Beyond Windgrove

Practicing what was learned

August 18, 2010

Last week I was swimming in the warm waters of Hawaii where palm patterns caught my attention. Today I am back in wintry, yet sunny, Tasmania trying to settle into a more “normal” daily routine than the coffee/Danish pastry/coffee one I “suffered” through for three months while whirling into and out of England and America.

Details will emerge over the next few blog entries, but for now, it seems worthwhile to juxtapose a few pics of the hands on gardening workshop I took at the Esalen Institute (along the Big Sur coastline in California) with photos of the tiny Windgrove garden taken just yesterday where I planted out seedlings of broccoli, cauliflower, spring onions and corn lettuce in one of the two “dome enclosed” garden beds.

The Esalen veggie garden feeds over 300 people per day. My attempt at a garden feeds no one just yet, except, of course, if nourishing the weary traveler’s soul by digging dirt is considered food. Nothing like dirty fingernails to sooth the disquieted soul suffering from separation anxiety; my separation from the daily chatty encounters with the many inspired people I met along the global path.

And if I have learned anything, it is that a very physical connection to earth is a prerequisite for sanity.

Another comparison worth making is between Esalen’s and Windgrove’s bathing facilities. On the one hand, the Big Sur’s Pacific coastline makes a dramatic background for the excellent hot tubs one can immerse into at Esalen (along with 3 or 4 others in each of around 9 tubs of various sizes).

On the other hand, the smaller Windgrove tub might only hold two people, but privacy is guaranteed.

I’m back among the dancing trees I call home.

{ 3 comments }

The bearable lightness of green

November 1, 2007

lake_clair_2

I walked through a myrtle, sassafras and wattle rainforest last week and it was akin to swimming through green light. A rare clear day allowed the sun to penetrate the umbrella’d canopy and make translucent and reflective the many thousands of leaves it bounced off of on its way down to the forest floor. Such magic. Such a change from the wind blown and stunted trees found at Windgrove; trees, that although beautiful in their fiercely gnarled way, don’t posess the soft, moist green quality that emanates from within a rainforest.

lake_clair_3 lake_clair_4

The path was along the shore line of Lake St. Clair (the last section of the famous Overland Track). After taking the ferry the full length of the lake, I returned a third way back and got off at Echo Point for a shorter 12 kilometer distance. The sign read that my portion of the walk would take three hours. It took me six. The knees were only a tiny part of my slowness as it was the green beauty I found myself immersed in that kept flooring me and to crawl along any faster was impossible. I just didn’t want to leave this bearable lightness of green. Most certainly, I felt like the bee in the haiku:

The bee emerging
from deep within the peony
departs reluctantly

Basho

lake_clair_1

{ 0 comments }

Science/Religion postscript

June 7, 2007

To carry on from last week’s discussion on the need to unite science and religion, rather than each of them disparaging the other, here are two simple, yet clear poems that address this unification.

science_religion

Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put
up a swing:
all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these
two trees,
and it never winds down.

Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the
wheeling sun and moon;
ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire,
and the secret one slowly growing a body.
Kabir saw that for fifteen seconds, and it made him a servant
for life.

2

Inside this clay jar there are meadows and groves and the One
who made them.

Inside this jar there are seven oceans and innumerable stars, acid
to test gold, and a patient appraiser of jewels.

Inside this jar the music of eternity, and a spring flows from the
source of all waters.

Kabir says: Listen, friend! My beloved Master lives inside.

Kabir (1440–1518)

{ 0 comments }

Seeking a greater Truth

May 31, 2007

sally_dennis_cave_1

We all want and need to walk towards the light. Moving into, through and beyond life’s mystery is innate. Discovering that the riddle has no answer should not stop us from engaging with this great unknown.

Both Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great, seek to separate science from spirituality. I have no argument with their contention that religions, (especially Judaeo/Christian/Islamic) have poisoned the world, but they throw the baby out with the bath water when they argue that humans need not walk a spiritual path.

The sacred text I keep returning to is the one written over hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary history and constantly proclaims awe, mystery and grandeur. Such a magnificent bible as this is enough to keep me in a constant state of grace and thankfulness.

Ann Druyan, CEO of Cosmos Studios and wife of the late Carl Sagan, gave a speech a few years ago where she questioned why science and religion couldn’t get along.

This makes no sense and it leads me to a question: Why do we separate the scientific, which is just a way of searching for truth, from what we hold sacred, which are those truths that inspire love and awe? Science is nothing more than a never-ending search for truth. What could be more profoundly sacred than that?

It’s a catastrophic tragedy that science ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life and it’s preciousness on this tiny world.

Ann Druyan feels that the roots of this antagonism run very deep. They’re ancient, she says.

We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It’s puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it’s more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It’s a horrible place.

