Sculptures in clay

 by Max Leiva from Art Artists Artwork on FB

Sharing with Sepia Saturday

Meme this week has to do with the postal deliveries in snow. I diverged as usual!

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Today's quote:

From Starhawk's substack "Where Will We Stand?" newsletter this week - she shares about reading this book:

Sand Talk: How Ecological Wisdom Can Save the World, by Tyson Yungaporta, an Australian aboriginal man. Pulling myself away from endlessly doom scrolling or to read Yungaporta’s words feels a little like coming out of a filthy dive reeking of stale cigarette smoke and old urine into clean, fresh rain-washed air. And Yungaporta is very clear about what the world means:

“In our world nothing can be known or even exist unless it is in relation to other things. Critically, those things that are connected are less important than the forces of connection between them. We exist to form these relationships, which make up the energy that holds creation together.” P.149-150

Yungaporta, Robin Wall Kimmerer, many other indigenous writers frame the world as a web of relationships in which we are embedded, and to which we are responsible. That world view sees us as mutually responsible for one another, bound together in networks of reciprocity and generosity. People are here for a purpose—to take care of one another, of land and community, practically and spiritually.

As Yungaporta says, “Some new cultures keep asking, “Why are we here?” It’s easy. This is why we’re here. We look after things on the earth and in the sky and the places in between.” P.96

Yungaporta also offers a clear diagnosis of what’s wrong with the world today.

“Emu is a troublemaker who brings into being the most destructive idea in existence: I am greater than you; you are less than me. This is the source of all human misery. Aboriginal society was designed over thousands of years to deal with this problem. Some people are just idiots--and everybody has a bit of idiot in them from time to time, coming from some deep place inside that whispers, “You are special. You are greater than other people and things. You are more important than everything and everyone. All things in all people exist to serve you. This behavior needs massive checks and balances to contain the damage it can do…” p25

Thank you Starhawk and Yungaporta!

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In case you've missed all my posts for the last couple of months...there are a lot of goddesses. Here are some of the more ancient ones:

Archaeologists were mainly men who discovered these figures, and they called them Venus because that's the culture they could relate to, and then they called them fertility objects to promote the birth of more children (suppposedly.) 

Marija Gimbutus (a female archaeologist) has refuted this, and described these matriarchal cultures which had no defense systems indicative of their peaceful nature, where goddesses were venerated by a whole population. I mentioned Gimbutus before in my blog: Why I'm an Environmentalist.

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And a bit of the Doors music in Playing for Change (thanks to fellow blogger, Linda Sue.)