SHE’S A PETITE little four-year-old, seriously castle building at the water’s edge under the watchful eye of grandpa. An errant wave splashes the shore and she shrieks with apprehensive joy. Further along is another group of children splashing in the shallows, oblivious to the fact that it’s far too cold for any adults to contemplate a plunge in the bay.
This deep fascination with water, much explored by psychologists and psychotherapists, and the inspiration of artists, poets, novelists and musicians, is the conduit to our origins. It is indeed what makes for membership in the community of life. In its
early stages of formation, our now blue planet was hard at work bringing forth water in all its forms and creative moods and calling from its depths the early stirrings which gave rise to the florescent superabundance of life forms.
In recent months the world has united in a massive outpouring of compassion as Earth’s waters once again exercised their transformative powers and roared into the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean with regard for none. The human species
realised its global dimension as never before and responded in ways that are rarely evoked by human-initiated violence and terror.
We have learnt a lot about tsunamis in this time and we have also been offered a clear reminder that we live within an unfinished creative event. We are caught up in an ongoing emergent five billion year planetary story. For many this has raised questions about the place of Divine Mystery and in this questioning we have needed to let go of a deity that is
interventionist. In fact for Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Jews and Christians, rich and poor, the recent tsunami has simply asked that we draw forth from the essence of our being the deepest of generosity and care.
Despite the traumatic pain and loss suffered by so many, we have heard little mention of blame or fault with regard to this event. In general it has not been attributed to a punitive God, whilst recent pandemics tend to evoke such thoughts for many. It is as if this catastrophic event may have been the catalyst to jolt u s, at least in the Western world, into another level of
communal consciousness wherein the myths and stories of past civilisations, so strongly rooted into the cultural memory, are no longer sufficient.
Rather, there is a sense that the Divine is literally embodied, incarnated, in the spirit of love that has shone forth in response to this apparent disaster. Instead of displacing emotions onto a distant sky god, there is a sense that the reflective, self-conscious species known as homo sapiens has within its power the potential to hold the chaos in its spirit and find within it a moment of new emergence and transformation.
Those of us who were in primary school in Victoria in the 1940s and following decades were given a wonderful introduction to literature through the Education Department Readers. In the Fifth Book we read the ’The Burning of the Rice Fields‘. This story tells of an old man on the high plains of Japan in one of the most successful rice seasons, just before the harvest. As the people of the fields were going about their business in the village down on the coast the old man looked out to sea and had
a powerful intuition. He called urgently to his grandson and commanded him to help set fire to the rice fields. The people in the village below looked up in horror at what was happening to their precious crop and ran up the hillside at great speed to
be more horrified by the sight of their revered elder and their youngster causing this destruction. In response to accusative remonstrations, the old man invited his fellow villagers to look out to sea — where a massive wall of water was rolling onto the land below, totally destroying the village and all that was on the coastal plain … the people of the village had been saved by the burning of their fields!
This elder of earlier times was deeply embedded in the vibrations and movement of his land. Similarly we heard in the media of the undomesticated animals taking refuge in the hills as the recent tsunami approached. What sense of connection to the rhythms of Earth have we humans lost? Given our innate natural attraction to the sea and the ingenuity of the human spirit, it is time that we listened to our deep memory and utilised our technology on a global scale to enable us to live within the rhythms of a powerfully creative Earth. If humans spent a fraction of the dollars used for weaponry and the perpetration of violence on others of our own species in the pursuit of listening more attentively to these rhythms we could surely reduce the
loss of life in all its forms.
Futile the study of Mars and Saturn without an embedded consciousness of and reverence for Earth as our place of belonging! The Great Work of our time is to live in mutually-enhancing Earth/human relationships and, with the powers of our imagination, to call forth from within ourselves a comprehensive compassion for all beings. The guiding virtue for this work is humility, a virtue whose name is drawn from the Latin word humus or earthiness.
Several of the articles in this edition of the journal coincidentally focus on the sea. Tim Winton offers us a glimpse into his love affair with the waters of the vast Western Australian coast. Rosie Baillie shares with us a young woman’s passion for
her bioregion of Port Phillip Bay, whilst Reba Woodwiss’s reflection re-enforces the damage and loss that the demands of commerce wreak on biodiversity in this area. The Flinders Ranges form part of the earliest land mass of this continent. Peter
Fawkner offers us a keyhole insight into the wonders of this area and its shaping by Earth’s powerful forces. Sheila Quonoey shares a brief reflection on ‘being there’ and Cath James offers an evocative piece on embodied memory. A sense of place is also celebrated in the Four Winds and Mittagundi projects and the acknowledgement of David Holmgren’s pioneering work in permaculture. Trevor Parton addresses an issue central to this journal through a conversation between ecology and spirituality. This conversation also lies at the heart of many current developments in education and Jane Scott looks at a transformational approach to environmental education while St Mel’s Primary School and Galen College tell us how they are doing it.
In addition we have poetry, art work, photos, book reviews, readers’ comments and some coming events. All of these are designed to draw us even more deeply into the process of hearing the song of our Earth and of responding to the melody in the practicalities of our daily living.
