Year of Living the Community: Week 36

GATEWAY TO THE ECOZOIC

posting by Jana

I've been involved in a four-part Coursera specialisation "Journey of the Universe: A Story for our Times" since September of last year. The course features ideas like the Great Work from Thomas Berry and the Journey of the Universe from Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker. All the stuff that makes up the resource pool for this Community of the Cosmic Person initiative. 

Projects for the capstone course are due this weekend so I've been welding my little heart out. About a decade ago I figured out that (a) I can't draw (b) musical instruments take too much time to practice (c) I am basically abstract as a person so representational art is not going to be my thing. I discovered welding and the art of found-object sculpture...and knew immediately that this was a medium I could manage.

Consequently, my project for the Coursera capstone, in the "Media & Arts" track, is a found-object sculpture. Here's me going on about it:

Here is my explication for the course submission... hoping to inspire your next Ecozoic project! 

My project is in the category Media & Arts.

After this amazing course that conveyed so many ‘big ideas,’ I wanted to put words aside and let my intuition guide me with this project. My mode of artistic expression is found object sculpture; typically I weld metal pieces into abstract or representational forms.

My project was to create a found-object sculpture that interprets Berry’s idea of the Great Work – the shift in consciousness involved in human beings learning to be present to the planet in a mutually enhancing manner.

The concept of my piece is ‘Gateway to the Ecozoic.’ Using a gate as the ‘canvas’ represents the conscious, personal choice involved in moving from the Technozoic to the Ecozoic.

This project involved welding objects onto a metal gate purchased from a recycled building materials shop. Objects were collected from recycled building materials and also included natural objects and things I had around the house. The beeswax candles were the only new item I purchased. The focus on found objects represents a focus on alternative consumer practices: reduce, reuse, recycle!

The thing about found object sculpting is the iterative process between the ideas you start with and the objects you find which in turn reshape the ideas.

I knew I wanted to feature the elements. This turned into air (prayer flags, fabric strips); fire (candles); metal (most of the objects and the welding itself); wood (plants were included); water (yet to come); earth (planter pots).

I also wanted to feature play and celebration, two themes emphasized in the new universe story: colour (prayer flags, purple & green plants, red hooks), natural objects (shells, rock), interactive elements (chimes, washers to put on bolts, door handle to put into door plate, photo mobile).

Finally, I hoped to find ways to invite people to be fully present as they experience the object, incorporating as many of the five senses as possible: there’s an incense holder for smell; bok choy for taste; rocks and shells to pick up and touch; chimes to play for sound; photos for added visual interest. This represents how the idea that human beings are the universe reflecting on itself, which I find thrilling.

The creation process helped me focus and meditate on the themes of this course, and I hope that sharing this object with others will spark conversation about what it means to be ‘learning to be present to the planet in a mutually enhancing manner.’

Gateway to the Ecozoic - mixed media found object by Jana Norman

key to the Gateway to the Ecozoic

Year of Living the Community: Week 35

A BUSY WEEKEND OF FRIENDS & NEIGHBOURS

post by Jana

It's been a busy week around the CCP; everyone seems particularly snowed under at work. (I've been filming the first unit of the Certificate Course in Ecozoic Living on top of everything else. That project has a long way to go...)

gotta love the green screen!

There was time last weekend to make some Earth community connections. 

On Friday night the CCP Experiment Team attended a screening of Seed: The Untold Story as part of the Transition Film Festival here in Adelaide. There is nothing I can say that the trailer doesn't say better:

On Saturday, we trooped back to the same precinct, the experimental arts precinct in the northwest corner of the CBD, for an ACE Open gallery tour and installation events. Of particular interest was a body-centred performance art piece by Tongan Punake (traditional poet/master artist) Latai Taumoepeau called 'Ocean Island Mine'. Since CCP team member Mandy has long-standing connections to Tonga, we had a lovely conversation with the artist after her endurance piece finished. 

