KIND-NESS

"When you walk along a country road and notice a little tuft of grass...the next time you pass that way you stop to see how it is getting along and how much it has grown." - Georgia O'Keeffe

“I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.” - Rachel Carson

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Kind-ness - experiencing ourselves continuous with the rest of nature. The lives, consciousness, sentience, and feelings of animals, plants and trees, streams, forests, all living forms in one's heart and mind and spirit. Sharing the same being, the same world. Being all of one kind. Kind-ness with all of creation.

And seeing and knowing animals (including the ones with whom we live), and plants and trees, streams, ponds, meadows, forests, oceans not as beings containing some "humanlike" spirits and consciousness, but as living beings in their own right, with their own ways of sensing, feeling, and being self-aware, and aware of others.

Beings that are beautiful, mysterious, magical, and wonderful.