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If ever a society could be said to meet all the mythological criteria of the next lost civilization—a society that ticks all the boxes—is it not obvious that it is our own? Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter is all there is—that there is no such thing as spirit, that we are just accidents of chemistry and biology—all these things, and many more, in mythological terms at least, do not look good for us.

Science in the twenty-first century does not encourage scientists to take risks in their pursuit of "the facts"—particularly when those facts call into question long-established notions.

We might feel very sure that there is no more to reality that the material world in which we live, but we cannot prove that this is the case. Theoretically there could be other realms, other dimensions, as all religious traditions and quantum physics alike maintain. Theoretically, the brain could be as much a receiver as a generator of consciousness and thus might be fine-tuned in altered states to pick up wavelengths that are normally not accessible to us.

"There's no courage", The Prophet said, "before the war has begun."

Drunkards vaunt their bravery when you speak of war.

But in the blaze of battle they scatter like mice.

I'm astonished by the man who wants purity

And yet trembles when the harshness of polishing begin...

When a man beats a carpet again and again

It's not the carpet he's attacking, but the dirt in it.

“It has been the fate of many a man,” said Naakkve, “that those who were his fiercest opponents in life found success on the road he had pointed out to them—but only after they had made him into fodder for the worms. After his mouth was stuffed with earth, the lesser men no longer shrank from affirming the truth of his words.”

In my experience, birds are as fine and appropriate a lens through which to assimilate life as anything else.

It’s useless to be frightened; fearful men are half dead already.

She had not come to God with her wreath or with her sins and sorrows, not as long as the world still possessed a drop of sweetness to add to her goblet. But now she had come, after she had learned that the world is like an alehouse: the person who has no more to spend is thrown outside the door.

Cormorants are hated. In one popular anti-cormorant treatise, the bird is blamed for its very existence: “A war is being waged between the interests of sport fishermen and a predatory bird that has no local natural enemy. The bird’s sole purpose is to reproduce and eat fish.” Of course, obtaining food and reproducing are two primary goals of any species, including our own.

The branch might seem like the fruit's origin:

In fact, the branch exist because of the fruit.

I suppose it might be argued that, for the amateur watcher seeking a meaningful connection with birds, this attention to remote detail is just another form of scientific reductionism, that harried foe of poetry and wonder. In my experience, it is so much the opposite. The tinier the details I come to comprehend, the more bewildered I become, the richer, it seems, the more inspiring of awe, is the biological life I manage to encounter.

The minutiae offer a focus that bridges the aesthetic and scientific worlds.

With the words Sira Eiliv had spoken the day before still in her mind, she suddenly realized that as fearful as she had been for her reckless sons and as sternly as she had often admonished them because she was tormented with anguish for their sakes, she would have been less content with her children if they have been meek and timid.