Beyond Windgrove

Our children cannot enjoy — and learn from — the gifts of Nature if all the adults in their lives are saying one thing (get outdoors) and doing another (staying inside).
Richard Louv

Following on from my blog of yesterday describing the tremendous adventure my neighbours and I had directly witnessing the brunt of a very visceral gale, the above quote from Richard Louv can only confirm that living at Windgrove is one big authentic commitment to getting outdoors.

Go through the center of the earth from Windgrove and you will almost find yourself near the spot where Izabel (from Brazil) is sitting on a rock overlooking the Atlantic Ocean along the Devon coast in England. The water molecules crashing at Windgrove a few days ago will someday soon be crashing along the Devon coastline.

After co-teaching my two week course at Schumacher College with Fritjof Capra in May of this year, I stayed on as a “humble” student for an extra week to attend the “Child in Nature” workshop (along with Izabel) that was co-taught by Richard Love (pictured in hat with wife Kathy) and artist Jan van Boekel.

Two fellow students — among the 20 exceptionally talented participants — were Annelies Henstra from The Neatherlands and Darren Southern from England. She was working on a supplemental resolution to the United Nations charter of human rights to include The Child’s Right to Nature. He, with difficulties in hips and knees because of a land mine in Bosnia, was physically active in providing emotional and outdoor experiential support to children-at-risk.

It was here at Schumacher College that I heard Richard Louv speak the above quote. It was here that I realized that, despite the good intentions of most people, finding the time and place in our increasingly busy urban lives for nature makes Louv’s quote more of a depressing reality than a cautionary warning.

One of the great combined intellectual/experiential days of our week together was to be guided by Stephan Harding on a 4.5 kilometer walk where each meter represented 1,000,000 years of evolution. Starting with the formation of our earth 4.5 billion years ago we walked — step by imaginary step — through the Hadean, Archaean, Cambrian, Ordovician Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic and Jurassic. This 4.356 kilometer portion of the walk representing 4.356 years took us past the ice cream stand, but the first flowering plants hadn’t even arrived yet. They and the first fossils of insects and modern mammal and bird groups came in the next 80 meters (80 million years) in the Cretaceous Period.

We still had to walk 63 meters through the Tertiary Era until finally reaching The Holocene, the last 10,000 years of the earth’s (and our human) evolution. Out of 4.5 kilometers of walking, it was only the last 10mm or half inch on a tape measure that represented the beginning of “agricultural civilization”.

The time since the Industrial Revolution when, supposedly, modern civilization took off, is a mere 0.2 of a millimeter.

Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

Certainly, time then for all of us to get out outside to learn to love nature before we have lost everything. And not tomorrow.

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In May of this year I left the warmth and security of my Windgrove home and began the 40 hour journey to England to co-teach a course with Fritjof Capra at Schumacher College where students from nine countries attended (Ireland, Canada, Slovenia, Brazil, Norway, England, Scotland, Thailand and Spain).

High above Asia on a tiny screen I viewed the movie Avatar. Although the violent solution to the problem of getting rid of the “invaders” seemed to undermine the possibility of a sustainable peaceful future (expect to see a return to the planet with bigger warships and thousands more soldiers), I found the overall message that, whether called Earth or Pandora, the land has a powerful, spiritual and potent voice. And her names are Eywa and Gaia.

Schumacher has it’s own “Hometree” in the form of a towering chestnut tree. How useful, then, to be able to teach at Schumacher and have this tree’s undeniable energy available to us all.

The course Fritjof and I taught revolved around Leonardo Da Vinci and how Leonardo’s sensibilities as both artist and scientist could give people today a model of how we might live our own lives in order to create societies on Earth wherein all beings are seen in an interactive and interconnected web of life.

For educational purposes only (and not because either of us lacked what the other possessed), Fritjof and I took on the symbolic roles of artist and scientist: I, the artist, represented intuition, vulnerability, passion, non-linear contextual, subjective behaviour, and emotive feelings. Fritjof, the scientist, represented raw facts, rationality, objectivity and factual linear thinking.

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“He who knows not both knows neither”
Robert Frost
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We didn’t argue the case of one side being superior over the other; rather, both sides were shown to be important to the debate. Like the two sides to our brain with the left and right hemispheres each having important functions (and moderated by the corpus callosum). Our present crisis of perception has more to do with the left brain becoming more dominant over the right brain rather than the two being in “dynamic” balance.

For my part, I delivered nine lectures that involved the showing of over 500 slides and the reading of 50 Roaring Beach stories and some 70 poems. Although all the lectures wove a web of interconnection, the one lecture that best summed up my intent was the one entitled “Becoming Earth, A Spiritual Journey”.

Beyond all the indoor, classroom “heady” stuff, what I found really important (in an Avatar sense) was the fire and tree guardian circle twenty of us created on the first day.

