A Summer Read…
‘When humans investigate and see through their layers of anthropocentric self-cherishing, a most profound change in consciousness begins to take place. Alienation subsides. The human is no longer an outsider apart. Your humanness is then recognised as being merely the most recent stage of your existence; as you stop identifying exclusively with this chapter, you start to get in touch with yourself as a vertebrate, as a mammal, as species only recently emerged from the rainforest. As the fog of amnesia disperses, there is a transformation in your relationship to other species and in your commitment to them. The thousands of years of imagined separation are over, and we can begin to recall our true nature; that is, the change is a spiritual one - thinking like a mountain, sometimes referred to as deep ecology. As your memory improves…there is an identification with all life…Remember our child-hood as rocks, as lava? Rocks contain the potentiality to weave themselves into such stuff as this. We are the rocks dancing.”
-John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess, ‘Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings (Philadelphia; New Society, 1988)
‘If we are the rocks dancing, then the force that evolved us from those rocks carries us forward now and sustains us in our work for the continuance of life…’
- Joanna Macy, ‘World as Lover, World as Self.’ (Parallax Press, 1991. 2007, 2021)
This time last year while I was on an extended summer break I spent a few months at a northern beachside community. This place is very familiar to me as it has been a family camping holiday spot for over 20 years, kind of like a second home. I never tire of it, the changing yet enduring beauty that is found in the natural surroundings, much of which remains largely untouched by the progress of the prevailing culture that loves to carve beachside land for houses. On one day while I was at the beach hundreds of small, smooth and coloured stones were washed up on the shore. I have never seen this before as the beaches on the eastern coast of NZ are mostly blanketed in classic white fine sand. These stones caught my attention and I attempted to gather one of each colour that I could find, eventually realising that it would be an impossible task to select a sample of all of the incredibly varied colours and markings, not unlike counting grains of sand. I took my small selection back to the caravan and spread a selection out on a small shelf, the others I took home, layering them in a big clear jar on the coffee table. Treasure. These stones contain no value in the world's economy but for me who gathered them, a priceless and mysterious gift. Mystery needs no explanation, but rather it is something that simply invites observation and experience. I can’t say why I was drawn to these small stones but I followed my intuition to gather and display them. Whenever I spot the gentle clues that nature leaves on my path I try not to dismiss or step over them. To stop for a moment and sink into wonder, (and if it doesn’t feel like an unnecessary disturbance to the environment), pick it up and put it in your pocket. This way the gift will be with you wherever you go, and one day when you feel it bouncing around beside you it might tell you why it caught your attention.
I live in a world of things which are satisfying for a moment but lose their appeal very quickly.I philosophise about living simply, of finding my way into some kind of utopian eco-village where everything is off grid, where the sun provides the energy and we ride bikes to get around. There we eat whatever we grow, there is no waste, and everyone gets along. There’s a small community such as this in the next town 5 minutes from my house, but I don’t want to live there, no, my dream is of a village somewhere in Spain or the South of France where the lavender is purpler and the grapes are older..and oh the wine!
There’s a part of me that wants to escape yet I am held, anchored in fact by something much greater than the sum of my own individual life and perspective which refuses to allow me to throw my rucksack on my back and make my own road by walking it, as if in reality I could, or would! No, this gravitational pull to stay connected to the space where I belong keeps me grounded. To want to cut out of the rat race, to disembark the hamster wheel is something I’m sure is a human desire at times. The thing is, if such a place even existed then it wouldn’t be long before I realised that I, in all of my complexities, would still be there. The same one who left the city for a quiet life would be present in the cloister of the hermitage, so when I think of leaving for a far distant country I realise it’s not the new destination that offers the change I’m seeking rather it’s the space of my own internal self within that yearns for peace and connection in the midst of what I often feel is a world out of control.
A year later, I am once again wandering the natural surroundings from my little beachside caravan, enjoying my daily ocean and estuary swims, walks through the sleepy seaside community, cycling under the rays of the setting sun and enjoying the cool night air under the watchful eye of the moon and the stars. For these moments in time and also in the context of a pandemic that is sweeping the Globe, life feels somewhat removed from the reality of the larger world I live in. It seems like Aōtearoa is held temporarily within its own micro-bubble that floats precariously on a planet as a macro-bubble that is being burst daily. But just reading the daily news as a way to start the day is an indicator that our bubble will burst soon, and perhaps then we will be able to live with sense of solidarity with the larger world around us.
On a day at the beach a few weeks ago I noticed another small individual stone on the tide’s edge, this one of deep red-cay tones, glistening in the water. I was on my way in for a swim so I picked it up and took it with me into the ocean lest it get washed away, holding it tightly in my hand as the waves picked me up, occasionally a gentle rocking and rolling and then the odd tempest and foaming dumping whirlpool. Later I placed it alongside the others that sit on my caravan shelf, it’s rich colour blending with the mosaic of stones, somehow adding a new and rich dynamism to this rocky community, somehow belonging.
I have just finished reading the book ‘World as Lover, World as Self’ by Joanna Macy. The cover was the first appeal, an image of a pile of stones sitting in a pool of clear trembling water, the same stones that could have been plucked off my shelf, a collection almost identical to my own. The bunch of stones that are imaged, and mine that are gathered represent for me our collective historical earth community, and the solitary stone, the most recent addition, myself, as a unique part joining and belonging to the whole. If what is depicted in the opening quote encapsulates the soul of the book and if true, (and I feel that it is), then these stones, this stone is a reminder to me of where I have come from. Dust that has been compounded and tightly packed, layer upon layer teeming with life that has found its way into the perfect shape of a little stone washed up onto the beach, one stone in the midst of many billions of stones, forged and formed into a life that can continue to be shaped, rough edges sanded, smooth surfaces appearing, colours of the earth braided with layers of ancestral history, embracing the shape of things now while continuing to morph and change into what might be.
And if I can embrace the idea that within me contains the same dust particles that have formed this stone, and see myself as being deeply interwoven and connected in and with the world around me, then I can find a way not to escape from the pressures of the world, but to be present, to contribute and participate in such a way that can bring about change, ushering in new ways of living and being together, all of the communities that call this planet home.
Postscript
Since writing this I have also read David Attenborough’s ‘A Life on our Planet.’ To encapsulate the depth, wonder and challenge of this book in a brief paragraph would do it no justice, but to say that it dovetailed beautifully with Macy’s work, both having a focus on deep ecology and the interconnectedness of all beings. Attenborough also brought to the forefront the idea that ‘our evolution is recorded in the rocks’, as fossils of our close ancestors, where creatures and particles can be found layer upon layer.
Both of these literary treasures have reminded, prodded and challenged me to continue to take seriously the plight of our planet. I have spent much of my working life dedicated to working with people in a religious framework which I have loved. Now I feel compelled to extend my focus and also attend to the rock that we call home, from which we were hewn and from which we depend on for a future. Perhaps working with people and planetary issues are one and the same and that as Macy describes, the time is now for a ‘co-arising’ and that a ‘Great Turning’ is upon us, as is the invitation Attenborough offers to our ‘Greatest Opportunity’.
‘If I don’t speak up, the rocks will cry out.’ - Biblical quote.