Go Hug a Tree........

I like to call myself a "Tree Huger" from time to time when folks ask if I am religious. I always get the same look... 'what does that have to do with religion???'

Well for me, being into nature IS Spirituality. For me, our Big Blue Planet is the only Church I need, with the open sky being the most beautiful Cathedral ceiling that could ever exist.

Nurturing our planet is our duty, whether you believe in Buddha or Christ, or in no God at all.

Pollution, extinction, consumption of limited resources.... affect us all in one way or another. You can't escape it.

It is every single human beings responsibility to take care of the only home we share with millions of other species.

Every child that goes to school should be taught how to care for the planet with the same emphasis as they are taught to brush their teeth, learn how to spell, read and know math.

Nurturing the environment teaches children empathy and compassion, respect, discipline, and self worth.

It teaches Science through gardening and composting and water conservation.

It teaches them about math and money and the economy by seeing how pollution and weather effects crops....


Man and nature have always been in a battle. We have always tried to fight against it, but we need to do the opposite... we need to work with it...
Man and nature can and must coexist. If we don't..... it's actually not the Planet that will suffer first.... we will...

If we poison the air & water and ruin the Land.... we will die first... and truth be told, the Planet will go on without us! It just won't harbor any life....

We only hurt ourselves and take the rest of life with us by not taking care of the planet.... so regardless of your Religion or back ground or politics.... Go Hug a Tree....:D

The "Spiritual Atheist"

I have ALWAYS considered my self a "spiritual " person. For a period, I believed in God. But as many children in our society, I was "conditioned" to believe in God. God was in my school via a pledge to my country, on money, related to me everyday by all kinds of people..... it's just the way it was.

As I matured and really started to question life, the concept of a "Super Natural Being" just seemed more and more bizarre to me. Yet I still "felt" this spirituality inside the very core of my being. It was deep and it WAS THERE.... I could not deny it.

It's taken me a long time to come up with a phrase that I feel best describes this seemingly contradictory existence..... "Spiritual Atheism"

For me, this means that I am a conscientious, moral, peace loving, good will seeker, who believes that we are all connected to each other, but more significantly... connected to the Universe itself.

We are, as everyone knows, a mix of chemicals and minerals, made from elements that are abundant on our planet and in our Universe. But there is also something MORE to us ....

I firmly believe that there is a type of energy (for lack of a better word) that gives us that "feeling" , that sense of "spirituality" that "inner knowledge" that there is more to our short little stay here on earth as human beings.

I will elaborate more on this another day, but for now I want to leave you with the idea that there is an alternative to being either religious or being an atheist. There is something in between those two extremes in a shade of gray....

This "shade of gray" is what I want to explore and hope it's one you explore as well... and that you find the same peacefulness I have discovered by being a spiritual atheist...