Life on the Edge

For a year I lived on a farm in Korea that was run by an in-house Catholic priest and frequented regularly by other priests from throughout the country. They were wonderfully warm hearted men doing what they thought best for those in their charge. On the surface their public persona was exemplary. Behind closed doors, however, I learned of their being all too human, all to susceptible to the complexities of being human and all to susceptible to the many human frailties including sexual misconduct. I was saddened and appalled and left Korea with a hugh dislike for those in power who not only abused their power, but couldn’t walk the talk they were so ardently preaching.

That was nearly 40 years ago. Today I only have to look at myself and my own long shadow to see that being human—that being part of the animal kingdom—is to be set up for disappointment, if total perfection is what one aims for. Wearing the robes of goodliness is never sufficient enough to disguise the earthly animal donning them.

Late on Sunday, when most churches were having evening services, I planted the last of this year’s seedling trees. I held it up to the setting sun, much like a priest holding aloft a chalice or holy book, and with a prayer that honoured the miracle of its young life, placed it into the ground.

When I first started planting trees on this land 16 years ago, I strove for a 100% success rate ardently wishing, more or less expecting, that with enough understanding and technical expertise, this could happen.

The intervening years have taught me, however, that nothing can guarantee protection against the vicissitudes of life. We can water, we can fence, we can pile branches waist high, we can lay down mulch mats, we can increase the size of the the U.V. bags and we can use ever taller and thicker bamboo stakes, but in the end, just like the good priest in Korea, being of this world means being caught up in the wheel of chance where justice and injustice, righteousness and immorality, life and death are interchangeable.

On Wednesday, I spent the day in gale force winds re-bagging and re-staking trees that had been planted two to three years ago and were still surviving; trees next to, but outside of the new protective fencing. I hammered over two hundred stakes into the ground and did my best to protect these struggling young trees from the wind and wallabies. Maybe all this work will be for naught. It could happen that this particular section of the cliff will remain barren despite all the many years of attention, discipline and dedication given to it.

Being human, though, it is in my/your nature to strive for perfection and to live in hope that growth—whether physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual—is an ever-present possibility.

Nine years ago I gave a speech at the Australian national Students and Sustainability Conference and my opening remarks were:

As you sit here now, charged in the belief that you can help sustain this world through your environmental activism, I want to ask you: What do you have in your personal belief systems that will guide you through the rest of your twenties, your thirties, forties and beyond? Life is easy, when it’s sunny. How will you pick yourself up, though, when the storms of life ravage your heart? Like the spider who daily mends her web, how will you mend your wounds? Eventually, your friends will move on, your lover will vanish, technology will make your job redundant, and you will be left with nothing but your fragile ego self to carry you forward. Can you do it? Can you do it alone? Can you do it without embodying the belief that the sustainability of self is intimately linked to a sacred Earth?

On Tuesday of this week, Allana Beltram—the Weld Angel in the above photo—came to Windgrove to walk the Peace Path and sit by the Peace Fire in meditation to seek inspiration, strength, hope and a way through some personally troubling times. It was bad enough when the Tasmania Police and Forestry Tasmania sued her this past month for her artistic civil disobedience action to protect the Weld Forest by sitting in a tripod dressed up as an angel. But this week she also found out that her partner, environmental activist Ben Morrow (who also happens to be one of the Gunns 20 people being sued), has been diagnosed with cancer. Thirty three year old Ben spent nearly a year in the threatened forests of Tasmania’s Styx Valley at the Global Rescue Station helping to raise awareness of the plight of Tasmania’s ancient forests.

So how will Allana deal with this double whammy? How will Ben heal himself? The questions I asked nine years ago still resonate for me because these eco-warriors who are there on the front line need to remain with us in this world in ways that are physically, emotionally and spiritually vigourous.

At the conference I ended the speech with: “In thirty years’ time, I want all of you back here for another conference, still active in the environment movement, still compassionate about the Earth, still in love with life, still living a life of integrity, courage, compassion and humour. Do what is necessary now to make sure you’ll be here in the year 2028. It will come.

Become one with nature. Embody this truth and it will sustain you. Even in your darkest hour, you are not alone. There is a great support network out there. Allow it to open you up to release the great shout of joy that resides in you and that has been waiting for years to come out.”

Beyond the support network of the natural world that I referred to in the conference speech, there is also the human support network. Allana and Ben need our help to both defend their separate court cases as well as to have money to give Ben the opportunity to seek specialist treatment. We need them.

Checks can be sent to:

The Ben Morrow Fund
C/O The Wilderness Society
130 Davey St,
Hobart Tas. 7000
Australia

Every sound
has a home
from which it has come
to us
and a door
through which it is going
again
out into the world
to make another home.
...........  David Whyte—from “The Winter of Listening”

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water
...........  Masuo Basho

Slowly, slowly over a period of three months, both outside in the weather and inside the warming house, the meticulous oil painting “Oasis” gradually emerged out of winter’s silent gestating darkness and into the world of Spring singing a vibrational tapestry of colour. Meditate on it long enough and one’s understanding of reality shifts into connective realms visible yet hidden; transitory, yet eternal where the sound of color resonates through one’s very soul.

During these same months, in the wee hours of the night while the oils were drying waiting for the next day’s thin layer, my partner Sally Horne also worked on setting up a web site. Today, with an excitement that goes with any creative unveiling, Sally launches her “Moonstone Mandala” into the public arena. For a more in-depth exploration—both visual and written—of “Oasis” and all the other mandalas painted here at Windgrove by Sally go to:
http://www.moonstonemandala.com

While there, discover how colour and pattern weave magic circles in sacred and profound ways; where every mandala has a home from which it has come to us and a door through which it is going again out into the world to make another home;

where Sally’s frog of emergence splashes into the age of the internet.

“As the Philosopher says,
He who contemplates a statue
Shares the thought of the artist;
The statue itself does not.
As the soul contemplates nature,
The spirit the light, and the mind
The stars, every eye sees into
The matrix from which it was born.”
Kenneth Rexroth

Wild Roaring Beach faces south towards the great Southern Ocean. If one walks north over the sand dunes and forested hills, one drops down about five miles later to the northern side of the Tasman Peninsula and the serene waters of Norfolk Bay. Surfers find this calm section of the peninsula dead boring, but kayaking across these waters over to the Forestier Peninsula is a sublime experience. Once there, it is only a couple of miles overland to the home of Jerzy Michalski, a painter of extraordinary skill and depth whose urban existential motifs contrast sharply with his studio nestled into the natural landscape.

Sally took one of her mandala paintings over to Jerry this past Sunday for some technical advice and, while seeing the two of them converse over some of the alchemical processes of painting, I was struck by the power of Jerry’s paintings—seen strewn about the walls of his studio in the above photo—to convey the utter desperate quality of the human experience when it is confined to the urban prison edifices of corporate temples of power. 

The matrix from which I was born allows me to empathise with the desperateness of Jerzy’s solitary male figures. This very personal matrix of mine, however, also allows me an “exit strategy”, so to speak, down the fire escape, out onto the road, out of the city and into the very real healing community of wild nature. From this vantage point, I am more likely to achieve a more capable compassion and touch the outskirts, at least, of poet Kenneth Rexroth’s other words:

“Ultimately the fulfillment
Of reality demands that
Each person in the universe
Realize every one of the
Others in the fullness of love.”

Both above quotes excerpted from the epic poem, The Dragon and the Unicorn.