture out to walk in the woods. To feel what I see. As I prepare to head out, The Ink calls me back. I jot a few notes but strongly feel the call to be in the woods. Surely a feast is waiting.

Indeed, the woods are rich with beauty for all the senses. Plump lichen invite a gentle touch. The aroma of woodland moisture abounds, and I experience subtle aromatic differences between the pines I approach and sniff. Moisture softened earth beneath my feet as I feel my bare skin soak in the dampness. A doe rests peacefully under a pine as three friends wander nearby. I stop. We observe each other for a time. Perhaps we notice the beauty in one another. I continue to saunter about savoring the bountiful feast of Beauty.

Returning to the pen, The Ink, my notes remind me about the absence of beauty and our mistaking glamour for Beauty. I think of the absence of beauty in our political discourse, wondering how we might call for our leaders to bring beauty into that discourse. If, as O’Donohue suggests, the Beautiful offers an invitation to order, coherence, and unity, then perhaps it’s time for us to expect and insist that they do so. I notice where glamour is confused with beauty and the harm that follows in its many extractive forms. Abuse of Life, both human and not.

How might we call Beauty forth into the hearts and minds of those who do not yet know its power?

And how do we nurture those who do know? Those who listen to the beauty in Nature and in Life as they engage in their unique ways of kissing the ground. For example, farmers, ranchers, gardeners who are building soil, regenerating earth. Perhaps if we open more deeply to Nature’s innate wisdom and beauty, we will recognize the power of the dollars we spend on food and ‘vote’ for the regenerators rather than the corporate conglomerates that confuse the glamour of more money with the beauty of healthy soil and the food it produces.

We experience Beauty beyond the five senses as well. Beauty’s vibrance flows in the synchronicities of events flowing with ease. A thought about someone and the ding from their incoming text a short time later. A ‘chance’ encounter with someone creating a new, beautiful regenerative initiative. A community of friends coming together with ease to meet the needs of another.

Beauty abounds when we call it forth, observe, and serve from that place. Beauty answers our call.

Lichen Come to Life Out the Kitchen Window

Being With Change

Retreat Mountain View - A Change of Scenery

Everything is working according to a plan. The earth and its elements were not just thrown together. There is an established order of existence in creation, and as we carry on with the continual process, we can see the value from the natural outgrowth of what has gone on previously before us. … The Universe, in its progression, brings to the planet what already exists. What we are experiencing is the natural pathway for what already exists in the Universe. Gregge Tiffen (The Language of a Mystic: Change)

As I moved about building a morning fire (winter weather is paying these mountains a visit) and opened to what wants to be shared this blog day after a retreat last week, I thought about change. The abundant (some would say ‘overwhelming’) change we are both witness to and participants in around the globe in every aspect of life. The changes on our planet, some visible and felt, others subtle yet profound in their impact. Changes in each of us, physically, mentally, spiritually, that aggregate into our consciousness and our experiences of life.

That led me to remember that we’re in the 5th month of the year, and that the number 5 represents change. Wanting to revisit his words and wisdom, I pulled a couple of Tiffen’s booklets off the shelf.

As I thought about myself and the changes I’m experiencing – yes, physically, mentally, and spiritually – questions emerged: What are these changes asking of me? What am I to observe and how am I to BE with change? The questions didn’t ask for answers, rather they invited me more deeply into awareness and exploration.

In our noisy, busy, speed addicted world, I wonder if we are willing to invest time and energy being with such questions. Questions both personal to us and those of our world, our consciousness. And I wonder if we have lost some of our capacity to do so as we’ve handed many aspects of our lives to ‘experts’ and systems to manage. What have we lost and what may we be losing as we turn to artificial intelligence for answers and guidance? What have gained and what might the potential upside be?

I wonder if we are turning away from Life, from our connections with one another, from Nature, and from Mother Earth who birthed us.

Or perhaps, as Tiffen’s words remind me we might ask whether all this change that is unfolding is indeed the logical, sequential expression of a benevolent Universe that is simply showing us our way home? Guiding us to the next iteration of humanity on the planet?

In our changing world, what questions are you beholding?

Retreat Mountain Sunset

Gratitude as Presence - Presence as Gratitude

Foggy Mountain Morning

As above, so below; as within, so without; as the universe, so the soul. Hermes Trismegistus (quoted in Terry Tempest Williams newly published The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary)

The focus and heading came and quickly words followed. A flow I didn’t expect, and I’m left wondering whether and how the narrative weaves …

It is hard to keep up with the flurry and pace of events that are changing our world, and much of what the media reports is all too often hardly worthy of our attention. At the same time much of what is changing our world and changing in our world goes unreported, unnoticed. We are called to hone our skills of discernment and to find sources that we trust. Not an easy call.

Yet something in that call calls me to the sacred, to being present to what is and to acknowledge all that is with gratitude. To be fully present and grateful requires a level of meticulous care for where I place my attention, my presence. But gratitude? Surely, I am not grateful for the horrors being perpetrated against Life, yet those very acts invite me to open to the deeper meaning of what they reveal and what needs to shift in me so that I’m not snared by the focus that would have me look the other way. To disregard (capital ‘L’) Life so that I can get on with my (small ‘l’) life.

