Some personal, some global. Without a doubt these past two weeks have had more than the average share of troubling news.

So how to cope?

There are two processes I use that are effective in taking anger, despair and/or any sense of hopelessness and embroidering them — as constructive threads — into the fabric of my life. With compassion and intentionality they are woven into this ever widening tapestry. They are not seen as separate from all the other colorful threads; discarded as irrelevant or not being part of the original design.

So, what helps me continue with my life’s weaving? Firstly, I gather a few friends and take a walk out to The Point or other wild aspect of Windgrove.

Sitting on top of a cliff while watching the waves crash 50 or so feet directly below one’s overhanging feet is enough to power up anyone’s flattened battery. When the big sets roll in, nothing but positive energy — even if verging on the scary — envelopes the body (along with a bit of salty spray). The irony of being in all this chaotic mess of wave does not escape me. It informs.

Secondly, I find going into the sheltered cave of my home with a piece of wood, a few carving tools, a warm fire accompanied with a mug of coffee in the morning and a glass of wine in the evening is extremely effective in bringing about a bit of equilibrium to the day.

Pictured on the dining room table is a walking stick I’m carving for my mentor, fairy godfather and dearest friend Paulus Berensohn who will celebrate his 80th crazy year in a couple of weeks.

In the 37 years Paulus has been in my life, among the many learnings, the most important is this: It is okay to drag along a suitcase full of shadowy fears, vulnerabilities and anxieties for this is where your muse resides.

Listen to what she is trying to tell you and then use this information to live artistically/Artistically to help both yourself and the world around you in this “one wild and precious life” you have been given.

{ 3 comments }

For ten years the Drop stone bench has withstood countless storms, searing sun and hundreds of people sitting upon its robustness.

It is a sculpture lovingly crafted and meant to compliment and enhance one’s experience of being in wild nature.

Arriving late in the evening around 11PM after flying into Tasmania and then renting a car to drive down to Windgrove, my former student Ingrid from Brazil and her fiancée Magnus from Sweden were a bit travel weary yet excited to finally come to a place they had only heard about for the past three years.

Just on midnight after a refreshing tea and because the moon was full, I decided to take them for a walk down to the Drop Stone bench to delight in the magic of moonlight bouncing off waves whilst sitting on one of my “family members”.

After years of living on the land, being open to the vicissitudes of wind, earth, fire and water and, thereby, gaining experience and sufficient wisdom to teach how the power of art can change people’s perception of the world for the better — especially, when art is placed in nature — nothing could have prepared me for what Ingrid and Magnus encountered on their first experience of being at Windgrove; a place I like to refer to as “a refuge for learning”.

All eight stones were thrown/rolled from bench. Six went over the 50 foot cliff to the rocks and waves below. Two were stopped by the dense coastal wattle at the cliff edge.

My heart for five days has been grieving. When the refuge gets violated — a place where people bring their vulnerable selves because of a sense of trust and safety — I begin to doubt the effectiveness of what I’ve been trying to create here for the past twenty two years.

We are definitely entering into a period of time Joanna Macy calls “The Great Unravelling”. I understand this and have been diligent in doing what I can to plant seeds of active hope in all that come here. Yet, when desecration is so close to the bone the violation causes me to weep.

I do believe in the interconnectedness of all beings. I also believe that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If, in our society, our weakest links walk the land with vacant hearts, unable to see the love that has been freely given, our work is made all the more difficult. Yet, oddly, all that more important.

The young and agile Magnus managed to get to the bottom of the cliff, and, with crashing waves soaking him, did manage to find four of the stones. Along with the two other stones found in the bush, for this I am grateful as it is not a total loss.

But will it happen again? And how will we learn to live with the increasing losses most certainly coming with climate change?

{ 7 comments }

Placental mammals are those that have live birth and nourish their embryos throughout gestation via a specialized organ—the placenta—attached to the wall of the mother’s uterus. More than 5000 species exist today, from the 1.5-gram bumblebee bat to the 190-tonne blue whale, from the mole to the elephant, from the horse to the human.

This rather amazing branch on the evolutionary tree shows the ancestor of all placental mammals as a tiny, insect eating, furry-tailed creature that evolved shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared some 100 to 85 million years ago.

Within every mammal’s womb, one end of an umbilical cord is attached to the fetus at its navel while the other end is attached to the mother at the placenta; thereby, making “the connection” between mother and fetus. In the umbilical cord, one vein carries oxygen and food from the mother’s placenta to the fetus and two arteries return deoxygenated blood and waste products, such as carbon dioxide, from the fetus back to the placenta for disposal.

