Life on the Edge

Winter solstice eve in the southern hemisphere. The sun sets early; too early. Pushes the man, who has been outside sculptling, inside to find the hearth’s warmth. Pushes him inward, into himself, to fathom this longest passage of dark time. By fireside, as a second, tinier “winter sun” heats up both the soup and those great paws of hands that have fondled tree and stone some 60 odd years, the man wonders just how many more of these great turnings of the earth and sun he will witness before becoming too witless to know what it was ever all about.

He thinks of what still needs to be done on the land upon which he dwells. He thinks of his teacher, Wendell Berry, and a line from this farmer’s poem, A Vision: ... a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here...

On this winter solstice eve, a chilling winter rain is blown through the dark. As the ground moistens and softens up for tree planting, a possibility is nurtured and a calculation is made on how many more trees need still be planted before “an old forest will stand”. Fifteen thousand. On average, he puts in 400 per year. Looks like he’ll be putting in the last trees on his 100th birthday. Looks like he needs to keep his wits about in order to be around to witness forty more winter solstices.

A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our season welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
along the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windrows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.

Wendell Berry

In last week’s blog, we read that the poet, Kabir, found god in a ceramic vase. In this week’s newspapers, we read that Paris Hilton has found god in jail. The “bearded one” certainly abides in mysterious places.

What about a lump of wood?  Why not? To say that someone is “as thick as two planks of wood” usually connotes a high degree of stupidity. But, if one regards wood as having special characteristics, such as intrinsic value or that God resides within, well, then, just possibly, we could be giving the “two planks” person a fairly high compliment; a compliment usually reserved for the pope or the Dalai Lama.

Take the above close up photo of a piece of split firewood, for instance. With its nice rippling waves and golden color it makes me think of the curly hairs of the goddess, Venus. Definitely sensuous. Lots of places to hide in; certainly better than jail. Moreover, this piece of wood can be inhabited by whomever or whatever I want. This is the artist’s prerogative. Or, the poet’s. Or, the shaman’s.  Or.... the child’s.

As a kid, my understanding of God was defined in the basement Sunday school class beneath the Christian Science church (not to be confused with Scientology). Here, the “Father/Mother” god of founder, Mary Baker Eddy, was gently hammered into our formative brains as being, along with Truth and Love, “Mind”. 

God as mind. Very abstract; very Buddhist.

As a creation story, taking a bit of dust and blowing one’s breath/spirit onto it and creating something that can walk is, to my way of thinking, rather impressive. So, seeing as how kids play with sticks, dolls and anything else and can animate them—i.e., bring them to life in the Biblical sense—it would appear that to be godlike one has to have the mind of a child. Or, at least, the imagination of one; a mind that can easily connect with the greater, sacred whole. Therefore, as adults, since we all have minds, we’re also capable of transforming objects into subjects, nouns into verbs. All it takes is a bit of imagination.

It might be considered child’s play, but to imbue life into the inanimate is certainly the work of a great mind.

Life here at Windgrove gives many opportunities to practice using one’s imagination to see the inner reality of seemingly lifeless objects. Trees do have tongues, stones exude wisdom and teddy bears are compassionate. Grass, clouds, firewood, vases, whatever...... they all hide fantastic personalities within and they all speak from the one Mind. 

And, they can be a great comfort in times of loneliness. 

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.

Both by Kabir (1440--1518)

1

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.

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.

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

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 million 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 paints, I carve. But of what? And, why?

Hard questions to answer even though we both constantly pursue answers.

Speaking for myself, I suppose that, if anything, I am trying to make visible the numinous quality of nature; at least give hints of it. But it is so complex that I sometimes tire of asking the questions. What helps, though, is thumbing through the well worn pages of any of my poet’s books. Today, it’s Rilke’s “Book of Hours: Love Poems to God” (translation: Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy).

Wir durfen dich nicht eigenmachtig malen

Piously we produce our images of you
till they stand around you like a thousand walls.
And when our hearts would simply open,
our fervent hands hide you.

Writing in Germany about the Italian artists, Rilke also said:

Ich habe viele Bruder in Sutanen

More I don’t know, because my branches
rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.

Just maybe I shouldn’t spend so much time trying to figure things out. Just maybe I should just keep carving and let what flows out of my hands speak what needs to be spoken.

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Today is an important day in Windgrove’s history as it marks the end of one stage and the beginning of another. This new stage is about enhancing the existing infrastructure at Windgrove and to allow for the design, building and running of small programs that will deal with the creative process of healing ourselves, the land and the world at large.

