About my children's bond with the natural world
Participation Mystique
Project description
In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call „participation mystique,“ we were as one with our world as a child in the mother's womb.
The words above by Joanna Macy touch me deeply, because this intimacy with the natural world is something I remember from my childhood and which I see now in my own children. During the past 13 years, I witnessed them growing up, naturally connected to nature and the elements. Watching my sons, I am reminded of my own childhood, when I still experienced this intimacy with rocks, plants and animals.
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