We are the custodians who are uniquely gifted to do this work, so we need to do it consciously and with mastery, within cultural frameworks aligned with the patterns of creation. If we allow the I-am-greater-than deception to enter this process, all is lost.

But their lives are also full of stark efficiencies. In the middle of winter, the area around my favourite beehive is littered with the corpses of the bees that were no longer useful—the most expendable, who were sent on the dangerous mission of foraging; the male drones who were ejected from the hive at the end of their useful lives.