Glimmering, Lake Waikaremoana

1 Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

2 ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!

3 Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

4 The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.

5 Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

6 The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.

John Newton Olney Hymns, 1779

Each year this most famous of hymns is sung 10 million times or more. Each year it continues to inspire and offer a profound hope.  As Johnny Cash would say in 1990: For the three minutes that song is going on, everybody is free. It just frees the spirit and frees the person.

But how many of us know the back story?

In 1748, after being abused and treated as a slave, 23 year old John Newton was rescued by a sea captain sent to find him and bring him back to England. His previous five years in the Royal Navy had not been happy ones. His rebellious and difficult nature, along with undisciplined behaviour, attempts to desert and threats to kill the captain had led to him being flogged and demoted. Eventually the crew of the Pegasus, the slave ship on which he was a common seaman, lost patience and abandoned him in West Africa. Then the captain of the Greyhound had found him.

On the way back to England, the ship ran into a serious storm off the coast of Ireland and began to fill with water. It was at that point that Newton had had enough. He gave up, he surrendered and called out to God to save him. Later, in his writings, he would mark this moment as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. I once was lost, but now I am found, was blind but now I see.

It would be nice to think that the Big Finger reached down from Heaven, there was a blinding flash of light and he transformed from sinner into saint. But that is not the way things work. These things take time. And none of us is tasked with more than we can handle. In 1778, 3 years after his conversion, Newton would write: How industrious is Satan served. I was formerly one of his active undertemptors and had my influence been equal to my wishes I would have carried all the human race with me. A common drunkard or profligate is a petty sinner to what I was.

It was to be some years before he gave up the sea and the slave trade. But in that storm, tied to the pump, he had made the first step away from the person who had proved difficult, profane and impossible to live with.

He turned and said: “If this will not do, then Lord have mercy upon us!” Over the next 11 hours as he steered the ship, he would reflect upon what he had said.

From then on he sailed a gradual course towards ordination. In the beginning he gave up his notorious talent for profanity.  Further on he would give up gambling and drinking. Later he married Polly, whom he had deserted the HMS Harwich to be with, until eventually he became the curate of the parish of Olney in Buckinghamshire. His was not an overnight conversion, a n experience on the Road to Damascus,  where everything shifted instantly, where he was instantly changed. It was not until 1754, following a stroke, that he gave up the sea.

He would then study Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and theology and begin to work as a lay evangelical preacher. His attempts at ordination remained frustrated until 1764 when he was finally ordained and finally got his own parish.

His preaching would become so popular that an extra gallery was built in the church to hold the extra people who came. Much of his attraction was the way in which he wove in his own life journey rather than pontificating from the pulpit. It was this ability to relate to the everyday which endeared him to his audience.

Amazing Grace comes from forming an association with the writer William Cowper, considered by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to be the father of Romantic poetry.  Cowper suffered severely from manic depression and a certainty that he was damned.   The hymns came from Newton’s desire to produce a new work to accompany his sermons. The force of his personality and his evangelical conviction allowed Cowper some of the peace he so desperately sought. Neither man had come from a pristine, priestly background, yet between them they produced some of the most uplifting hymns of all time.

Curiously it would be Newton who assisted William Wilberforce’s spiritual conversion, persuaded him to stay on in Parliament, and ultimately led to Wilberforce being instrumental in the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. Wilberforce died just 3 days after hearing the Act was certain to pass. Newton’s journey had ultimately been a circular one which had  indirectly had led to the abolition of the slave trade where he had begun his own journey. Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home. Amazing grace.

Standing back from the events and clipping them together, it is impossible not to sense Something or Someone at work here, to get the feeling of a gracious, gentle loving hand moving at its own pace, gently rearranging the pieces on the cosmic chess board, moving in its own time and in its own way, moving on a scale beyond human conception, working to a plan beyond comprehension. Perhaps this is the joy of history; the ability to step back from our own limited perception and to see things on a (somewhat) bigger scale. Newton’s journey began in the slave trade and ultimately led to the demise nearly a century later of that which had begun his journey. He, of course would never see the fruits of his labour, just as grain of sand cannot see the beach or a chess piece see the whole game.

Newton’s journey was not a flash of light, an instantaneous conversion where one moment he was a sinner, the next a saint in flowing robes surrounded by a radiant aura. No, his was a gradual journey, a shedding of the old and a series of trials which shaped him into the force for good which would allow him to be instrumental in slavery’s abolition.

His understandings came not in a flash of light but a glimmering. The angel was in the process, not the moment.  The devil lies so often in the detail, not because it is intrinsically bad, but because it constrains and prevents us seeing what is in the distance. Eventually Newton was able to look up, to stare at the horizon and begin to see a bigger picture. History allows us to see beyond that to see one order of magnitude of intention beyond that. And we might ask where we fit into the Big Finger’s intention, in what  way our observation and repetition is part of a plan whose conclusion we will never see but in which we are participating, whether we  like it or not.

This photograph has fascinated me ever since I made it and I would like to share its conception.

It was a rainy morning and the mist was layering the lake and mountains, gently wrapping itself around the undulations and intimations of the landscape.  The tree under which we had parked was shaking itself in the wind, capriciously flicking raindrops from its fingertips onto the roof of the vehicle ( and us when we finally left its shelter).

For a time I stood there, looking at the monotonal scene, an unrelieved gradation of closely-packed greys that seemed to offer no way in, which seemed to offer no potential for an image. I was blind, but I wanted to see.

Then a Glimmering. A drifting in from left field, a whisper from my subconscious.  Listen. Observe.This is all about the horizon. Allow. Let go. So I put my camera on the tripod, frame a composition, format the card and begin to make exposures. As I reach the 80th exposure, a terrible ennui grips me, a tide of restlessness that rises up and threatens to swamp me, but it subsides around the 100^th exposure as I shoot through it and I pass on, move off into another time and place, the soul-time realm of Kairos , while only my shutter finger  remains, a an Achilles-heel  metronome which talks to the seconds until I emerge back into Chronos time,  when the card fills. I have 200 images of exactly the same composition, roughly 10 minutes of exposures a few seconds apart.  Not one is the same. A brush of wind on the surface of the lake moves a texture here, a ripple of movement there; the mountainside in the distance shows itself for a few frames than retreats back into obscurity.

Even the horizon shifts between suggestion and statement then back again. Time has passed, the Earth has turned and nothing is the same. Except it is. Plus ca change, plus c’est  la meme chose.

And the glimmering begins to take shape. There is a horizon. At first it is a Lightness, an unrelieved Monotony.  The horizon is invisible. There is no contrast.  Then, as I work on it, it changes, it becomes a Darkness.   and there is Contrast. I can now detect a horizon, a separation. Ranginui and Papatuanuku , Sky Father and  Earth Mother have separated, and their children have room to move, to breathe. Then, as I contemplate it further, I see a faint light along the edge, a dim perception which forms the horizon. It is Te Po e whai ao, the 11^th Darkness, where light begins to find its way in.

A Glimmering.

