Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Batesonis an American writer and cultural anthropologist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
loss echoes identity
Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
caring animal self
A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict.
commitment democracy politics
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
sacred natural conventions
Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
biblical opposites ideas
Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.
problem depends solutions
Solutions to problems often depend upon how they're defined.
christian imagination religion
The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.
answers patterns coherence
Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.
numbers training care
A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.