Another work by Latai was also featured as part of a larger installation called 24 Frames Per Second, an international collaboration focusing on dance outside of the black square of theatre. This piece, 'Repatriate', is also very confronting. Here's an interview with Latai about the work.

Finally, to close out the weekend, it was time to meet some new neighbours at a drinks get together down the street. Everyone knows us as the vertical garden house! 

lettuce from 'the great (green) wall' of Charlotte Place

All in all, I'd rate this past weekend as 5-star Cosmic for its immersions in the wonder of the processes of life in the form of seeds and the resilience of seed masters around the world; for the face-to-face connection and confrontation with eco-colonialism; and its gentle neighbourliness. 

And speaking of neighbourliness, here's a beautiful article Paul came across and shared this weekend, too. It's very clear to me now that my childhood friend, Mr Rogers, was a Cosmic Person through and through, defined by presence and mutual benefit. 

Year of Living the Community: Week 34

PRECISELY THE TIME WHEN ARTISTS GO TO WORK

posting by Jana

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work... There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. That is how civilizations heal.”

— Toni Morrison

This week BrainPickings featured the print work of illustrator Wendy MacNaughton and writer Courtney Martin, described as 'a mighty manifesto for our time and a testament to the only mechanism by which the creative spirit has ever pulled humanity out of every abyss of its own making.'

Read more about the project and find links to the artists' inspirations at brainpickings.org

It's pretty Ecozoic advice, I reckon. An excerpt from MacNaughton and Martin:

This is your assignment.

Feel all the things. Feel the hard things. The inexplicable things, the things that make you disavow humanity’s capacity for redemption. Feel all the maddening paradoxes. Feel overwhelmed, crazy. Feel uncertain. Feel angry. Feel afraid. Feel powerless. Feel frozen. And then FOCUS….

This is your assignment.

Year of Living the Community: Week 33

PROJECT GATEWAY TO THE ECOZOIC

a post by CCP convener, Jana

the 'canvas' awaits

As part of the Experiment in Ecozoic Living, I've been enjoying participating in a Coursera specialisation on Journey of the Universe: A Story for Our Times.  Three of the four courses are a varied and deep immersion into the idea of the Ecozoic era and the new universe story; the fourth is a 'capstone' course with a project focus. Learners can choose to work in one of three areas: Arts & Media, Education, or Transformation. As a way of exploring Ecozoic Living from a new angle, I've chosen Arts & Media and hope to complete a found-object sculpture. 

The idea of the sculpture is 'Gateway to the Ecozoic', thinking in terms of the 'shift in consciousness' towards human beings learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. Ecozoic Living is a conscious choice to enter into a new way of being, like opening a gate onto a new path. 

On the weekend, I found my 'gate.' (The actual farm gates and Victorian fence gates at the reclaimed building supply place were cost prohibitive but there was a rickety old metal screen door frame going cheap.)

This week begins the search for objects. I'm hoping to incorporate all five elements: fire, earth, water, air and metal as well as some plants. And I hope I'll be able to make it kinetic and interactive. It's supposed to be completed by mid-June so I've got my work cut out for me. 

Other projects in the course include a Cosmic Drive someone is hoping to create along a stretch of highway in Tasmania, a public information campaign on how to continue to observe one's Hindu commitments in ways that are more 'mutually beneficial' to the Ganges and the people of faith in that region, and an amazingly comprehensive curriculum about the new universe story based on the Montessori model of education. 

Unfortunately, there has been a technical issue and once we review other participants' projects we can't access them anymore. Someone in the group has taken the initiative to invite us to share more with each other on one of the discussion forums, which is great. I'm not alone in my hope that participating in the course will inspire, connect, and equip me for Ecozoic Living. 

It's amazing to realise that people all over the world are engaging with these ideas and the new universe story in such creative ways. 

Year of Living the Community: Week 32

locavore /ˈləʊkəvɔː/

post from Jana, Convener of the Community of the Cosmic Person

Apples from Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills.

I still like the 'locavore' idea. It sprang up, according to the Oxford Online Dictionary, early in this century as people began talking about eating locally produced foods as a trendy thing.

