![]() “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” by Manly P.Thoughts on “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut.Hall: Part 9 – The Universe in a Grain of Sand Thoughts on “The Illustrated Man” by Ray Bradbury.Thoughts on “Woolgathering” by Patti Smith.Thoughts on “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki.Thoughts on “Tristram Shandy” by Laurence Sterne.“Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea” by William Butler Yeats.“Correspondences” by Charles Baudelaire."The Cloak, The Boat, and The Shoes" by William Butler Yeats.“Who Goes With Fergus” by William Butler Yeats.“The Rose of the World” by William Butler Yeats.“The Reverie of Poor Susan” by William Wordsworth.“Fergus and the Druid” by William Butler Yeats.Unholy Trinity: The Number Three in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.Remember, everything that you do matters. It will inspire, outrage, and motivate you. I strongly encourage you to read this book. Whether or not we want to admit it, we have a choice ahead, a crossroads. They have brought us the loss of our relatives in a great wave of extinction. And yet those lifeways, lacking balance, justice, and peace, have not brought us contentment. Ecologists estimate we would need seven planets to sustain the lifeways we have created. Scientific evidence tells us we are close to the tipping point of climate change, the end of fossil fuels, the beginning of resource depletion. Every one of us has a responsibility, to begin the healing process and start undoing the damage that we have done as a collective species. We are indeed at a crossroads, and we no longer have the luxury of complacency. We all have important decisions to make, and every choice, regardless of how insignificant it may seem, will have lasting consequences. As Johnston suggests, multinational corporations have spawned a new breed of Windigo that insatiably devours the earth’s resources “not for need but for greed.” The footprints are all around us, once you know what to look for. The native habitat of the Windigo is the north woods, but the range has expanded in the last few centuries. In Ojibwe ethics, Pitt says, “any overindulgent habit is self-destructive, and self-destruction is Windigo.” And just as Windigo’s bite is infectious, we all know too well that self-destruction drags along many more victims-in our human families as well as in the more-than-human world. No matter what they call it, Johnston and many other scholars point to the current epidemic of self-destructive practices-addiction to alcohol, gambling, technology, and more-as a sign that Windigo is alive and well. Kimmerer uses the myth of the Windigo as a metaphor for our current state of mindless consumption. There is a long section later in the book that is worth quoting. But what would happen, I wonder, to the mountain of junk mail if we could see it in the trees it once had been? ![]() Similarly, acting and theatre are coupled into an outwardly presentation of that story. The short path from the mailbox to the waste bin tells the story. King’s love for screen writing quenches his thirst to tell a riveting story. Just as much as an ash splint, a sheet of paper is a tree’s life, along with the water and energy and toxic byproducts that went into making it. They say that the “waste stream” in this country is dominated by paper. The ash curls we make are almost paper thin. Just about everything we use is the result of another’s life, but that simple reality is rarely acknowledged in our society. But as Kimmerer points out, almost everything that we use, every item that finds its way into our homes, is made at the expense of another living entity. As a result, we do not have to think about where everything comes from, and the true cost to our world in the mass production of commodities that are destined for landfills. We live in a society that is detached from the sources of that which we consume. As a writer, a scientist, and a carrier of Skywoman’s story, I sit at the feet of my elder teachers listening for their songs. ![]() It might seem an odd juxtaposition, but to me she belongs there. ![]() Floating to earth with her handful of seeds and flowers, she looks down on my microscopes and data loggers. I have Bruce King’s portrait of Skywoman, Moment in Flight, hanging in my lab. The people who are at the forefront of each discipline are exploring the relationships between the two, and Kimmerer’s skill as a wordsmith makes this book a joy to read, even when she addresses painful issues, which are unavoidable when writing about environmental topics. Science and spirituality used to inhabit opposite ends of the spectrum, but not anymore. So this book is essentially a weaving of environmental science writing and spiritually based storytelling. Kimmerer is Native American and a Professor of Environmental Biology. My daughter gave me this book as a gift, and I have to say, I loved it. ![]()
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