Nearly three years ago, a planning process involving eco-development consultants, the Tasman Council, surveyors, road construction crews, lawyers, land conservancy people, environmentalists, friends and neighbours was begun. In the mail this week I finally received the titles to two new blocks of land: that portion of Windgrove’s land that has been subdivided off as a strata title development. The long wait and protracted negotiations have insured that whoever buys into Windgrove will be buying into a very unique, special and stunning landscape. 

In the book, “The Devil in Tim: Travels in Tasmania”, the author writes: If there is a piece of paradise on this earth, the sculptor and environmental philosopher, Peter Adams, has come close to finding it with his coastal property Windgrove, overlooking Roaring Beach and Storm Bay on the western side of the Tasman Peninsula. Tim Bowden then proceeds for the next eight pages to describe what is here. Not bad publicity, if one is looking for it.

Well, I am, because Tim Bowden’s honest words, rather than those of a real estate agent’s, is what will help sell the land.

Both blocks (one at 9 acres and the other at 15 acres) border the Roaring Beach Conservation Area (a status almost akin to being a National Park), have excellent views to the ocean and have excellent building aspects to the solar north. The land is strata titled which means that, although they will be privately owned, the blocks will remain part of the whole of Windgrove and are protected by the established by-laws of Windgrove. For the most part, these by-laws reflect environmental concerns, thereby, protecting all households living at Windgrove from damaging development.  More importantly, the by-laws ensure that those who chose to live here do so because they are in accordance with and supportive of Windgrove’s philosophy of living in harmony with the environment.

The driveways have already been put in and the two house sites (nestled in coastal trees around 30 metres/100 feet above sea level) have been cleared and are ready for building upon. 

And so today, my partner, Sally, and I are officially announcing the sale of a portion of our home, Windgrove, to the public; first, via this blog and later in the year, through other channels. My reason for going through this blog is that I feel that anyone who has been a regular reader of “Life at the Edge” will understand what is on offer and how living here and being surrounded with good neighbours is as important as the view from the window. 

For anyone interested in building a home here and joining the Roaring Beach community for a life of relative quiet surrounded by native bush and a fantastic surf beach at your doorstep, well, this is your chance. To chose to buy this land is to also chose to support the future of Windgrove as the money earned will be invested back into the many aspects of Windgrove.

For further information or to register an expression of interest, please contact:

Oh, Lord.

Life has tumbled me in so many harsh ways that, now, the bones of this scrubbed body lie clean and free of the last resistance to Love.

Take these then,

And, at cliff’s edge, place in a nest of she-oak needles, lichen and bedfordia.

Softly,

Your heart flies in on dimming light. Touches down, caresses. Makes me feel finally whole.

So who comes to Windgrove to partake in its natural beauty and restive charm?

Disembarking from the bus are 50 people from the states of New South Wales and Victoria; here in Tasmania and Windgrove (last Friday) as part of a tour organised by the Australian Garden History Society. These people are mostly 40 years of age and above (way above).

The bottom photo, from a weekend visit by Heidi Douglas and Paul Oosting on either side of my camera shy partner, Sally, are people of a much younger generation.

Between the two groups, are there generational clashes or do they share some things in common? Being at Windgrove certainly gives them a bonding of sorts. But beyond that, what I hope is that all of them are motivated enough in their concern for the earth that they will use whatever skills and talents they have to speak out for the care of the earth. Either that, or use their financial resources to fund others to speak for them.

I enjoyed guiding the Garden History society around as they were truly knowledgeable, inquisitive and understanding about the environment. Who knows on what side of the political fence they stood? What I can infer, though, is that they would want the environment and, especially, Tasmania’s natural heritage, to be protected from unscrupulous development. Wood chips; no way. Pulp mill; no way.

Heidi is being sued by the southern hemisphere’s largest timber company, Gunns, because of a documentary film she made about the woodchip industry in Tasmania. Paul heads up the Wilderness Society’s anti-pulp mill task force. For little earned money, both have invested much of their time and emotional energy for the sake of us all. We, of the baby boomer and older generations, owe them much gratitude for carrying the activist banner we might have dropped behind as weariness, pessimism and a touch of cynicism crept into our lives.

Sally’s painted stone mandala is an engagement present. Like the older generations before them, one thing Paul and Heidi will be honouring is the tradition of getting married.

Now, if only someone in the bus tour or elsewhere would help with Heidi’s legal costs.