As a trendy thing, it soon became tainted with an elitist, farmers-markets-if-you-can-afford-them brush. And yeah, I'm not denying that the taint is real; healthy, fresh, locally grown produce is one of the markers of the increasing wealth disparity in Western industrialised countries. It's possible that to some 'being' a locavore is some kind of neoliberal merit badge.

“It’s a funny old world. ”

— Margaret Thatcher at her last cabinet meeting, Nov 1990

But eating locally produced food is a good thing when and for whom it is possible. It has the added bonus of built-in paradox: I pay a premium to be in solidarity with people for whom local production, for whom eating what they are able to grow themselves, is the way things are rather than a celebrity option. (I like a good paradox, which is why I've quoted Margaret Thatcher in a post about neoliberal wealth disparity (thanks, Maggie and Ron)).

Pocketful of posies from the Market Shed 

Buying local produce is a privilege and I am grateful for the opportunity and glad to be living in a city that hasn't sprawled so widely as to push 'local' produce out of range. 

Today I bought a variety of avocados I'd never heard of and was happy to find them misshapen with a stripe of mottled skin up one side. Is anyone else tired of perfect vegetables? And I enjoyed my conversation with the local apple grower who said the Pink Lady variety was late this year. Her husband's birthday came around and for once it wasn't coincident with the moment to pick the pinks.

King George Whiting and Flathead from the Spencer Gulf (B A Fisheries, Stansbury)

Last week, the CCP Experiment Team took a short break for a couple of nights at Innes National Park on the Yorke Peninsula. On the way, we stopped to buy some local fish from the shed at the back of a house on a regular suburban block. The fish was good and the peculiar conversation with the fisherman was a bonus. 

rooftop lettuce and herbs, CCP HQ in the Adelaide CBD

Of course, nothing beats homegrown: zero food miles, immediately fresh, and you don't have to talk to the producer (unless you like talking to yourself). 

“Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good. My life orientation is that simple. It is also that pervasive. ”

— Thomas Berry

So if I don't think being a locavore is anything to trumpet about, why am I writing this post about my locavore adventures? Because popular or not, buying local is a good thing that fuels my Ecozoic Living. And when I'm eating my salad of home grown greens topped with pink apples and wonky avocados, I'll just be happy. And I like to share what makes me happy. 

Year of Living the Community: Week 31

IT'S A REVOLUTION

Jana, posting for the CCP Experiment Team

Limes in abundance are part of the lush growth of The Mulch Pit community garden in Darwin. Photo by Cosmic Person and TMP facilitator Lucy. 

“(Permaculture is) a revolution. But it’s the sort of revolution that no one will notice. It might get a little shadier. Buildings might function better. You might have less money to earn because your food is all around you and you don’t have any energy costs. Giant amounts of money might be freed up in society so that we can provide for ourselves better... So it’s a revolution. But permaculture is anti-political. There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends.”

— Bill Mollison

In the course of finding material for this week's daily Cosmic Quotes, I looked to Bill Mollison, founder of modern permaculture. Mollison died in September last year; his birthday is coming up this week, 4 May. He would have been 89 this year. His co-developer, David Holmgren, is considerably younger and is still going strong. Earlier this month Holmgren was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from CQ University which last year launched a graduate certificate program in Permaculture Design. 

My permaculture teacher is an amazing woman named Rosemary Morrow She's taught permaculture all over the world and continues to guide groups via Skype in Afghanistan, Greece, Argentina (to name a few pins on her map of influence).

“I think this was succinctly put by Bill Mollison (co-founder of permaculture) when he said: Permaculture enables what is morally required and scientifically necessary. So for me, a scientist with moral learnings and wanting to be part of the solution and stop being part of the problem, permaculture through its principles and strategies meant that I didn’t have to do my own research, nor put together my own framework. It fell into place and gave my life foundations and meaning. I love living permaculture because the techniques are not always evident and so there is always room for creative personal response.”