I pause, take a few breaths as I wonder at and about the words. Ah, the sacred. Follow the call to the sacred for that is where the weave of presence and gratitude play. What is sacred in the minute details of life? Life? In both the seen and unseen?

While Every Thing is sacred, I think of place. The sacred land on which I dwell and of all the creatures whose visits bless me. I think of the visible life here, the soil, the grasses, wildflowers beginning to bloom, the pines, the birdsong, and deer that saunter through. Of The Mountain. Of the invisible microscopic beings and networks of underground communication and communion. And I think of the much-needed sacred moisture, forecast and yet to fall.

I think of each breath, mine and these beings, and how they are intertwined. Each with its role in the greater function of Life. I wonder about all that I don’t grok about that intertwining and of my role in the unfolding.

Gratitude as Presence, Presence as Gratitude – a starting point of deeper listening to step more fully into the reciprocity that keeps Life and life flowing. A place to begin again to more deeply align with that sacred flow. Of weaving. Of Life.

First Bloom - A Touch of Color on the Dry Landscape

Inaction IN Action

Inaction in action.

I woke to these words clear as a bell this blog morning. Not hearing nor seeing them, they emerged from the inside out as I slowly opened myself to the day. I sensed them. The direction, focus, indeed the title for today’s Pivot felt as deep knowing that the three simple words were guidance for Friday’s May Day Strong events and how I will engage.

Questions emerged: Inaction in action. Who will you Be? Who will you stand with by your choices on Friday? And beyond?

I’m not surprised to awaken to Pivot guidance on Wednesday mornings. That’s how these weekly posts have emerged over the 659-week journey of The SuccessZone and its pivot to becoming The Pivot in 2020. From some mysterious ‘place’ both inside and beyond me. A place not a location. A place we are all a part of and rely upon, the Source of All Life. At the same time responding in some way to the world I’ve experienced.

But I digress, an easy tack to take when I experience resistance to something. Just turn the other way. A tack that may work for an instant or a bit beyond, but somehow whatever I resist finds me … usually at some inconvenient moment. This morning as I wonder why the resistance? I’m guided back to the questions: What is to be shared? How am I guided to engage on Friday?

I journeyed down a bit of a rabbit hole thinking that perhaps I need to share lots of information about May Day itself and plans for the day. But you who want that know just where to find what you need.

Thinking, that was the mistake. Just listen. Bring attention to the day. Everyone will make their choice.

What about mine? I feel guided to be in solidarity by engaging in NO commerce and turning away from my electronic connections with the world which in themselves are commercial operations. No Zoom. No social media or following the ‘news’. Disrupting my own patterns so I can listen to another voice. Mother Nature and Her wisdom. Returning in a sense to the pagan roots of May Day. Celebrating Spring’s fertility and the return of light on this day that is the midway point between the Equinox and Solstice.

And as I listen, I will honor those who courageously walk away from jobs, from schools, from the cultural pull to consume as well as those who organize, who march, who provide all manner of support in creating some disruption that will make a difference. I will honor those in Minnesota who inspired this day’s events with the Minnesota Day of Truth and Freedom on that cold day in January and in every city, town, and hamlet who join in their own special ways.

And I will honor those who work tirelessly day in and day out to bring our world to a more peaceful place. For indeed, with a loving heart and clear intention, everything we do is a part of co-creating just that. Even inaction is a choice to act.

An old snag along my path reminds me to not be ‘snagged’ by the culture …

A Simple Pivot this Earth Day

From Global Alliance for Rights of Nature Earth Day 2026

We capitalize Nature because relationship begins with recognition. Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN)

A simple pivot when you pick up the pen or your fingers touch the keyboard – from nature to Nature. Nature – a collection of living, breathing beings each and everyone more than deserving of our recognition. Not a collection of ‘its’ to be exploited. A whole that IS LIFE.

And it is time, this Earth Day, to remember and recognize just that. GARN’s post which greeted me this morning says it well:

This Earth day change how you write and you begin to change how you relate.

We always capitalize Nature. Why?

Long before modern law, many cultures understood the living world as a community of beings, not a collection of resources. Mountains had presence, rivers had voices, forests were relatives, and language reflected that relationship.

The industrial age broke that bond: Nature became lowercase, abstract, extractable, governable without consent.

Capitalizing Nature is a return, not backward, but deeper. It restores agency and aligns language with a growing legal reality where rivers, forests, and ecosystems are recognized as rights-bearing entities.

The United Nations now capitalizes Nature in official reports. The law is shifting because the story we tell is shifting, as words shape perception, perception shapes behavior, and behavior shapes the future.

We capitalize Nature because relationship begins with recognition.

This Earth Day, start there.

I made this pivot some years back when I first became aware of the Rights of Nature movement and this simple yet profound shift one can make. As I’ve hiked these sacred mountains and as I saunter in the Woods Out Back, more and more I sense the true nature of Nature and that we indeed all are One.  And when I forget, there is always some gentle reminder, like the mule deer that was resting under Grandmother Pinon on my morning walk a couple days back.

Honor the Earth and all Her Beings this day. Honor Nature and honor you as a part of all Life.

Resting Under the Grandmother Tree