Did You Figure It Out?

So now it's time for the "answer" to the puzzler we posed on the “Spring Fun” page of this newsletter: the theme that unites all the images on that page. Of course, there's still one image left, and it's of the Phoenix bird -- on a Belgian 10 Euro coin from 2004. (In case you're wondering, the top of the image is cut off and the color has been distorted because governments don't like images of their money to be reproduced in publications.)



If you look at the dates on both sides of the bird, you'll see that what the Phoenix symbolizes here is Europe's, and especially Belgium's, revitalization after the end of World War II and the destruction it brought to those communities. In numerous cultures around the world, the Phoenix represents new life coming from the cataclysmic destruction of the old life. For the Phoenix builds a nest in which it immolates itself and from which the young bird then rises.

The interdisciplinary organization Metanexus will be holding a conference in Phoenix, Arizona this July, on the topic of "Cosmos, Nature, and Culture." Tapestry's founder and Vision-Keeper, Dawn Adrian, Ph.D., has been invited to be a keynote speaker at the opening meeting in Phoenix's Heard Museum. If you think about the issues raised in the Polar Bear article, you know there is no more appropriate place to hold a meeting by this name than in a museum dedicated to Indigenous cultures, in a city named for the bird of new life rising from death.

What they have in common -- someone learning to ride after a lifetime of yearning, polar bears and people struggling to live for new springs in Hudson Bay, a Horse-Human Relationship Program rising (literally, in this case) from the ashes of a wildfire, a young Asian studies scholar moving to a whole new place in a country far from the land of his birth, or a scholar turning to visions of life beneath life in the deep layers of ancient cities -- is, I hope, obvious by now.

Welcome, Phoenix Bird, the light and life and fire of our Spring.