EBOOK
About
Brought up in a land of sectarian conflict and for the first half of his working life a soldier in the British Army, Geoffrey McMullan is, I suppose, your average warrior. As he, himself loves to tell us, he is six foot four and built, like the proverbial shithouse, door. But, Geoffrey has a softer side, as well as a secret inner life that he, exposes among all the rambunctious, globe-trotting adventure of this humor-filled memoir. He is one for the birds. Give him a Heart-spotted Woodpecker, it seems, and this, great big bear of a man is, moved to his soul. Birds? I hear one or two readers ask. Isn't that a bit, well, cissy? What can be so moving or special about birds? The truth is that Geoffrey's passion is both ancient and universal. To the Sufi mystics of central Asia, God was sometimes, known as 'the unnamed bird'. For Native Americans, the Cheyenne and Lakota peoples of the American plains, the mythic 'thunderbird' was central to their spiritual lives. In the Andes, the Quechua held the condor sacred for thousands of years. Zeus the preeminent deity of the ancient Greeks was, represented as an eagle...
The truth is that these creatures are central images for our most cherished ideals, love beauty, inner peace. Geoffrey McMullan knew this instinctively. In his book, he describes a moving moment when, as a small boy, to fend off the casual violence of his boarding school, he alighted on a woodpecker on the lawn outside the dining room window. To that troubled child the bird was a source of peace and comfort. He goes on in More Birds than Bullets to show how this understanding has blossomed into a lifelong form of personal therapy. In the second half of his working life, as a teacher on the healing power of the natural world, Geoffrey is again summoning the birds but to demonstrate to others their uplifting potential. Encounters of the feathered kind are, written into the DNA of Geoffrey's autobiography.
The truth is that these creatures are central images for our most cherished ideals, love beauty, inner peace. Geoffrey McMullan knew this instinctively. In his book, he describes a moving moment when, as a small boy, to fend off the casual violence of his boarding school, he alighted on a woodpecker on the lawn outside the dining room window. To that troubled child the bird was a source of peace and comfort. He goes on in More Birds than Bullets to show how this understanding has blossomed into a lifelong form of personal therapy. In the second half of his working life, as a teacher on the healing power of the natural world, Geoffrey is again summoning the birds but to demonstrate to others their uplifting potential. Encounters of the feathered kind are, written into the DNA of Geoffrey's autobiography.