So here are Adam and Eve, who have awakened full grown, without the tenderness and memory of childhood. They have no mother, nor did they ever have one. The idea of a mammal without a mother is, by definition, tragic. It’s the deepest kind of wound for our species; antithetical to our flourishing, to who we are.

Their father is a terrifying, disembodied voice who is furious with them from the moment they first awaken. He doesn’t say, “Welcome to the planet Earth, my beautiful children! Welcome to this paradise. Billions of years of evolution have shaped you to be happier here than anywhere else in the vast universe. This is your paradise.” No, instead God places Adam and Eve in a place where there can be no love; only fear, and fear-based behavior, obedience. God threatens to kill Adam and Eve if they disobey his wishes. God tells them that the worst crime, a capital offense, is to ask a question; to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. What kind of father is this? As Diderot observed, the God of Genesis “loved his apples more than he did his children.

To me, the true nature of the void remains unknown. For the good of all humankind and all living beings, I would hope that the superstitions of both religion and science give way to a joined acceptance of a universal truth that simply says, “Wow”. In the end, we will all pass through this particular portal of time. Where we exit from and where we will re-enter, is anyone’s guess. My footprints, and yours, will soon enough fade away, but let the love we have expressed throughout this life flow along the currents of time a little while longer.

Sally_Dennis_cave_2

{ 0 comments }

The colour of home

January 24, 2007

After a long trip away, how does one reconnect with home? After speaking in broken sentences for weeks in a foreign language barely understood, where does one relocate the language common to one’s self of well being? Tongues in trees as Shakespeare said?

I ask these questions because it has been just over two weeks since returning to Tasmania from my stay in China and time enough, I would have expected, to have gotten back into some form of rhythm here. Not so.

It was easy enough to open the door and walk into the house that is nestled in the grove of trees on the hill that overlooks the ocean. Harder, though, has been opening and walking into Windgrove’s larger house: the one that is the hill and the ocean itself.

So daily I venture out of the one house to try and familiarise myself with the other house. Some wanderings start off totally aimless. Other times, I have taken several groups of people around Windgrove’s Peace path or have worked clearing a new footpath through the scrub. But, in the midst of all this, I have kept searching for some clue, some hint, some hook to finally bring me back to this place; this land called Windgrove. My home. Something that will ease me back into a comfort zone of recognition.

Colour, oddly enough, is helping with this process. And the colour is green. Or, more precisely, lime green.

Yesterday’s evening sun reflected in breaking waves produced such a green. And, during recent rains, the wet eucalypt bark cracking off a branch revealed such a green.

lime_green_wave_1 lime_green_bark_1

The colours I associated with China were red and gold. Here, the signature colour of the land—the fresh perky quality of new green/ spring green—is bathing my spirit with a welcoming home coming.

How marvellous to reunite with such vibrancy.

This calls for a gin and tonic. And, a slice of lime, for sure.

{ 0 comments }

Back from China

January 18, 2007

China_Peace_Fire

I’ve been back for over a week now from China and have found the process of settling back into a “normal” routine is taking longer than expected. For sure, I am more than happy to be back on home soil and tending to the Peace Fire and such, but like the photo above, a partial fog hovers over my mood like a soft blanket of sadness.

For the past few days I have been mulling over what this feeling is about and from whence it comes. This morning I received the following email from my partner, Sally, who, after three months of living in China, is leaving in a couple of days to return to Australia. What she writes points towards this difficulty of adjustment.

I am sad to be leaving. Ready for a change from the hospital hours, but there is a part of me that would like to stay and enrich the relationships that have been slowly building, learn the language and get to know this nation’s people a little more. I will miss their friendliness and their gentle innocent humour. There is such a softness to the people here, and a softness between the people and an ability to live so easily amongst one-another, or on top of one-another. There is a basic acceptance of human nature and survival that I’m not sure exists at home. Less ego. Less toes to be stepped on (even though there are more toes around.)

Wandered through the streets. Lots of activity, different smells, red lanterns, street stalls cooking meat, flute music here, rock music there, handbags and high-heels, cars honking, bicycles, people. How will Australia feel after all of this?? I will miss this crazy place.

What she writes encapsulates clearly the pain all travellers experience (must experience) after immersing themselves into another culture and then choosing to move on to another place or returning home.

And “home” is never quite the same again. When I returned home last week after dark and after a 30 hour flight, two things stood out: the total lack of sound and the unpeopled sense of emptiness. No wind, no waves hitting the beach, no animal noises. It was as though the land had fallen quiet out of respect for what I had left behind. Eerie, it was.

So, we do the simple things to stay in touch; to rekindle the memories. Mornings still find me carrying on the practice of learning the Chinese language. I’m also looking into taking Chinese cooking lessons.

china_stone_2 More importantly, though, the stone from Taishan Mountain that I swapped with the Roaring Beach stone is now nestled among the other stones on the Ancestral Midden (it’s the brown and white one near centre bottom of the photo).