This quote was read by Sharon Lovejoy at the Kindergarten Forum on March 18, 2000, Saratoga California, and requested to be posted for attendees and other to copy.

From Orion Rises on the Dunes by Henry Beston.

"The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of completing life-all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. A human life, so often likened to a spectacle upon a stage, is more justly a ritual. The ancient values of dignity, beauty and poety which sustain it are of nature's inspiration; they are born of the mystery and beauty of the world.

Do no dishonor to the earth lest you dishonor the spirit of man. Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas. Rest your spirit in her solitary places for the gift of life are the earth's and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach."