TABLE OF CONTENTS

 LISTEN TO THE LAND

EXCERPT

Earth Shadows

Walk with me. Learn to walk as I do. Carefully. Without hurting anything in my path.

Mother earth can be felt beneath my feet. I hear her breathing and I feel her breathing through my paws. Every time I lift my paw carefully, she lifts with me. I have never left this earth in heart. I have made myself a part of her, as you must do to survive.

I cannot teach you what you will not do. I only can teach you if you are ready to be an earth person, willing to share your fortunes and your burdens with others and willing to be part of earth herself.

Many shadows speak. They talk of war, of killing, of hatreds long endured. But if you are to leave your way of living and listen to what I have to say to you, then mother earth will help you in your fight to live.

"Come back," mother earth says. "Return to the ways that I have taught and remember that you are a partner with all creation: the birds in flight, the ways of the wolf and the breathing of the seas."

The shadows speak to me also and their voices come from plants and trees. These shadow people tell me that we must listen--you and I--together. We must hear the stream talking, telling us how we can make water, how we can live in peace once we understand that the mother feeds us and provides for us.

The secret is in the listening. The land talks. What you share with others will come back to you because we are one in a family of earth sisters and brothers. We are one as life.

Soon there will be no shadows to speak and no land to walk upon. If you will listen though, we will make changes on earth and she will rise in happiness and joy.