centred QUOTES

4 " ...Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media...

Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the following examples are taken from the recollection of child protection workers present in court. In one case, during a controversy that centred fundamentally around disputes over the meaning of RAD [reflex anal dilatation], a judge refused to allow ‘any evidence about children’s bottoms’ in his courtroom.

A second judge — hearing an application to have their children returned by parents about whom social services had grave worries told the assembled lawyers that, as she lived in the area, she could not help but be influenced by what she read in the press.
Hardly surprising then that child protection workers soon found courts not hearing their applications, cutting them short, or loosely supervising informal deals which allowed children to be sent back to parents, even in cases where there was explicit evidence of apparent abuse to be explained and dealt with. (p21)

[reflex anal dilatation (RAD): a simple clue which is suggestive of anal penetration from outside. It had been recognised as a valuable weapon in the armoury of doctors examining children for many decades and was endorsed by both the British Medical Association and the Association of Police Surgeons. (p18)] "

― , Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas

6 " These are burning times. And they call for Burning Women. Women embodied in their passion. Woman feeling in their bodies. Creative women. Courageous women. Women who have learned to run on a different power source to the world which is falling into flames around her. She has already disentangled herself from the wreckage of the patriarchal culture, so she will not be dazed, confused and disorientated by the systemic changes happening around her. Centred within herself, receptive to the Earth beyond her, she knows how to cultivate from the ashes, she knows how to find the embers to fuel the new fire.

Burning Women arise.
Our time is now.
Our time has come. "

― Lucy H. Pearce , Burning Woman

8 " When the knowledge of biological fact is conjoined with imagination, on the other hand, one gets facts stranger than most fiction. When biology and morphology combine perspective with religion, they become a chimera of facts that can change the world view of spirituality.
Cats bring this blending of biology, morphology and imagination to the prospective table of religious discussion especially. This is so because they have differing physiological functionalities that humans do not. These differences may seem trivial to many but one wonders how these variations would work themselves out in a sapient religion or spirituality centred on these quadrupedal predatory and often nocturnal creatures. Imagine not the cat worship that other religions in the past may have done. Instead, imagine what religion would be like if cats experienced it as sapient beings. The religion's context would take place in the physical form of the domestic cat, not the anthropological form. From the perspective of cats, the mirror of divinity reflected back at them would be quite different. "

― Leviak B. Kelly , Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction

10 " I say, 'Use it or lose it.' I have my own fitness regime, which is centred around stretching, free-weights and fast walking. I also have a trainer half of the year, as I spend my summers in the south of France where I swim a lot. "