Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
Alice WalkerRead
Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you're 52.
Interpretation
In Cherokee tradition, adulthood is recognized later in life, specifically at the age of 52.
Alice Walker's quote reflects on the Cherokee tradition which defines adulthood at the age of 52, suggesting that wisdom and maturity are gained through life experiences rather than earlier milestones. This perspective invites reflection on cultural values and the importance of understanding time and personal growth in different contexts.
In practice
During a cultural presentation, I shared this quote to illustrate different philosophies on adulthood.
Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.
On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.
If nationalism makes us poor, weak, and morally insecure, how can it claim to be patriotic? I maintain that nationalists are unpatriotic.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.
Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
The first call which every Christian experiences is the call to abandon the attachments of this world.
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