An understanding forms. A cognition then a re-cognition. A reminder that duality is the battery which powers the Universe, That Light and Dark need each other, as do night and day,  male and female, thought and intuition. The Tao Te Ching enacted and being constantly re-enacted.

And that the Big Finger needs sinners as much as saints to do his work.

Lady of Shalott

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay
She has heard a whisper say
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot …

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year
Shadows of the worlds appear
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot…

-The Lady of Shalott
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

All of us dream. All of us have visions.

It is how we celebrate those nocturnal visitors which make the difference. We can simply write them down as the by-products of a well-fed night out, with too much cheese and red wine, perhaps. We can put it down to the fact that we should know better than to overindulge (whatever that means, since it is different for each of us.

But the dreams come and the dreams go, and often they are like unwanted relatives who suddenly appear on our doorsteps when we least expect or want them. They knock expectantly and, when we open the door, smile benignly (a little too benignly) and invite themselves in. We, being polite and well-mannered (or weak, depending on your point of view) gasp and stumble and allow them to come in and make themselves at home, to take over our kitchens and lounge on our couches and even turn on our television sets and watch the soaps. We cede control and roll with the punches.

And, when they are gone, we put it all back together and get on with our lives. We reassemble the tattered shreds of our discomfort and badly-bruised and pick up where we left off, hoping that things are as they were before The Visit transpired.

Fat Chance.

For Things have Changed.

Things have Moved On.

Things are Different.

Things are Not the Same.

Dreams do that to us.

Just ask Carl Jung.

He knew a thing or two…

But what happens when Freddy Krueger turns up at the door? What happens when it is not just an overfed and ugly relative with whom you know you must share a genetic lineage (which is bad enough) but can conveniently forget? How do you react as Freddy scrapes his over-length claws along the pipe balustrade and claims to be family, all the time freezing you with his hypnotic and Knowing Smile?

What happens when the Prince of Darkness appears and claims a family kinship? Do you slam the door in his face?

Of course you do.

For none of us sees ourselves as evil.

I would imagine that, were you to go around Dr. Mengele or any of the guards at Auschwitz or Treblinka or Dachau before they were  sent there and asked them how they felt about what they would be asked to do, they would, to a man have reeled in horror. Some might, appalled by the vision, have committed suicide.

And some would have rejoiced.

Of course.

But not us.

Of course.

But in our dreams we get to experience who we really are.

Allow me to share a dream. But not all of it.

Now, like most of us, I consider myself a Good Person. I would like to think I have spent most of my life trying to make the world a better place. I really would like to depart having done more good than harm (although I will freely acknowledge that I have done some of that as well). I would like to think that I have been sunny and caring and put others before myself.

Well, I have. Some/most of the time.

But not always.

Because I am a Libran. And I know something of duality, of the contrasting and contradicting forces which flow within each of us.

Back to my dream.

Suddenly there I am, a torturer, carrying out an horrific act on another human being. On the one hand I am dismembering them, on the other trying to sellotape them together (Sellotape, for God’s sake!)

I am so shocked that I tear myself away from Freddy aka the POD and swim for the surface of the pool. I can feel myself straining to get to air, to the Light. I can feel my legs thrashing furiously as I strain for the surface. I am desperate to escape the horror of what I have been doing, to run from a part of me which seems frighteningly comfortable with what I am doing. I am aghast at what I have jut learned about myself.

My capacity for Evil.

But it exists within me. As it does in each of us. As it does in every one of us.

Then, as I lay gasping and sweating in my bed, having thrashed my way back to the surface of my conscious self, I began to understand where I had been and what had happened. What IT WAS ALL ABOUT.

For there were a couple of clues which helped me. The journey to the surface was fearsomely like an experience I had a few years ago, when I decided to face my fear of water, of being drowned and attempt to get my PADI Open Water Divers Certificate. As a small boy I remembered going on a picnic to a local beach with my mother. We stopped beside the river and she put up the deck chair. While I was playing, she snoozed off. It was a warm sunny day. I continued to play and, being hot myself, I went for a swim. I remember how the river current suddenly gripped me, wrapped itself around me and clutched me to its bosom, bearing me triumphantly away downstream.

For a time I was motionless, aware but impotent. Then a little sand brushed my feet and that gave me the impetus I needed. I wormed my way, bit by bit, out of its grasp until at last I had clawed my way back up the bank.

Then I returned to my mother, who was still dozing.

I never told her what happened.

But, when I took on the task of learning to dive, which meant learning to swim, which meant learning to defeat that experience and come to an accommodation with the ocean, it all came back.

But acquire the ticket I did.

Then, in my dream, I realised what it all meant.

I think.

For I encountered two creatures on my way to the surface.  As I rose through the waters, I saw a Great White circling below me. It was the Perfect Killer, having evolved over millennia to Locate and Destroy. It missed nothing. It saw all. And, like all sharks, it was a scavenger. It could scent the faintest molecules of decay and detritus along the edges of the ocean, down the highways of Time and come to remove them. I watched its black, lifeless eye roll sideways as it beheld me and, like Ishmael and the crew of the Pequod, I looked Shiva, The Destroyer in the eye. In this case, however, He appeared as a shark.it circled around me, coldly clinical and frighteningly Knowing.

Familiar even.

I shuddered. It was as if my Bad Dream had summoned it, as if it had been drawn by the power of my Dark Side. I waited in Fear..

But all was not lost.

For I heard a voice.

Down in the depths I heard a lone, forlorn cry. Down in the depths where even Great Whites dare not venture, I heard the Voice of Hope, of Reason. A long call down the ages.

I heard the Great Blue Whale.

Its resonant cry rose up through the depths and spiralled towards me. Like a spiral of blue light it enveloped me and drew me up to the light. The Wisdom of the Ages. The voice of God and Reason and the Creator, singing to me through the years, down the centuries, rising up from the past.

Salvation.

Affirmation.

Preservation.

And I began to understand.

In shamanic traditions, whales are the Keepers, the holders of eternal and oft-forgotten wisdoms. They dwell in the Depths of the human psyche, in the vast fathomless ocean of our subconscious, down in the darkness where most of us will/cannot travel. They hold the truths we all know, and sing them constantly to us, that we may remain in balance..

For we are creatures born to duality.

It is a prerequisite for being Human.

Like a battery we require two opposite poles if we are to exist. Opposite poles allow energy and therefore Life. To be one or the other is to suffer certain death.

Our job as spiritual beings on human journeys is not to embrace one or the other, to be purely angels or purely demons. To attempt either is certain immolation. That is not our Journey.

It is about finding the Middle Ground, about balancing the two, so neither holds critical sway. We are capable of Great Good but, in order to be able to do so, we need to recognise the shark within ourselves, to face ourselves in the dark ocean of our subconscious.

Or to sale across the mirrored surface of our existence and avoid that which swims below.

And that is acceptable also.

If ultimately pointless.

For we all know.

We have all heard a whisper say a  curse is on us if we stay to look down to Camelot …

To do nothing.

For a small bird, who gave up his life that mine might begin.

From time to time, across my life, as I have described it, there have been very big questions. And most of those questions have been ones centred on my spiritual tradition.

