How best to speak of our society’s ongoing self destructiveness in a way that our eyeballs, ear holes and heart might get it? How to “fool” us into a little unlearning of our learned disconnect from the watery animally earth? How to tease out a thread, a rope, an angle of vision which ‘by indirection, direction finds’? Maybe, these wordy images can help us laugh some sense into us.
Bob Haverluck is a Manitoba storyteller whose stories and drawings largely play off of our spiritual traditions and their wise counsel in caring for our watery earthy existence. His books of story and drawing include When God was Flesh and Wild: Stories in Defence of the Earth & The Court Case of the Creatures, as well as a joint book of essays and drawings with Kathleen Dean Moore, Take Heart: Encouragement For Earth’s Weary Lovers.
You are a genius, dear Bob. Never stop poking us into awareness of the stakes in this awful game.
Kathy , like your grand essays , we each get to use
What we are given to help one another carry on carrying on, eh.
Thanks for your kind words….your encouraging words are heard.
I have enjoyed the witty and original Haverluck art for years, from the whistful attempts to celebrate the link between humankind and our fellow creatures (eating berries together in the snow) to the messages of struggle (best book cover ever) to now appealing to absurd self interest. At each stage the humour shines through but becomes more pointed as the situation around us worsens. Keep “laughing some sense into us”, through absurd motivation #18 or wherever you find us.
Thanks Russ! To hear when the stuff connects is always a gift , given the love labours involved are somewhat solitary for a time.
Prompted by the goings roundabout and our creaturely confusions , but then like a bear with his salmon it’s off alone to gnaw on what you’ve been given to find. Then you try to fertilize the good Forest growth. ….. Maybe not a good metaphor