There is a story about a raven who wished to be a dove. The raven practiced many years imitating the dove; trying to sing the dove song, walk and they way the dove flied. When at last the raven admitted defeat in this impossible task, he discovered that he no longer knew how to be a raven.

In a sense, we are like the raven. We have been cut off from our roots to the Earth. With the great task of unlearning the dependence on rational thought to the exclusion of our other faculties.



John Seed tells a story about two sisters in Australia who began reclamation of their land by choosing a small corner of a field where native plants still flourished. Starting in the spring, they removed the seedlings of the introduced plants. That is all they did. The native grasses and plants began growing ever stronger and each year the sisters increased their culling efforts. Native plants thought extinct in that area began to appear. When the native plants reached an erosion gully, they took it in stride-the reclamation took on a life of its own.
John Seed makes the point that within ourselves this same situation exists. The internal removal of introduced species(beliefs) will result in the native plants (old knowledge) appearing again within us of their own accord.

-per sacred plant medicine-stephen buhner