Each of us is born into a spiritual tradition in one way or another.  While many of us have never seen the inside of a temple or church or mosque, yet the societies in which we live draw their structures and mores from a tradition. Western society in general is based upon a Christian ethic with laws founded in ancient Rome.

I was been born into Christianity. I experienced it in the womb, as my mother carried me to church, and I overheard the priest whenever she went. His words ( there were no women priests in  New Zealand in the 1950’s as far as I am aware), would have carried through the walls of the womb and down the umbilical cord to me. Since her experience of the service she attended would have impacted upon her emotions and hence the chemicals circulating in her bloodstream, the Christian tradition was literally in my blood. It was fed to me for the time I was carried by her, and no doubt reinforced when she took me, newly born, along on a Sunday.

St,. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, reputedly said “give me a child for the first seven years and I will show you the man”. And he is so correct. The period of my life from conception to the age of seven was a time when I was absorbing literally everything around me, drawing it in, soaking it up, ranking it and filing it away in my subconscious, where it would be forgotten, covered up and affect the remainder of my life. Those learnings were carefully designed to write the job description for the remainder of my life. From them I would choose my life’s path, both consciously and unconsciously.

According to a friend who is an astrologer, I was born during Libra, with my ascendant in Pisces. According to him that means I am naturally inclined towards priesthood, and that I have reincarnated in priest/shaman/ medicine man roles many times. Perhaps. I would like to think at times that I have memories of this. It may be that it was this genetic inbuilt leaning which encouraged me to listen more carefully when my mother was carrying me both before and after my birth. Whatever was said in those early years found its way inside and had a powerful effect upon me.

No doubt, in those times, as my mother carried me and attended the local Anglican Church in Ranfurly, I would have heard the priest refer to the Creation. While it would have had little meaning for me at the time, I would have wondered what it was all about. Later, when I went to Sunday school (I was not a regular attendee or motivated student) I would listen to the story of the Creation, to the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall from Grace. As it was told to me, we were descended from two original humans, both of whom were created by a paternal God who decided to make these toy people and give them a wonderful place to live. If my childhood teachings were to be believed, they were corrupted by a Snake who waited until this Kindly Creator’s back was turned and then caused trouble. When God finally caught on to his mischief and threw them out of Paradise, to wander for eternity, the trouble began.

As a child I saw it as a child and believed it. I could even envisage Paradise and to a degree the pain Adam and Eve must have felt as they were evicted. Had I been able to draw or make a film about it, I am sure I could have drawn it in very fine detail. As children do I wanted to believe it was that simple, that in fact God was a kindly old gentleman, a kind of benevolent uncle who loved everybody and wanted the best for each of us. But the story of the Creation raised a few problems:

1. If God was indeed a Kindly Old gentleman, then why had he been so mean to Adam and Eve?  As I saw it, it hadn’t entirely been their fault. After all, had there been no Serpent in the Garden, none of this would have happened. And if I was being taught at the same time to be merciful and turn the other cheek, then why was God not setting an example?
2. If God was the Creator, and everything was of Him, then how come the Serpent was there in the first place? How come, if he was omniscient (I only learned that word much later on), how did the Serpent get away with it?
3. If God was the Creator and Master of All, why was the Serpent there anyway? Had God made a mistake which had got away on him? Perhaps the KOG wasn’t entirely on top of his game.
4. And where did Science fit into all this? At school they were teaching me about Evolution, how the Cosmos had evolved over countless aeons; that humans were really descended from Apes, that chimpanzees were my distant relatives. And scientists, archaeologists, palaeontologists all seemed able to offer concrete proof that there was a version of the Creation quite at odds with what was being told me in Sunday school.

Because I was the sort of child who wanted to believe, who was bitterly disappointed when I found out that Father Christmas did not exist, that wishes did not always come true, I didn’t question what was taught me in Sunday school.

But I was troubled. To my Child Mind someone was lying to me or at best, concealing the real story from me. Of course Trust was what I wanted to face. In the end I went with Science, the child of the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, and turned my back on what was happening.

I walked away.

But even though I had decided to reject what had been told me in Sunday School, there had to be some sort of truth behind it, something I could accept.

For now however, I had learned not to trust. I had learned the opposite of Faith.

So, instead of rejecting it out of hand, as some do, I began to Select. I began to choose what I would believe and what I would leave out of the story. I was Editing, a time-tested human tradition for dealing with the difficult parts of Christianity. After all, editing allows you to select which bits of the story will fit into your own theology. Very useful when you want a moral justification for killing another human being.  Killing for God allows you to carefully mask off Commandment 6, forbidding murder. And so you begin to make God in your own image.

But the Creation would simply not go away.

I became an adult and tried to return to my Faith, the thing my mother and I had truly shared, which she had fed me through my umbilical cord

I became an adult.

Time and Time again I would return to the only place I knew where such issues could be openly debated or debated openly (not the same thing), and time and time again, I would get a variant of Adam and Eve. I would return to church.

I also usually got the question of original sin as a sidebar.

When I began to ask, the question of the Adam and Eve story and its reality was always sidestepped for the message contained in it, namely original sin which, as it was taught me, meant the humans were inherently flawed, therefore weak, there doomed to fail. That, like Macbeth, we were heroes with inbuilt flaws which would inevitably lead to our undoing. It was too much. By now I was having experiences which I was unable to explain metaphysical experiences of something that I couldn’t find in my science textbooks. I tried to share them and quickly learned that it wasn’t always wise to do so, that trouble could come from being too free with my feelings

I was refining Select.

And it was presenting theological issues for me. The KOG was a model that no longer fitted. God had become something vaster, more unknowable, sometimes terrifying, because I had experienced something which I took to be his presence. I was beginning to understand the true meaning of awesome and sublime, something so enormous, it inspires terror and a fear of God.

And I wasn’t alone. It had happened to others. God had appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. Julian of Norwich seemed to have first-hand experience of Him. And old memories were beginning to appear.

So God wasn’t a KOG after all.  The kindly old Gent sitting on a throne surrounded by well-fed chubby children with tiny wings was just a fiction for children. And what was the Fall really about?

As any child will tell you, if you have the respect and wit to ask, there is nothing more painful than the Betrayal that comes from Finding Out. Finding out that farther Christmas does not exist, finding out that there is no manic rabbit distributing chocolate eggs to all the children of the world, and finding out that the Tooth Fairy does not value your first molars at all.

But something in it rang true. I began to dimly realise that I was not looking at a picture, at a Reality but at an Encoding. Rather than looking at the story face on, if I was to sidle up to it and glance out of the corner of my eye, then something eternal was lurking there.

I tried again. This time I was shown how it was a metaphor, that it was about the formation of the Nation of Israel. So why encode it anyway? That one didn’t wash. Then another ‘expert’ suggested that it was about the Battle between Good and Evil. That the Serpent was the Devil Incarnate, an Angel-Gone-Bad who attempts to distract us from our path to God. So why did He create humans in the first place? I got no answer to that one.

None of this really dealt with what was there.

I walked away yet again.

