Heroes Not Zombies

I was in Segovia last week and I noticed quite a few towers had stork nests on them, and the nests had adult storks as well as chicks

Then as I looked one of the adults (the mother?) brought home some food

Wow! Amazing, huh?

There’s been something rattling around in my head for a while. It’s related to the ideas of the left and right hemisphere ways of engaging with the world, as described by Iain McGilchrist, but also to the ancient traditions of yin and yang, of the divine masculine and the divine feminine, of the Emperor and the Empress in the Tarot Majors, of alchemical and spiritual practices of bringing together two halves to make a whole…..and to my thoughts about two fundamental forces of the universe.

Here’s what’s been cropping up – (NB this is thinking about the psyche not about gender…..whilst our societies might ascribe clearly different tasks and roles to men and women I believe for each of us to be whole we need to integrate the male and female within us all – the anima and animus if you wish (I know that’s not quite the same) )

There are two pairs of behaviours, functions, activities which we ALL need to access….not just farm out one pair to someone of the opposite sex while keeping the first pair for ourselves!

The two pairs are –

Provide and Protect

and

Nourish and Nurture

I think we all need all of these behaviours in the adults around us or we won’t grow into healthy adults ourselves. And when I look at these storks in Segovia I see the incredible, huge structures of the nests, built to provide a home and shelter, built up high to protect from predators. And I see this adult feeding the chick directly – providing nourishment and nurture both at the same time (food and loving attention)

Maybe each of us specialise in, or concentrate on, one of these pairs – we are the providers and protectors OR we are the nourishers and nurturers – but I feel it’s becoming clearer to me that all of us need to develop both of these pairs….that with only one, we are not whole.