Rewilding the Urban Soul Quotes

“Lockdown would save lives. I was up for that. What I couldn't bend my mind around was this new currency of fear and panic.”
― Claire Dunn, Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City

“Jon Young's words come back to me. 'When someone dies in an unhealthy society, it leads to isolation and mistrust. When someone dies in a healthy culture, it brings people closer together. Think of grief like this: if a forest's fuel load isn't reduced on a consistent and regular basis, then severe fires eventually burn throughout the land.”
― Claire Dunn, Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City

“The sacred-fire experience taught me how critically important it is for cultural repair to reinvent such shared ceremonial containers. 'They're as old as time,' one white-haired woman told me as I sat next to her on the woven rug. 'We barely limp along without these places to connect with spirit.'
The sacred fire holds this intention for four days, sorry business for three weeks. Death in these contexts is an opportunity for greater intimacy and reciprocity, for shedding and transformation. Grief is not something to 'get rid of' - the quicker the better so as to return to being a productive and functional member of society. Instead of a nuisance, it's actually revered for the connective tissue it provides a community. Rather than a private affair, grief is a collective experience, a shared responsibility, held with equal import to celebration rites, its inevitability and universality woven into the cultural fabric of a healthy culture.”
― Claire Dunn, Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City

“A person in a modern city can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day, or even an entire life, mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.”
― Claire Dunn, Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City

“We don't want obedient students; we want sovereign creatures following their own scent trail.”
― Claire Dunn, Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City