But it remained, a Rock in the Path of an easy and reason-friendly acceptance of the Christian Faith. For a while I was able to ignore it but eventually I had to Face it again.

Now perhaps I feel we may have become friends and that I can see it for what it is, that there is a way of seeing it which I can live with. And the path to that friendship has come through an introduction from an acquaintance, a distant relative called Io Matua Kore, the ancient Maori spiritual teachings.  There are a number of congruencies here and intersections where rivers merge into a single current. And modern physics is helping here, reversing the current of the last few hundred years when reason and logic and scientific observation ruled. If I can see it, I can prove it. Therefore it is true.

The story of the Creation and Fall, it seems to me, us an attempt to explain the nature of our own creation, of our own selves. If Jung, Freud et al are to be believed, then each of us is composed of two components, complementary and opposed. As most of us know we each have a female and male side. We are neither all one nor all the other. The Tao makes this clear. Io Matua Kore stresses the duality of our Self.

And this is no bad thing.

Almost all Creation stories begin with the universe at rest. The void. Eternal peace, rest, tranquillity. At some point there is a Movement, an Idea, perhaps a Thought. The Deep shudders and separates into two component parts. Io Matua kore talks about Ranginui the Sky (Father) and Papatuanuku, the Earth (Mother). A duality has formed. Now there is a gap between. A potential difference has been formed. Like a battery, a difference is needed for voltage to be present and therefore current to flow.

All life hinges on the necessity for duality, for polarity. With that polarity present, energy begins to flow. Life now has what it needs to be able to create.

On another level, Ranginui represents the rational mind, or thoughts, logic, reasoned beliefs and the masculine, which bases itself in reason. Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother is the province of Life, body, faith, intuition and the subconscious.

As are Adam and Eve.

When I began to see them as metaphors, as symbols pointing to a truth, an understanding as old as humanity, the rock began to diminish.

Let us look again.

Consider Adam not as an actual human being. Think of him as the logical left brain within each of us. This is the part of us able to logical things, to plan, organise and make qualified judgements. Adam lives in the conscious mind and comes to his conclusions in a sequenced logical way. Or would like to think he does. He is needed.

Eve on the other hand is the intuitive right brain, the province of the subconscious. She  makes her decisions based on feelings, belief and  the promptings of her subconscious. Because it feels right. Her feet are on the ground, her roots buried underground, out of sight in the subconscious.

Left to their own devices, they would have remained a single entity. And gone nowhere.

Fortunately the Creator really did know what he was doing. He created the Serpent. The Adversary , the one who came between and generated chaos was needed, for without chaos order cannot exist. Without Imbalance there can be no balance. The Serpent came between Adam and Eve, and created a potential difference, a duality which led to their being evicted from Paradise. As a result of the Serpent/Spark/Adversary, Adam and Eve became Self-conscious and hence aware of their difference. The Apple had become the seed of their ability to Create.

In casting them out from paradise the Creator had given them the ability to reproduce, had created the grounds for Life.  He had given them the gift of an endless psychological nuclear reaction which is a fundamental part of the human psyche and providing the conditions for potential personal growth and learning the lessons for a life.

He had created the grounds and ground for them to be able to interact and generate energy. Being opposite poles they would be eternally attracted and attempting to join back together. Opposite poles attract.

So the energy lay in the journey, not in the destination. Each of us chooses a path to walk. Each of us creates the perfect conditions for our life’s lessons. And then experiences it. We cast ourselves out into the Outer Darkness so we can find our way home. So Separation becomes a precursor, almost a condition for our own journey. We need to experience it in order to be able to grow.

And as I realised that, so it came to me that a healer’s work is not about curing. It is about helping to create the conditions where the client can resolve that inbuilt need to bring both halves of the polarity closer together.

To reach towards a Personal Age of Enlightenment.

Morena:

A number of you asked to see  our  South African wedding ceremony, so it is posted here.

Heather found the ceremony out in the  (Internet) wild were inspired to adapt parts of it. The individual texts were brought to the ceremony by each ofthe peoplewho read them.

We wrote our wedding vows apart from each other , then incorporated them into the ceremony. They thus represent what each of us felt towards each other and the journey we were about to undertake.

Having had the joy and honour of its use, we would like to re-release it into the wild for the use of anyone who may want to use/adapt copy it.

It goes with our blessings.

whano, whano

Hara mai te toki

Haumi e, hui e

tai ki e.

Heather McLeod and Tony Bridge Marriage Ceremony

In the Labyrinth at Lemoenshoek, outside Barrydale in the Klein Karoo

Saturday 8 May 2010

Performed by Dominee Nico Weeber of the Dutch Reformed Church

What is a Labyrinth?

We are all on the path… exactly where we need to be[a]. The labyrinth is a model of that path.

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. The Labyrinth represents a journey to our own centre and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools.

A labyrinth is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. We can walk it. It is a metaphor for life’s journey. It is a symbol that creates a sacred space and place and takes us out of our ego to “That Which Is Within.” [b]

Walking into the Labyrinth

The guests walk the path into the Labyrinth, with Nola in front, followed by Nico, Shivani, Kim, Elize, Brenda, Marthie and Alex, with their partners and children. Heather and Tony follow at the rear after the other guests who want to walk the Labyrinth.

As Nola gets to the centre, she lights the candle on the stand in the centre. She takes a stick of incense and lights it at the candle. She places the incense in one of the flower pots and then turns to help the others as they arrive. Each guest takes a lighted stick of incense, places it in a flower pot of their choosing, and walks to the edge of the centre, leaving room for those still arriving.

As more people fill up the centre, so the last people will be walking the outer rims. Those in the centre can now move back into the first inner rings of the labyrinth, to leave the centre clear for Nico, Tony, Heather, Alex, Shivani, Kim, Elize, Brenda and Marthie. Chairs will be brought up for those needing them and placed in a circle around the first ring.

In the Centre: Introduction

Nico: Welcome …

Nico: Heather and Tony are happy today not only because they can share the joy of their love for each other with friends and family standing around us, but also because they have the opportunity to express their aspirations for the future.

This ceremony today, as written by Heather and Tony, is based on a Buddhist wedding ceremony[c]. Buddhism is a path of transformation of inner potential, a path of enlightenment and a path dedicated to serving others. Marriage is seen as a vehicle to practice serving others and requires the equal commitment to the happiness of your partner, to your own and your partner’s  spiritual growth.

Readings

Nico: Heather and Tony have asked five friends and his son to each prepare a reading, something to share with us today.

Shivani Ramjee:

(From “Ocean Sea” by Alessandro Baricco, with lots of editing)

And so they went down to the sea in the gentlest way possible – borne by the current , along the bends, pauses, and hesitations that the river had learned in centuries of journeying ; a great sage, the river was the only one who knew the gentlest, mildest, most beautiful way one could get to the sea without harming oneself. They went down the river, with that slowness determined precisely by the maternal wisdom of nature, slipping gradually into a world of odours and coloured things that day after day, revealed, with extreme slowness , the presence, at first distant and then ever nearer, of the enormous womb that awaited them. Water slipping toward water, a most delicate courtship , the bends of the river like a lullaby of the soul. An imperceptible journey.

