Life on the Edge

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.

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, where Sally hopped off and walked back 17 kilometers, I got off at Echo Point for the 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 Basho’s poem:

The bee emerging
from deep within the peony
departs reluctantly

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.

This delicious looking, round, red apple is an organic apple. Many people talk about wanting to buy organic produce, but instead, choose non-organic because the price is cheaper. Most likely, these same people throughout the year give generously to environmental organisations.

However, probably more important than funding WWF or Greenpeace is to use one’s money to support, even demand, organic produce be sold at one’s local grocery store. I say this, not because organic produce is tastier and healthier (which it is), but because supporting organic and biodynamic farming is the single most effective way to help preserve and sustain our environment.

None or minimal chemical usage is part of the reason, but what I want to focus on in today’s blog is dirt; that layer of top soil that has to grow all the food required to feed six billion people daily.

Only a tiny portion of the earth’s land is capable of producing food. Current farming and forestry practices are diminishing this thin layer of fertile top soil. Organic/biodynamic farming seeks to bolster and increase the fertility of the soil.

How much of the earth’s land is available to grow food?

Imagine the earth is the above apple. Take this apple and cut it into four quarters. One part is covered by land. The others are covered by water. Discard these three pieces.

Cut this land section in half. One of these halves is covered with mountains, desert or ice. Discard this piece.

Cut the remaining piece into fourths. Three of these are rocky, too wet, too hot, too infertile, or covered with roads or cities. Discard these.

Only 1/32 of the apple remains.

The thin layer of red of this section represents the topsoil that must feed the world.

We had better look after it.

Parts of a Rilke poem, translated by Coleman Barks, read:

“...whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your house which you know so well.....

... with your eyes slowly, slowly, lift one black tree up, so it stands against the sky: slender, alone…

...tenderly your eyes let it go...”

What Rilke is asking is for each of us to find the courage to leave the safety and comfort of our daily lives and begin the journey to connect to the whole of life.

In a translation by Joanna Macy/Anita Barrows there is the added line:

“Now the immense loneliness begins”

The people for whom I have the greatest admiration are those very people Rilke is imploring. It is never easy to move towards the light. Instead of unconditional support, parents, partners and society in general make this journey even more difficult. Instead of being the bow and releasing the pilgrim like an arrow into the world (Kahil Gibran’s analogy), they tend to impede and cling. What advice they offer is couched in fear.

Therefore, to those brave souls willing to seek answers beyond the known, I offer a gracious love to your well being in the coming New Year.

To those left behind tending the home fires, I offer a gracious support and will pray with you that those travelling on the great journey will be kept out of harm’s way.

To all pilgrims everywhere, if temporary refuge is needed, Windgrove is available.

In another translation of Rilke by Robert Bly, there is this poem:

“Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.”

On the Monday morning of last week as I was driving off the Tasman Peninsula taking resident artist, Melanie, to the airport to fly back to the other side of the world (and over hurricane Katrina), our dear Margaret Scott departed as well; aged 71. Not, however, to another world. Her spirit and body will remain here, in and of this earth. It was only a few months ago that I presented Margaret with her portion of the Windgrove Peace Mandala and officially dubbed her a Windgrove Laureate (by kissing her twice on each marvelous cheek).

On a hillside cemetery near her home yesterday, son Marcus and daughter Sarah met with a Tasman Council officer to discuss her burial. I was present because the family had asked me to design a memorial—something subtle, something subversive—and I wanted to get a feel of where her physical remains would rest for the next long while, undisturbed except by time itself. 

The design will come. The task now is to plant thoughts and ideas like seeds into my heart and mind and allow them to do their thing and blossom when ready. Part of this preparation has been to go back through some of Margaret’s books of prose and poetry and re-familarize myself with her work.

Out of these readings I am particularily drawn to this poem Margaret wrote for her beloved second husband Michael Scott when he died.