Eight blossoming fruit trees (four apple, two quince, two pear) were half buried in ceramic pots at the cardinal and sub-cardinal points of the compass. Within each pot, each of us partially buried a conically shaped hand made piece of paper that would become the repository of whatever we wanted “composted” during our two week course. Whether representing positive or negative emotional thoughts and feelings, flowers or leaves or twigs were put into the cone and the earth would bring its substantial energy to bear on transforming these elements back into the ground. This was our neural link to Ewya or Gaia. This kept us grounded.

While at Schumacher I gave one public lecture attended by around 100 local residents. I ended the presentation with a collection of prayers I have for those children who visit me at Windgrove. These are prayers for my “children”. Not in a biological sense, but in a relational way where I, Uncle “Peter Bear” and Windgrove can have a little influence in their physical, emotional and spiritual growth.

Children in any home are always a delight. Having children come to Windgrove for any time is a time to cherish.

These are my prayers for them while they are in my presence.

PRAYERS FOR “MY” CHILDREN

I pray that:

That they immerse themselves in fun so that when shadows arrive they can beat them back with fluffy pillows and plenty of giggles.

That they play “pick up sticks” and Monopoly and Scrabble and do jig saw puzzles; not to learn competitiveness, but to experience the joy of games and companionship and joint efforts to solve problems.

That they bang on the piano and my drum to feel how sound, any sound is music to the body; that they develop a taste for this particular joyful expression and yearn to be a member of a band or choir and to constantly, spontaneously, sing up the earth.

That they pick themselves up after falling out of a tree exclaiming how wonderful was the view despite the sobs.

That when climbing on the cliff rocks they learn to discern between being courageous and being foolish.

That when swimming in the bigger waves they learn respect rather than fear; that being tossed about by the surf might have an element of danger to it, but boy, is it fun.

That their sweet, innocent bodies and minds grow up understanding the privilege of being alive on this precious earth; of their role in the safeguarding of this earth.

That they are never shielded from the negatives of life, but rather shown how to continually embrace it in all its manifestations.

That their growth into a fully sensual/sacred person is never held back by social or religious dogma.

That the language they learn to speak in “school” is balanced by the other languages of the trees, birds, clouds, wind and worms.

That their love for their individual selves, their family, the greater human family and the outrageously large tribe of all living beings continually deepens throughout the whole of their lives.

These are my prayers for these children.

I also pray that I:

am seen by them to be an exemplary role model of how one can live in this precious world without ever abandoning — no matter how old — a child’s awe and imagination to call forth the fairies and pixies of wonderment;

am seen by them to be a person of trust;

and, hopefully, will always be worthy of a visit, every now and again, as they grow older.
Likewise, the fire would be the recipient of pine cones or pieces of paper and would transform these elements quickly into air and spirit.

Although not children in any sense of the word, Ekawee from Thailand and Ingrid from Brazil were the youngest people in my class. Along with all my students, I dedicate today’s blog to their ongoing happiness and continuing dedication to bringing peace to this world.

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Just a month ago I spent six quiet days at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in northern California — the oldest Japanese Buddhist Soto Zen monastery in the United States.

Meditating twice daily in the zendo with the monks and nuns while also quietly soaking in their hot spring tubs and gratefully dining on their world famous cuisine, it was relatively easy to drop one’s personal and global anxieties behind.

(Concerning the thoughtfully prepared vegetarian food, intriguingly, the traditional name, ‘Tassajara’, is from an indigenous word which means “place where meat is hung to dry”.)

I was surrounded by peace and rest.

My mind didn’t race.
My thoughts didn’t fly high.
My body slowed down.
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This Press of Time

We set the pace.
But this press of time –
take it as a little thing
next to what endures.

All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy.

Young ones, don’t waste your courage
racing so fast,
flying so high.

See how all things are at rest –
darkness and morning light,
blossom and book.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus I, 22
(translation: Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows)

This poem comes from the newly published book “A Year with Rilke” and is the daily poem for today’s date: August 25. I find its message continually important; even more so despite not being a “young one”.

In the river below the Tassajara hot tubs, the three stacked rocks were done one contemplative morning and they suggest to me what Rilke was writing about. The stone figure has hands in pockets, silently enduring, eternally pondering the age old question of whether or not one can step into the same river twice.

Now that I’m not in such a conducive meditative “environment” as Tassajara, I have to look elsewhere for the quieting of my restless soul. And that elsewhere, for the moment at least, can only be Windgrove.

My grey haired webmaster Allan Moult, standing on The Point, could be doing Chi Gung as he quietly tarries — touching the invisible holy?

And my shadow? It seems up in arms — either in celebration or frustration. You choose. But to me, certainly the former. Or, I would hope so. If I need a confirmation that my life is on a decent path (and, yes, occasionally I do need a supporting loving hug), I can go to the inscription Joanna Macy wrote for me in ‘A Year with Rilke’:

“For Bear — in gladness for your life at Roaring Beach and around the world, kindling love and reverence for Earth!”

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