How fine it would be if, for each sea that awaits us, there were a river, for us. And someone – capable of taking us by the hand and finding that river – imagining it, inventing it – and placing us on  its flow.  This, really, would be marvellous. Life would be sweet, any life. All that is needed is someone’s imagination – someone. He would be able to invent a way , here, in the midst of this silence, in this land that will not speak. A clement way, and a beautiful one. A way from here to the sea.

Kim Lowenherz:

Marriage gives you roots and then gives you wings.

Elize Delport:

This is from Love letters in the sand – the love poems of Khalil Gibran:

“Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings

its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

and to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give

thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in

your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

And, from the same collection:

“Love one another,

but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between

the shores

of your souls.”

Brenda Greyling:

“May the tapestry of your lives be woven

with rosy threads of love,

the deep reds of passion,

the quiet blues of understanding

and contentment,

and the bright, bright silver of humour”

May you live each day

Compassionate of heart,

Gentle in word,

Gracious in awareness

Courageous in thought,

Generous in love.

Alex Bridge:

From the Love Poems of Rumi, edited by Deepak Chopra

The Privileged Lovers

The moon has become a dancer

at this festival of love.

This dance of light,

This sacred blessing,

This divine love,

beckons us

to a world beyond

only lovers can see

with their eyes of fiery passion.

They are the chosen ones

who have surrendered.

Once they were particles of light

now they are the radiant sun.

They have left behind

the world of deceitful games.

They are the privileged lovers

who create a new world

with their eyes of fiery passion.

Marthie Momberg:

I quote from an interview between Russell DiCarlo and Richard Tarnas:

“In order to have a marriage, you have to have a differentiation for the two to come together autonomously and join with one another in an act of love. This is also true for the human being in relationship to the divine and in its relationship to the world: that having fully differentiated itself, it is now in a position to embrace the matrix of its being freely and consciously. “

In other words, it’s about a harmonious co-existence of freedom and love.

“Having achieved our freedom, we are now in a position to embrace the whole which will preserve autonomy while also transcending the alienation that has been the downside of our forging an autonomous self.”

By choosing to marry, we have an opportunity to overcome the loneliness of autonomy and the struggle of dualism. We choose love and we choose to recognise the other as part of ourself. This allows us to be free while we are together.

Vows

Nico: Introduce vows … nature of marriage.

[Heather will have carried a rose quartz heart into the Labyrinth. She turns to Tony and holds out her hands with the heart. He folds his hands around hers.]

Shivani: Heather and Tony, do you pledge to help each other to develop your hearts and minds, cultivating compassion, generosity, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, concentration and wisdom as you age and undergo the various ups and downs of life and to transform them into the path of love, compassion, joy and equanimity?

“We do”

Kim: Recognizing that the external conditions in life will not always be smooth and that internally your own minds and emotions will sometimes get stuck in negativity. Do you pledge to see all these circumstances as a challenge to help you grow, to open your hearts, to accept yourselves, and each other; and to generate compassion for others who are suffering? Do you pledge to avoid becoming narrow, closed or opinionated, and to help each other to see various sides of situations?

“We do”

Elize: Understanding that just as we are a mystery to ourselves, each other person is also a mystery to us. Do you pledge to seek to understand yourselves, each other, and all living beings, to examine your own minds continually and to regard all the mysteries of life with curiosity and joy?

“We do”

Brenda: Do you pledge to preserve and enrich your affection for each other, and to share it with all beings? To take the loving feelings you have for one another and your vision of each other’s potential and inner beauty as an example and rather than spiralling inwards and becoming self absorbed, to radiate this love outwards to all beings?

“We do”

Marthie: Do you pledge to continuously strive to remember your own Buddha nature, your own Christ nature, as well as the Buddha nature and Christ nature of all living beings? To maintain the awareness that all things are temporary, and to remain optimistic that you can achieve your greatest potential and lasting happiness.

“We do”

Alex: When it comes time to part, do you pledge to look back at your time together with joy–joy that you met and shared what you have–and acceptance that we cannot hold on to anything forever?

“We do”

[The rose quartz heart is handed to Nola to hold.]

Nico: The wedding ring is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual bond which unites two loyal hearts in partnership. [Alex hands the two rings to Nico]. Heather and Tony have designed rings that have meaning to them..

[Nico hands Heather Tony’s ring]

Heather: We each have a ring, the wholeness of the ring representing the One, Unity, the All-in-One, God. Each ring has two solid bands representing the duality of the world. These two bands enclose three strands woven in three different colours of gold (yellow, white and rose gold).

[Nico hands Tony Heather’s ring]

Tony: The three strands have multiple meanings for us: body/mind/soul; the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; the three Hindu manifestations of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva; the Buddhism trinity; your path/ my path / our joint path; past/ present/ future; and in lo Matua Kore, the ancient Maori spiritual tradition, the three baskets of knowledge: power, wisdom and love.

Tony: Dearest Heather, we have travelled a long distance to this moment . Each of us has travelled a different path, fought our own battles, made our own mistakes and learned our own lessons, but here today our roads become one. Here today we move from our individual journeys to a mutual and shared one.

Today, in this place, at this time, before our friends and our Father, I stand and offer you myself without condition or expectation. I ask that you join with me, that we intertwine mind, body and soul, that we may become one, so that we may be of greater service.

Before God and before our friends I offer you all that I am. I will love, honour and cherish you. I will be your friend, lover, husband, and soul partner. I will be your guide and teacher when you need me to so be, a candle in the darkness when you have need of one.  I will be the rock on which you can stand, a place of security, safety and certainty.

Heather Diane McLeod, will you have me?

Heather: My Dearest Tony, Radiant Divinity that you are. We met here at this Labyrinth. We met in Spirit and realised that we had known one another many lifetimes. We then made the connection mentally and then emotionally and only finally in these, our physical bodies.

It is a great joy to me that we have felt called to renew our connection and to formalise that connection in our physical bodies today. Yet at its deepest level our connection is a spiritual one. The great gift you give me every day is to make me realise that I am not a human being having occasional spiritual experiences, but rather a spiritual being having this human experience.

Before God and before our friends, I offer you the greatest gift I can – to be truly, completely and honestly me. I will be your friend, lover, wife and soul partner. I will constantly seek to remove any impediments to the flow of Universal Love so that we can channel that Love in order to be of service to others in the Light.

Anthony Charles Bridge, will you have me ?

[Heather and Tony exchange rings]

Pronouncement

Nico: By the power vested in me through ……., the wishes of Tony and Heather, as well as the blessing of all of their friends gathered here today, I now pronounce you Husband and Wife.

Nico: Ladies and Gentlemen please join me in congratulating Tony and Heather, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. [To Tony] You may kiss the Bride.

Congratulating the Couple and Leaving the Labyrinth

The guests, led by Nola and Alex, walk forward to congratulate Heather and Tony. Marthie, Shivani, Kim, Brenda, Elize, her daughter Malaika, and their partners do so as well. Rose petals are available in the centre to throw over the couple.

