Connections

From Wolf's having generously linked to this site from theirs, this site became linked to others, which connected me to Starhawk's writing (and I've seen her referenced in many other places but hadn't had a chance to delve more deeply yet) and a "Declaration of the Four Sacred Things," which I'll post in full below. How deeply I feel these things to be true, back-to-my-childhood-feelings deep, and how wonderful it feels to connect to these truths and to those who honor them. After reading this aloud as a personal manifesto on this Easter Sunday, I felt like shouting (as is done in certain Southern churches I've been in) AMEN!

DECLARATION OF THE FOUR SACRED THINGS, Starhawk

The Earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standard by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance; only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.

To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.