Fable

This image by artist Christian Schloe is titled “Fable”. Fables are stories passed down through generations, featuring natural beings—trees, plants, animals—who speak to us and interact with us to teach us how to live well. These stories come from a time when we humans lived as part of nature, rather than separate from it, from a time when listening to nature wasn’t a figure of speech but a daily reality.

When I dream of a future, I like to imagine a time when we might, once again, talk to the animals and the trees as fellow beings traveling in the great circle of time, a time when we speak with them as peers and friends, rather than as oppressors and dominators.

Christian’s beautiful image stirs in me a longing for that imagined future.