[Image: “Crow and Tree – Heaven and Earth in Winter,” by H. Kopp-Delaney; found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). The artist’s only comment in English says, “I am a son of the crow… This raven (Kolkrabe) visited me on the 1st of September. Alice Popkorn took a photo when it landed on my head. I made a snip and put it in this picture. Thank you Alice :-)”]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
…when women dream of the natural predator, it is not always or solely a message about the interior life. Sometimes it is a message about the threatening aspects of the culture one lives in, whether it be a small but brutal culture at the office, one within their own family, the lands of their neighborhood, or as wide as their own religious or natural culture. As you can see, each group and culture appears to have its own natural psychic predator, and we see from history that there are eras in cultures during which the predator is identified with and allowed absolute sovereignty until the people who believe otherwise become a tide.
While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. In my heritage, there is a saying, cultura cura, culture cures. If culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine.
(Clarissa Pinkola Estés [source])
…and:
These are pregnant times throughout the world. Just as in geology we have breaking lines between huge blocks of earth, so today we are at the juncture between great blocks of time. This is the place of storm and volcano — and of becoming. In today’s reality, a small act can have far-reaching consequences, beyond imagination, whereas things that will be done five or ten years from today will be so much less effective. This is precisely the meaning of pregnant times: Anything can be born. And this is exactly the time when one must not sleep.
(Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz [source])
…and:
The Rider
A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.
(Naomi Shihab Nye [source])