— Rosemary Morrow

It was a permaculture design class with Rosemary in Darwin 8 years ago that inspired Cosmic Person Gai Nowland and me to suggest to a group of friends that we try converting an unused hard scrabble parking lot into a garden. Soon enough - since things grow quickly in the tropics - The Mulch Pit emerged. Gai coined our motto all those years ago: Veggies grow in veggie gardens, flowers grow in flower gardens...and people grow in community gardens.

The Mulch Pit permaculture garden, Rapid Creek NT

It was the permaculture basic motto that caught my attention all those years ago and still guides my life and work. Care for people; Care for the Earth; Enough for all. I think it's pretty Cosmic. 

Here's the Cosmic Quote from Bill Mollison:

Year of Living the Community: Week 30

Jana, posting for the CCP experiment team

'IT IS A QUESTION WE MUST ALL DECIDE FOR OURSELVES'

Twitter can be so full of shit. I persist in using it, though, because I'm a realist and shit is real. But I'm a beauty-hungry realist and sometimes even Twitter connects me to Ecozoic beauty. Like this morning, when I followed a lead and met Lyla June Johnston. Her Twitter profile includes a link to her website Sodizin. It's really beautiful. 

The question referred to in the title of this post is from this poem. The question Lyla June poses is, 'What is civilisation?' She raises it in the context of a poem about her grandparents being part of a group of Indigenous children at a school run by the Dutch Reformed Church near Gallup, New Mexico. They were told, in hundreds of ways big and small, that they were uncivilised.

“Beautiful children like my grandparents
with smiles so pure and hearts so loving
were told they were a broken form of human
with every word and action.”

— Lyla June Johnston

It's a story we're familiar with here in Australia, the Stolen Generation being taken from their parents 'for their own good.' Lyla June names the same phenomenon in her native land. 

“There is a stolen generation who
even though they spoke our mother tongue
did not teach it to their children
out of fear they would be punished as they were.”

— Lyla June Johnston

The poem is a declaration of what Lyla June calls 'Indigenous renaissance,' a powerful statement of resistance to the diminishment of any peoples. 

“Our generation today,
we are reawakening to our beauty now
in this Indigenous Renaissance.
We are here to declare
that we are beautiful, we are respectable, we are virtuous
as we are.”

— Lyla June Johnston

I find her words generous and welcoming, especially the invitation to kinship, an invitation extended through insights into the beauty of the Navajo language. 

“Níłtsą́ means rain in Diné Bizaad (The People’s Language/Navajo Language).

The cross-L letter in our alphabet (ł) is an aspirated sound
made when you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and breath out.
There is no sound really, just the air breathing outward
like an -S- sound of someone who speaks with a lisp.”

— Lyla June Johnston

To learn more about Lyla June and her work, here's a bio on the Center for Humans and Nature. 

“Whoever you are: Ayoo Anííníshní, I hold indescribable esteem for you
because you had the courage to come to this world as human
and fight this great battle between what is far from Creator
and what is close to Creator. May your path be blessed always.”

— Lyla June Johnston

Year of Living the Community: Week 29

MEETING FIRE WITH FIRE ON A SACRED MORNING

Easter, for all of its plastic eggs and millennia of pomp and ceremony seeking understanding, still manages to keep its heart of wonder: new life emerges from death, a thing worth celebrating.

From yesterday's ABC News:

"Since pre-historic times, people have celebrated the equinoxes and the solstices as sacred times," University of Sydney Professor Carole Cusack said.

"The spring equinox is a day where the amount of dark and the amount of daylight is exactly identical, so you can tell that you're emerging from winter because the daylight and the dark have come back into balance.

"People mapped their whole life according to the patterns of nature."

In the roof top garden at CCP HQ this morning, we greeted the dawn and tried to match fire to fire. 

People mapping their whole lives according to the patterns of nature...good plan. Celebrating balance. Also good.

“Dawn and sunset are the mystical moments of the diurnal cycle, the moments when the numinous dimensions of the universe reveals itself with special intimacy. ”

— Thomas Berry

The stories of Easter celebrate the numinous of dawn, when things are set free and go on ahead, drawing us forward to the More. 