Nola then begins to lead the walk out of the Labyrinth, followed by Nico. As the first people leave they will be walking the outer rims. Those in the first inner rings of the labyrinth centre can now move back into the centre.

At the exit, Malaika offers a basket of small individually-wrapped pieces of wedding cake.

The guests all come forward in turn to congratulate Heather and Tony in the centre, throw rose petals and then follow Nola and Nico out of the Labyrinth. Heather and Tony douse the candle and then walk out at the rear.

[b] http://labyrinthsociety.org/download-a-labyrinth

[c] Created by John Karuna Cayton for the wedding ceremony of Bonnie Le Boeuf and Robert Baptist, May 2002. Inspired by Lama Thubten Yeshe when he performed the wedding ceremony for Karuna and Pam Cayton.

Macrocarpas, Waipapa Point

Of late my photographs have come as stories I write to myself (but then they always have). Of late those stories take some time to walk in the door, often trailing the image by weeks or even months. I will make the photograph, usually from a non-place, what Miyamoto Musashi refers to in his book The Book of Five Rings as the Void, that place where one lets go, where one photographs from intuition, where one allows all the years of training and practice to work from the subconscious, so that one is clear to respond to whatever presents itself, to whatever speaks. To be able to do that, it is important to put in the time, to practice until the mechanical aspects become unconscious, so that the soul is free to listen to whatever is asking to be heard.

A similar thing happens whenever we walk a labyrinth;  not one of those places which deliberately seek to confuse, to impose a feeling of being lost. I fail to understand why anybody would want to walk a maze, to find fun in being dislocated and confused. Goodness knows, there is enough of that in everyday life. No, the labyrinth to which I refer is a very old tool/phenomenon, based upon sacred geometry. There is one set into the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. It was originally put there, I believe, to give priests the opportunity to draw closer to God. The geometry upon which it is based is much, much older than the Christian Church, having its roots, so I am told, in ancient Egypt, if not before. Nowadays it is difficult to walk that particular labyrinth, since it is covered with pews, all facing the high altar. I cannot help wondering why a tool of such value has been so carefully concealed. But I can certainly guess.

A labyrinth works like this: as we trace the path into the centre (into our own centres), we focus upon the sheer difficulty of staying on the path. In doing so, the left side of our brain, our rational mind, is fully occupied with mastering the journey, and so gets out of the way of the intuitive/unconscious right side of our brain, our True Self, where 99% of us lives;  our soul, which is continually talking to us but usually shouted down by all the apparent importance of day-to-day existence. As we walk the labyrinth, lessons which our soul has been trying to teach us are able to get by this channel, rise to the surface, and speak to us so we can learn from them. In doing so, and by facing the lessons we are here to learn, we are able to grow and move on. So often the most valuable parts of our existence, the lessons from the individual life in which we find ourselves, are suppressed by this hard shell of illusion, by the apparent importance of quotidian existence. However, walking the labyrinth implies a certain acceptance, a certain belief, a certain willingness to be open to what comes, what presents itself. In doing so, we have the opportunity to get out of our own way, to learn and therefore grow. It is interesting to note that some people simply cannot walk a labyrinth. It is not because they are physically unable; rather it is because they are so enmeshed in the day-to-day that, when faced (at the subconscious level) by unravelling and discarding their chains, their body takes over and puts them off-balance. To be restored to the state of true balance, it is often necessary to firstly discard the old sense of false balance, and replace it with a new one. The transition can be difficult and unpleasant, but the rewards can be glorious indeed.

So, let me share the making of this photograph.

I was in my own way (as I often am). It was a dull, murky, grey day in Southland, and I was feeling cold and tired from several days of intensive teaching, of being present to students, of trying to be there for all of them on an individual basis. It is not easy teaching 10 classes of one rather than one class of 10. It takes skill (which I sometimes have) and patience and sensitivity to where each of them is at. So, after several days of cold wet weather, with my energy drained by being present to them, I wasn’t in the best of moods. As a consequence I was leaning heavily towards the judgemental, to making judgement calls without thinking about them. I had fallen heavily in front of myself.

When we arrived at Waipapa Point, there was every sign that it was going to rain. I gloomily remembered something one of them had said to me about the weather in Southland: when you can see Bluff from Invercargill, it’s going to rain; when you can’t see it, then it is raining. You can tell I was feeling distinctly jaundiced and out-of-sorts. It didn’t help when Rodney said: we have maybe half an hour before it begins to rain. We had gone there to see the macrocarpas, about which I’d heard a lot, and pictures of whom (I use the word whom rather than which because trees have always seemed to me to be sentient) I had seen from time to time. The others in the group were far more enthusiastic, bailing out of the vehicles, grabbing their equipment, and galloping over the horizon. So, instead of joining their glee, I opted to leave my camera behind, follow along, to see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to see the trees for themselves, to wander amongst them without any imperatives about making photographs.

Waipapa Point has to be one of the bleakest places in the South island. In the rain, with a storm blowing through, you wonder how anything could possibly survive there. But survive people did, and perhaps even flourished. The Dept of Conservation Information Centre has boards with text and pictures, describing the lives of the early lighthouse keepers there. Not only were they expected to look after the lighthouse 24/7, but they were expected to provide for themselves. The houses stood out there on the spare, sere landscape without any form of protection around. Up behind where the lighthouse keeper’s home used to be,I could see evidence of the garden planted, intended to supply vegetables for the families who  lived there. They protected it by planting macrocarpas around the edges, to hold the winds at bay. Presumably it worked, because there were still people living there well into the late 20th century.

Macrocarpa trees (Cupressus Macrocarpa) have always fascinated me. Even though they have remarkably shallow rooting systems, they seem able to grow in places where other trees throw up their hands in horror and give up. You will find them along the edges of cliffs, along windswept ridges and forming protective shelter belts around farmhouses all over New Zealand. They are durable, amazingly hardy, and seemingly able to cope with the worst of environmental conditions. In many ways they have become an iconic part of the New Zealand landscape. Not only that, but they make  wonderful  furniture, and burn superbly on the fire. They just aren’t very pretty.

So, wrapped tightly  in the warm comfortable mantle of my own grumpiness, I wandered around amongst them, utterly underwhelmed by the grey, spare landscape, and not at all enthusiastic about photography. Then I walked through a gap, away from the tourists, whose presence I was finding irritating, and on to the windward side of the hedge. As I moved back from them, and began to study them, the mask of my discontent dropped, and I became entranced by what more than a century of storms had done to them. They were gnarled, twisted, blasted and bleached, but still standing. Somehow they had held together, supported each other, and in some special way retained their own macrocarpa-ness. I sensed a lesson here.

It was as if I was looking at a lecture in life, as if I was seeing the visual representation of the life journey of every person on the planet. Someone, late in the 19th century, had planted a whole row of macrocarpa seedlings, had birthed new lives and brought the hedge into being. I could almost imagine those small seedlings, taken from their protective wrappings and dug into the ground. I could imagine their childlike innocence and expectation that they were going to have a comfortable life. And the reverse had happened. Over the subsequent 120 years, as far as I could tell, the weather had thrown itself at them, throwing lesson after lesson at them  in a relentless and an ending series of experiences. Bit by bit, as they grew, each of these lessons had had a cumulative effect upon them. Bit by bit, as they grew, each of those seminars had affected them in the way they developed. But they had survived, they were still healthy, bowed, perhaps a little cowed, but still there, strong and resolute. They were macrocarpas, the survivors of the plant kingdom.