So what would be the most distinguishing characteristic of placental mammals should it be possible to “line them up” for a photographic comparison? Well, in my opinion, it would be the little scar we placental mammals all carry on our belly: our belly button.

This scar, or cicatrix, we all have is paid scant attention by any of us. Maybe noticed when removing a bit of fluff, but generally disregarded as insignificant. Well, I want to change this and focus my next sculpture on the huge symbolic importance of our belly buttons. Important, because they are a very visual and physical reminder of our connection to the female and to the mother.

Evert man has one; every female.

Simply put, if we want to create new stories that re-empower the feminine in the overly dominate male hierarchy that passes for western civilization, than what better symbol than the navel? Surely, even the Pope would have to look upon his belly button and feel some sort of connection to the female. This particular scar cannot be erased or suppressed. Ever.

Concerning the one half of the title used in these past three blog entries — The Cicatrix and the Stone — this refers to a poster I am producing that brings together the “birth” processes of the ‘Deep Time’ sculpture (just being completed) and my next sculpture called ‘Present Time’ that will be based on the belly button. The idea behind the poster is to link the long history of evolutionary processes that give birth to more and more divergent and varied species; from stone to human, so to speak.

I’m not quite sure what form this next sculpture will take, but I trust the birth process of imagination.

{ 0 comments }

I ended last week’s blog with the self-coined term “religious neoteny”.

Neoteny is the retention of juvenile characteristics in an adult animal. Strictly speaking this only refers to physiological development, but I find the imaginative combination of neoteny with “religion” or “culture” informative. It implies that, as adults, our religious or cultural views are adolescent in nature; not yet fully mature or wise.

Fundamentalists — whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or New Age cults — take story telling literally and, therefore, ruin the intention of the myth maker.

Not only ruin, but prevent us from unifying the advances of science with the sacredness and wonderment of all life.

Twice as old as the Biblical story of the creation of Adam and Eve, the carving of the Goddess of Laussel dates from 22,000–18,000 BC. This was in the Palaeolithic age when our ancestors worshiped her as the source of life and where the cave “represented” the womb of the Mother Goddess.

“The Palaeolithic cave seems to be the most sacred place, the sanctuary of the Goddess and the source of her regenerative power. Entering one of these caves is like making a journey into another world, one which is “inside” the body of the goddess. To those who would have lived in a sacred world, the actual hollowed shape would have symbolized her all-containing womb, which brought forth the living and took back the dead. The cave as the place of transformation was the binding link between the past and future of the men and women who lived in the forefront of it and held their religious rites deep in its interior sanctuary. Inside the cave were placed the stones that represented the souls of the dead who would be reborn from her womb.”

Baring and Cashford, ‘The Myth of the Goddess’, p. 18.

Jesus was symbolically “re-born” from the cave; the stone removed from the entrance.

If we want “literal”, it is only from the womb of the human female that we have all entered this world. This would also include the radical social activist Jesus who, as an unfertilized egg in Mary, was fertilized by Joseph.

Above, Leonardo da Vinci drew the inner child. Below, the last half of a poem by Billy Collins speaks clearly about understanding our lineage and temporary place in the long evolutionary cyclical path that goes from birth to death to birth to death, ad infinitum.

“And while I am at it,
thanks to everyone who happened to die
on the same day that I was born.

Thank you for stepping aside to make room for me,
for giving up your seat,
getting out of the way, to be blunt.

I waited until almost midnight
on that day in March before I appeared,
all slimy and squinting, in order to leave time

for enough of the living
to drive off a bridge or collapse in a hallway
so that I could enter without causing a stir.

So I am writing now to thank everyone
who drifted off that day
like smoke from a row of blown-out-candles –
for giving up your only flame.

One day, I will follow your example
and step politely out of the path
of an oncoming infant, but not right now

with the subtropical sun warming this page
and the wind stirring the fronds of the palmettos,

and me about to begin another note
on my very best stationery
to the ones who are making room today

for the daily host of babies,
descending like bees with their wings and stingers,
ready to get busy with all their earthly joys and tasks.

Billy Collins, from “Thank-You Notes”

The intention of myth is to take the stories of the human race and dream them onwards. According to Jung, our role today is “to dream the dream onwards and give it a modern dress”.

– continued next week

{ 0 comments }