It seems to me that many of us feel lost, as if we've cut ourselves off from something we deeply need. I think that what we're missing is an everyday connection with nature, the home of our species. We modern humans like to think we are above belonging to the messy stew of wild relationships that birthed Homo sapiens. But that community is part of who we are, from the myriad microorganisms that help our bodies function to the plants that respire in tandem with our breaths, exhaling the oxygen we breathe in and absorbing the carbon dioxide we exhale. We may have forgotten nature, but the community of the land has not forgotten us. Every day, the other species around us go about their lives in our company. It's often no harder to get to know them than it is our human neighbors, and it's just as enlightening. Better still, it weaves us into the fabric of nature, and brings us home.

I believe that people have a positive role to play in the community of the land, even if we've forgotten it. And I believe that life itself is numinous, charged with spiritual power. As a Quaker, I try to live what I believe. Hence my vocation: rekindling our terraphilia (see below) by bringing awareness of our kinship with nature - and the responsibilities and blessings that entails - home to our daily lives.

(That's my husband, sculptor Richard Cabe, and me photographed along the block of urban creek that borders our property, a thread of formerly-industrial waterway which we've spent the last decade restoring. The Nature Conservancy recently recognized us for our work. Photo copyright 2010 Jim Steinberg. Thanks Jim!)