So, humbled by their tenacity and courage, I trudged back to the car under the gloom of the incipient rain, in search of my camera. Sneakily, I had borrowed a camera from one of the others and checked the exposure settings, so I didn’t expect to have to use my tripod. Anyway, there was a new technique I wanted to try out.

By the time I got back, it was starting to spit, and I knew the rain proper was not far away. I had a window of perhaps 10 minutes. And I began to photograph the backs of the macrocarpas, with their bleached spines  and bare tails pointing out into the wind.

And then the rain came. But I was done. I knew that what I had seen and felt was in-camera. I just did not know its significance. But I knew it would come. Resolving the picture later that day came rather easily, as I suspected it would. The lesson took much longer.

It has taken until Easter, this weekend, to finally get it. And on Easter Sunday, as I sat in church, thinking about the Resurrection, about the way in which The Light of the World, the Lord of Karma, died more than 2000 years ago, the way in which he put himself on the line in the most terrible way possible, to demonstrate that enlightenment is available to all of us, that the message really is that simple, I thought back to the macrocarpa hedge. And then, as I thought about the significance of the Easter egg, about what it really represents for us in terms of our own spiritual journeys, and about the labyrinth, these three things began to make sense, to connect. I was joining some dots.

We are born into the world, naked (physically, mentally and spiritually) and alone. We are a new life which has formed, which has begun a long and potentially dangerous journey. We opt into Life, with all the wisdom we might have brought left behind. We cannot see the future (which some consider an illusion anyway), and we have no idea of what Life is about to deal us. But we do it anyway. Then, as life experiences pile themselves upon us over time, much as the Southland storms have piled themselves on the macrocarpa hedge for over a century, we are gradually shaped and formed by those experiences. Bit by bit they layer themselves in a hard shell around us, and bit by bit we come to see that shell as reality. Over time, with the reinforcement of our family and peers, their own journeys, we come to assume that the surface is who we really are. We become separated from the glorious radiant being within each of us, the essential innocence of soul with which we were born.

Like the Easter egg, itself a metaphor for life, and for the egg which surrounds each chicken when it is born, we move out to the surface. Consider an Easter egg: what do we see? We see an egg-shaped object, usually made of chocolate. We see the surface. We know that it has an interior, which may be solid, or filled with creamy confectionery, or even hollow. We really do not know what we will find until we strip away the shell, usually by biting into it. Then, we will have some idea of its contents.

The same goes for an egg laid by a chicken. It protects the contents for just long enough,  but eventually the life within it will stir and attempt to get out. Sooner or later the chicken inside knows that it has to get out through the walls of its prison or perish. And so it marshals its resources and sets to work, pecking a hole in the shell until eventually it emerges into the Light. And so, I believe, it is with Life. Many of us mistake the shell of our daily lives as being reality. Many of us assume that what we see with our eyes, that what we have been taught to see with our eyes is ‘Reality’. We mistake our pain as being the Truth. As we grow, and Life layers its experiences upon us, each of them a lesson to be overcome, it is very easy for us to mistake that for the way things are.

But deep down inside is the chicken of our innocence. It wants to get out, it wants to reach the Light and live fully. And, because chickens need shells on their eggs to both protect them, and give them the challenge they need to grow, so it is with us. It might be said that our subconscious, where we truly live, is the chicken inside each of us (I know the analogy is rather forced) which dictates the path of our lives. And so, whether we like it or not (usually we do not), we are the authors and directors of our own lives. We write our own script and then act it out. Blame it on the chicken in each of us. Or allow it. The chicken is enlightened, and it  lives  within each of us. The chicken is who we really are, childlike and innocent, our True Self there for our entire life. Our architect and guide. And every day the opportunity to break free, the opportunity for resurrection and rebirth is there, ready whenever we are.

The macrocarpas began their lives full of expectation that everything was going to work out just fine, that their lives were going to be comfortable and serene. But it did not turn out that way. Storm after storm has thrown itself at them for over a century, shaping them, twisting them, deforming and re-forming them, changing them and making each one a unique being. Each of them has been moulded by the elements into a singular shape.

And each one, for all its apparent world-weariness, contains its own Chicken Innocent inside.

As do we all.

Pukaki 1

I wonder how many of us spend time exploring ourselves and why we do things. I wonder how many of us spend time looking at our own journey and the direction our life has taken.

I think things begin to change when we look beneath the surface and especially when we realise that in a way we are icebergs drifting on the Ocean of the Infinite, with most of who we really are below the waterline. We like to think we are who we experience, that the daytime, when we are consumed by living, defining and achieving our goals is reality.

Time and again I have heard people exhorted to live in the real world, that they do not know what that is. I have heard people being told to ” get real” or to” get with  the program”. As a teacher I would have to grit my teeth as I was clearly told that schoolteachers led a cloistered and protected life, that they did not live in the “real” world. In this instance the real world was the commercial world, the world of business and employment. The subtext was that living in a world where there was a “real” fear of being dismissed and that performance was in some way related to  fear was “real”. As a teacher apparently I and my colleagues could (apparently) not be dismissed and therefore were both underperforming and living in a state of continual fantasy. Having 13 weeks holiday a year was “unreal” and further proof of our underperformance. As any teacher knows, those times are about recovery, about taking ourselves back , about lining the ducks in a row before we step up to the mark again.

What I have to realise of late is that most of these commands were related to that individual’s concept of reality, that it was about power and taking power. What I have come to realise is that they were attempting to expand their own concept of reality to include others. Why, I began to ask, would they do that? Why would one person attempt to impose his/her own reality on another? Ask and I suspect you would hear them insist that it was obvious, that reality was a commonly agreed concept. How could it be otherwise? Everybody knows what reality is…..

But then I look closer, what I begin to see is fear. Methinks he protesteth too much, to plagiarise  the Bard. What we have here is fear and illusion. The more insistent the speaker becomes about my participating in the real world, the more I am aware of being drawn into another’s fear, a fear on their part, usually subconscious, that in fact their reality may be an illusion. For all of us wonder, at some level on the iceberg we are, about the nature of reality, of truth and illusion. We may not voice it or indeed experience it in conscious thought, but experience it we do. And often we seek to avoid  the potentially uncomfortable nature of that experience by industry or the pursuit of achievement, of trophies we can line up on the wall of  our lives.

I have watched people  doing this very thing. I have heard it referred to, here in New Zealand, as the 3B Syndrome; that is, Beemer(BMW), Bach (holiday home), and Boat. The individual in question aims to generate sufficient income to afford a new BMW, and works tirelessly to  get one, believing that will satisfy an inner hunger and fear, born perhaps of a sense of lack  as a child (although there are many other reasons). The prize is claimed and then after a few weeks, the thrill wears off. The hunger returns, so the next goal is defined and achieved. Perhaps the holiday home is by the ocean. Friends and relatives will be invited to come and share the” achievement”. This is “real-ly” nice. Pride, ego and sense of achievement mix, to form a really poisonous cocktail. Then the high wears off, and it is onwards, looking to the boat to fill the need. But the desire never ends, the hunger can never be satisfied. There is a reason for this.

