Jonathon Neville

“It has been acceptable for some time in America to remain "wound identified" (that is, using one's victimhood as one's identity, one's ticket to sympathy, and one's excuse for not serving), instead of using the wound to "redeem the world," as we see in Jesus and many people who turn their wounds into sacred wounds that liberate both themselves and others.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“... he slipped in and out of himself, testing which disguise to use. He knew it had to be his most clever. The Sisters were too astute for his usual chicanery.
He flapped his wings, then soared. The shape of an eagle, useful for fast travel across worlds, but only temporary. Not convincing enough to hide his true identity.
... He pushed out of the eagle skin and leaped away from the horde of birds, springing into the sky. Into nothingness.
Instead of transforming into another creature, he hovered in between. Dangling on the mouth of wind. He rumbled with pleasure, at his own cleverness, born out of accident and indecision: he had become pure air.
Without effort, he whooshed past the threshold into the cave, into the bark of the Great Tree, winding cleverly under and over and through a maze of roots and rough stone, past every trick and trap the Sisters had set. He delighted at the speed at which he travelled, catching himself just in time, before his enthusiasm revealed the disguise. Slowing impulse to a mere draft, sucking into himself, he reached the very heart of the Norns’ lair. The Great Hall of Time.”
― Michelle Grierson, Becoming Leidah

“Science likes to measure things, to test hypotheses and collect data. Until quite recently science wasn’t testing hypotheses about animal feelings. From the time Charles Darwin wrote his last book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) to about the time Neil Armstrong left footprints on the moon nearly a century later (1969), prevailing scientific dogma denied animals their hearts and minds. A nonhuman animal was viewed as merely a responder to external stimuli. The idea that a walrus made decisions, or that a parakeet felt emotions, was considered unscientific.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“Animals are as intelligent as they need to be. If a particular mental ability—such as learning to recognize other individuals, or to identify predators—is important to survival and reproduction, then it will be favored evolutionarily. But nature doesn’t waste energy building brains just because it can. All else being equal, an organism with a smaller brain should have a survival advantage over one with a larger brain, because the “brainier” one must consume more energy to sustain its gray matter.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals