Terry Tempest Williams Quotes - Page 11

John Cobb is saying that perhaps we are beginning to see that now as our greed goes completely out of control and everything is seen through money, through corporate power, etc., etc. We know it well. He asked the question, What will be the holocaust that takes us to the next era? - which he describes as "Earthism."

To me, we are in the midst of such broad-scale destruction, both psychically and physically, that the only thing that can threaten the grip, loosen the hold, of economism, I believe, is a discussion of the sacred born out of our regard and compassion and intelligence for the earth and the creatures on the earth.

It was fascinating listening to this wonderful biologist, Sarah Allen Miller, speak of her relationship to these beings for 20 years.

The only thing I have done religiously in my life is keep a journal. I have hundreds of them, filled with feathers, flowers, photographs, and words - without locks, open on my shelves.

Lanscape shapes culture.

That is the wonderful ecological mind that Gregory Bateson talks about - the patterns that connect, the stories that inform and inspire us and teach us what is possible

Story is a sacred visualization, a way of echoing experience.

There are things within the culture that absolutely enrage me, and for me it is sacred rage. But it's not just peculiar to Mormonism - it's any patriarchy that I think stops, thwarts, or denies our creativity.

I am a Mormon woman, I am not orthodox. It is the lens through which I see the world. I hear the Tabernacle Choir and it still makes me weep.

Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.

Our family has made its livelihood from the land, digging trenches for hundreds of miles cross-country. You could say this is a real paradox, to destroy the land, yet love it at the same time. This is a typical story of Westerners, how we build community through change.

I have a sequence to my creative life. In spring and fall, I am above ground and commit to community. In the summer, I'm outside. It is a time for family. And in the winter, I am underground. Home. This is when I do my work as a writer - in hibernation. I write with the bears.

Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision.

Community is extremely intimate. When we talk about humor, I love that you know when you're home because there is laughter in the room, there is humor, there is shorthand. That is about community.

I remember a phone call from a friend of mine who lives along the MacKenzie River. She said, "This is the first year in twenty that the chinook salmon have not returned." This woman knows the names of things. This woman is committed to a place. And she sounded the alarm.

I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions.

Revolution is not something outside of us, but inside us, begging for our engagement every single day.

I will never be able to say what is in my heart because words fail us, because it is in our nature to protect, because there are times when what is public and what is private must be discerned.

When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.

Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?

I love the ordered mind of history because it takes us out of the chaos, momentarily, and says, "Ah, so this is the story we are engaged in."

I recently got back from Hiroshima and it was fascinating to me how the Japanese accommodate this paradox. We were talking about this word aware, which on the page looks like "aware," which speaks to both the pain and the beauty of our lives. Being there, what I perceived was that this is a sorrow that is not a grief that one forgets or recovers from, but it is a burning, searing illumination of love for the delicacy and strength of our relations.

Words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free.

I think we're skating on surfaces. I know it in my own life - and I think that is where this frustration comes in. It's not the place we want to be, but it's the place our society requires that we be. There is no fulfillment there. So we become numbed, we become drugged, we become less than we are. And I think that we know that.

I feel like we are at a time of great creativity if we choose to embrace it as such, if we choose to engage the will of our imaginations and imagine another way of being in the world.