“Elegies M.F.C.S.  1928 -1984”

1
At ten to twelve by the grandfather clock
in the hall you stopped breathing in your sleep.
I put down the telephone and came back
to the study door—as I’d come for years
with questions, news and jokes --
meaning, I think, to tell you you were dead,
but the light of the lamp beat down
on the arm and seat of your chair
and the darkness filled with glimmering books
reeled and shook with your absence as though
from the long stroke of a black bell.
The cat was mewing, mewing down in the kitchen
and I went as on ordinary nights to open a door
but this was the first meeting with life
from the new world in which no search
could find you, so I watched wary of strangeness
as the pleased arch of its back wound round
my legs, and it strolled, taking breath for granted,
down the path. There was no wind.
Nothing but garden trees rising against
the glow of Saturday night and the pulse of silence.

2.
Friends who mean to be kind speak of a happy release
and it’s true that in the week before you died
you couldn’t eat or walk, your mind was going.
You spoke of prisons and woke at night from
tormenting dreams of actions for negligence.
Between sips of Sustagen made at three in the
morning you called for documents, gave contrary
directions concerning capital trials and execution.
On the day of your death, your compassionate
philosopher’s face broke in chaotic fragments --
a nose sharp as a fin, a flake of dark moustache,
ulcers, a tooth, a harsh bubbling snore.
But time like your bones collapsed in on itself.
Your waking eyes were blue. You said, ‘Dear love,
dear love’ as tenderly as on that summer night
in the dunes beyond the yacht club.
Holding your hand, I remembered how you sat
by my bed on the day our child was born and,
to take my mind off the pain, gave a most lucid elegant
disquisition on contingent and necessary statements.
The hearing’s over now, the case is lost,
our past locked up beyond the reach of proof.

----- from “The Black Swans”; published 1988

----- portrait photo of Margaret Scott by Alan Moyle for the book “Margaret Scott: a little more”

When I lifted the lid on the Peace Fire this morning, the eternal flame inside had almost gone out overnight and only a thin trail of grey smoke indicated it was not yet dead. Carefully, thoughtfully, quietly, I tended to the fire's needs and made the flame visible once again.

The care of this world is a fragile business. The Peace Fire, environmental awareness or the health of any relationship can so easily be undone. "Fragile" is not too strong a word to describe the tenuous hold that love, peace and the environment have upon people. These are most often, as they say, "off the agenda" when priorities have to be made. It behoves all of us, therefore, to daily do those little actions that collectively keep the flames of hope burning the world over. As seen in the Balkans and elsewhere, peace and love can so easily be dismantled when one's moral foundations are cemented in centuries of fear and mistrust. The same holds true for the environment movement where, because of deep cultural and religious roots embedding fear of the earth into nearly everything, environmental protection can be dismantled as quickly as a spider's web in the wind when fears of job losses or mortgage payments or consumption habits get moved into a zone of uncertainty. Whether it be peace, love, or a healthy world that we long for, none will arrive at our doorstep prepaid or remain for long unless nurtured and carefully looked after.

This past weekend the Green's held an art auction to raise funds for Christine Milne's federal Senate campaign. The sculpture I donated, Five Ancestral Stones (see blog 24 May), sold for $3,100. The total raised from all the donated art was over $55,000. I was pleased, the other artists were pleased, the organisers were pleased, and most pleased was Christine Milne. Compared to the many hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by the major political parties through corporate, union or vested interest groups, $55,000 might seem a paltry amount. Considering the cost of television advertisements, it would probably only buy a few seconds of time. But what it represents to me, and I am sure to all those other supporters of Christine's bid for the Senate, is dignity. Yes.... a simple dignity gained from tending, in whatever way possible, the fragile fires of peace, love and hope for, and upon, this earth.

About a twenty minute drive from Windgrove is Remarkable Cave, a sea tunnel that is entered into from the back side at low tide to gain access to the ocean. Standing in it yesterday, two much used phrases came to mind: "tunnel vision" and "the light at the end of the tunnel". Am I guilty of the former when I constantly seek to have the clear felled logging of old growth forests stopped? Is the pain of the thousands of animals poisened during these operations, along with the deliberate destruction of their ancient ecosystems, blinding me to a wider, more encompassing and tolerant vision? Or, is the Future Perfect exhibition which opened last week in Hobart (showcasing the work by more than 60 writers, artists and thinkers) pointing to a vision that offers some light at the end of today's dark age mentality of forestry mismanagement? It is a constant struggle to stay informed and fully aware of all that is happening around us when government and corporate spin doctors are relentless in their paid occupation to hide the full truth of their actions. It is enough to make one crawl into a cave and hide.