This week’s meditation is Part 2 of the stewardship quotes. Hope you’ll take time to read and reflect on the meaning of these words of wisdom.

“Friends at home! I charge you to spare, preserve and cherish some portion of your primitive forests; for when these are cut away I apprehend they will not be easily replaced.” — Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, 1851


“In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create but by what we refuse to destroy.” — John C. Sawhill, President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy (deceased)


“In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.” — Baba Diuom, Senegalese poet


“The Lakota love the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth . . . The Lakota knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon leads to a lack of respect for humans, too.” — Chief Standing Bear, Lakota


“One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.” — Barry Lopez, “Searching for Ancestors”

(Thanks to The Quotable Nature Lover, edited by John A. Murray, published by The Nature Conservancy, Lyons Press, New York, New York. 1999.)