Earth is our home ... the largest living creature in our solar system. The land, the water, the air, and all the things that live on and in them form a gigantic community, an enormous cell. Here fungi, eagles, toads, worms, grasses, mosquitoes, ferns, people, dolphins, spiders, oak trees, and lions — up to ten million separately distinguishable forms of life or species — share Earth's environments. Whatever happens to one part, for good or ill, ultimately affects us all, the whole Earth: our home of abundant riches and indescribable beauty.
"Tending soul requires patient and sensitive listening to inner needs and wants: resting when we need to rest, rather than when convention or habit dictates; respecting our desires for solitude even though others may consider it antisocial; weeping when there are tears to weep. With each compassionate and understanding response to our needs, with each authentic expression of who we are, our capacity to recognize and respect our nature increases. And inasmuch as and only to the extent to which we can acknowledge, allow and serve our own souls, we can acknowledge, allow and serve the souls of others.
Like a musical instrument, the soul and its physical form can express the symphonies of Self -- the songs of God -- only as sensitively as its own degree of delicacy and refinement permits. For just as a Stradivarius allows levels of a Bach violin sonata to be heard which cannot be heard on a beginner's violin, so a finely wrought soul allows more of God's voice to be amplified than one unrefined by spiritual and psychological work."