Using your chosen spiritual practice, take about fifteen minutes to quiet your mind and open your heart. As you enter your practice, focus on your connection to the whole. Now feel the hard edges of your ego that separate you from the earth begin to soften. Place your hands on your heart and ask your open heart about your connection with the earth. Take time to reflect, draw, and journal.

Let your imagination free-associate moments of particular beauty where you felt connected to the natural world – a sunset, mountain hike, ocean, forest, creature, waterfall – it could be anything. How do you experience your connection? Can you feel your connection with the natural world in the same way you relate to an aspect of beauty within yourself, or another person you care for? Take time to reflect, draw, and journal.

Once again quiet your mind and open your heart. Now recall a moment of personal heartbreak as you connected with the natural world – a poisoned river, raped land, an injured or dead animal, or a battered forest. How did you experience your connection with the earth in that moment of heartbreak? Can you feel how similar this heartbreak is to the pain in your own story and society's story? Can you feel the unbroken whole as you link your story to the beauty and the heartbreak of the earth's story? Take time to reflect, draw, and journal.

Now recall a time when you were healed in some way by the earth. A time when the outer landscape helped you see inside your soul in a way that changed you and informed your story. Perhaps the natural world offered you solace in time of sadness, or clarity in time of confusion. How did you experience your connection with the earth in that moment of healing? How did this affect your desire to return that healing by living in a way that is sustainable and compassionate to the earth?

One way to continue to join your story with the earth's story is to simply focus on one moment of connection each day. You can do this outside in the natural world or as a part of your daily spiritual practice.

— Gail Straub in The Rhythm of Compassion