Matthew 28:1-10

The Resurrection of Jesus

28 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Year of Living the Community: Week 28

STAR GAZING AND NAVEL GAZING

The CCP team watched one night of the ABC Stargazing Live 3-night program this week. Sadly, we can't claim to be amongst the 10,000 viewers who discovered a new solar system when 'The show's viewers were called on to hunt exoplanets (beyond our solar system) by analysing observations of about 100,000 stars via the Zooniverse website and recently downloaded data from the NASA telescope.' A professor of astrophysics at Oxford, Chris Lintott, said the discovery will help them test how planets are made. Closer to home, experts were unimpressed (a NSW prof says,'These discoveries are common as dirt nowadays' - party pooper). Brian Cox, host of the program, thought it was significant, and that's good enough. 

Plus we were introduced to Space Gandalf.  

As for the navel gazing, CCP is checking in with Arne Naess's idea of living in a Deep Ecology way. The notion of 'tends toward' is helpful so that this doesn't become another way to beat ourselves up. How are we tending towards these things this week is vibrant reflection for 'learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.' 

Deep Ecology & Lifestyle, Arne Naess (1984) 

Year of Living the Community: Week 27

STARGAZING LIVE

Suddenly, all that's known about the universe at this moment is going to be on TV. How cool is that? 

That's the week for CCP planned then:

ABOUT

Over three consecutive nights across both ABC, ABC2 and ABC iview, renowned British Professor Brian Cox and presenter Julia Zemiro are joined by a cast of Australia’s leading scientists and some familiar faces to inspire the nation to ‘look up’ and appreciate the unique wonders of space and our cosmos.

Broadcasting live from the Siding Spring Observatory, on the edge of the Warrumbungle National Park near Coonabarabran, NSW, Professor Cox and Julia will lead a breathtaking journey through space, using state-of-the-art technology and interacting live with viewers. 

Professor Cox and Julia will be joined by experts including astrophysicist Dr Lisa Harvey-Smith from the CSIRO; astronomer Greg Quicke; Indigenous Australian Michael Anderson who, as a senior Lawman and a knowledge holder, shares some of the ancient wisdoms of his Peoples' connection to the universe; and 'Citizen Science' advocate Dr Chris Lintott. Joining the experts will be familiar faces including actor comedian Josh Thomas and Gardening Australia's Costa Georgiadis as they take part in exploring space. ABC News Presenter Kumi Taguchi will also help anchor the series and take part in regular live crosses. 

There’s nowhere better in the world to cast your eyes to the heavens than the Southern Hemisphere. Here we can see more bright stars and constellations than in the Northern Hemisphere – and it’s not just because the skies are clearer. From the great southern land, we look directly out into the vast heart of the Milky Way. Siding Spring Observatory is regarded as Australia’s premier optical and infrared astronomical observatory, operated by the Australian National University, and it’s from here that viewers will be taken on a stunning ride through the universe.

With a mixture of live crosses and pre-recorded segments that will take viewers on a space odyssey, Professor Cox and Julia will look at the Milky Way (episode 1), Planets (episode 2) and Aliens(episode 3), teaching us everything we’ve always wanted to know about the Solar System. 

In their own unique style, the pair will tackle some of the most intriguing questions in astronomy, such as what happens if you were sucked into a Black Hole, and do aliens exist? Closer to home, there will also be hints and tips for getting started in stargazing and advice on navigating your way around the skies.

Following each night’s Stargazing Live broadcast on ABC will be Stargazing Live: Back To Earth, a 30-minute special on ABC2 in which viewers can use social media to put questions directly to Professor Cox and Julia, send in their favourite astronomy pictures and take part in astronomy related discussions and debates live on air.

Throughout the series, the Stargazing Live audience will be encouraged to help make scientific history as they’re invited to join an online experiment to discover a brand new planet, far outside the confines of our solar system.