Beneath the surface, down where the iceberg drifts underwater in the current, the subconscious is at work. The surface meltdown is the external manifestation of a subconscious desire. Down in the middle zone is a perceived lack, often born of something overheard or experienced in childhood. Down in the middle zone is disappointment. But, down in the engine  room, where the real energy is working , is the stuff of true reality, of a place closer to the Infinite. Bumping up against the mass of a parental iceberg has caused a deformity, a blip in the underwater form. This affects how it drifts in the current and how it responds.

But beneath this, deeper still, at the base of the iceberg, down in the deep teal blue of the Ocean, is where the true direction, the real intention, comes, where the soul is busy  effecting its purpose, where what it has chosen is manifesting.

The iceberg is under its own orders after all. Nothing happening to it is subject to external influence and external affluence. It is making its own way and creating situations which will achieve its own and higher purpose.

There are thus three zones to the iceberg. Firstly there is the surface mind, the ego, which lives from day to day, oblivious and self-concerned. The ego knows what it needs for the moment. It reacts instinctively, intuitively. It knows only about self-protection, about self-gratification. It lives in Illusion Time.

Then there is the middle zone. it lives in a wider Time Space, where cause and effect and being experienced at a deeper level. Here the need to grow can be felt, albeit unconsciously. The unconscious mind is working to create situations where the soul can learn. It is shifting the current under the surface and charting the direction the surface mind takes.

But at the base of the bulb which is the iceberg is the soul. Buried deep within and beyond  time, a part of the Universal Mind, it seeks its own development. It does this by getting the subconscious to manifest change, to create situations which encourage  and facilitate its own development. It is at the root of what happens on the surface. It has a direct line to and  from God.

The soul is always at work, tireless and immune to Time. It lives its own journey, welling up and bringing about change on the surface.

So to this photograph.

I was passing the Tekapo B Header Pond, a place I have photographed many times over the years. The water from the canals reaches a carefully-contrived circular space, where it circles, turns, makes up its mind, then rushes down the penstocks, through the  turbines, and emerges gleefully into Lake Pukaki.

We drooped down the hill and followed this joy south. Then , as we rounded a corner, the light had become resolute, perfect.

As I looked back up the lake, I felt the need to make a photograph. Something in the scene, in the colour of  the water and the shadows upon it suggested a metaphor, a moment of recognition. It was as if I saw  a  singular and undeniable truth. There, in the scene before me  was a moment where the pictorial held all the meaning, where it brought to me all I had learned and come to understand.

As I looked up and photographed the lake, I saw  the journey we all make, either consciously or unwittingly.

Like  icebergs, we live most of our lives on the surface, believing that what we experience is real. We hold to the  thought  that Death is final, permanent. To believe anything  else is far more fearsome. It involves accepting that things are not as they seem, that we are part of a river, flowing behind a wall we only dimly understand or of which we are only dimly aware.

But it is not. In the foreground is our subconscious, usually hazily perceived and incomprehensible. Beneath that, deep down in the milky density of our miscomprehension, is  our soul, tied inexorably to the true reality of our Being. It knows all, it influences all. It IS.

What happens to us externally, in the “real” world is an illusory manifestation, the province of soul, moving our subconscious  to generate events and circumstances which will affect us and therefore affect what is learnt by the soul and what helps its own devellopment . We must in no way believe that what is happening in our surface  lives is real. It is all Illusion. It is all set and influenced from below.

We may head toward the mountains in the distance, but the quality of our journey will be a script  written by our soul, tied directly to God, which has the final say. And it will begin in the foreground, in the here and now.

Whatever that is.

As I looked, I saw an Infinite Moment and therefore an in infinite Truth. it was mirrored by the calm reflection of the lake. The soft blues were trying to communicate with me, to allow the Truth to be more manifest. It was as if, for a moment, I stared into an endlessly deep well, which offered me a  lidless stare into the Infinite, the place for which every soul thirsts.

In the distance were the mountains, the destination of ego. But the mission of Soul hovered in the foreground, in the milky film of the  Present and Correct.

For a moment I was able to see Reality.

Jesus Christ at Saltwater Creek

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

Faith… must be enforced by reason…. When faith becomes blind it dies. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Just north of Christchurch, perhaps 20 minutes or so out of town, is a place called Saltwater Creek. It is called that, because, after some reason, it has significance. State Highway 1 crosses on a bend in the river. As you pass, there is a small picnic area, perhaps a few houses, and the remains of what appears to have been a service station and automobile repair facility. Nobody appears to stop there, and in fact it’s perfectly understandable. There is very little reason to do so. But, after some reason I’m still attempting to understand, it has been sitting there in the background for most of my life. For the last 48 years or so, and one guise or another, I’ve driven through Saltwater Creek. Curiously, in all those years, I’ve never stopped, to stretch look around or consider my response to that place.

Until last week.

Saltwater Creek is not so much a “to” place, as a “through” place. I’ve never heard anybody say” I went to Saltwater Creek for a picnic, or for the weekend, or to a wild bacchanalia”. I’ve heard the odd person talk about driving through Saltwater Creek, or comment on the nature of the curve across the bridge. One of two of my friends have told me about getting a speeding ticket near Saltwater Creek. Not one of them has ever told me about going to Saltwater Creek.

Over the years I doubt if I have given Saltwater Creek more than a cursory glance. Most of the time, I suspect, I have not even done that. My mind has been occupied by the camper van that I’m desperate to pass, or I have been thinking about things to be done, places to go, or people to meet. You know, the usual things of life that sit in the front of your mind when you are driving long distance.

Until recently.

Until last week.

I was heading out the door, on my way to visit a friend in Hanmer, when a memory of having observed the scene sometime ago, and resolving that one day I would photograph it, suddenly popped up in front of me. So I picked up my camera off the desk and took it with me. I drove past the scene, but didn’t stop for a two reasons. I was focused on getting to Hanmer and anyway the light was coming from the wrong angle. I really needed late light to make the most of it. So I drove on.

The day progressed as it should and, somewhere near five o’clock, I climbed back into the HiLux and began the hour and a half journey back to Christchurch. With the stereo wound up and the soft beauty of the evening-illuminated landscape around me, I wasn’t thinking about Saltwater Creek. At all. That is, until somewhere just south of Amberley, I glanced down at the passenger seat and noticed my camera there. I was so focused on getting home to dinner, that I toyed with the idea of leaving it for another day. Mañana. There would always be another day. But the photographer in me noted that the light had just the right degree of softness to open the shadows but provide modelling in the brighter areas. And anyway, I had thought about this particular photograph long enough, so all my pre-visualisation was sitting there, becoming increasingly calcified. It was time to do it.

I pulled over, got out the camera and made perhaps 20 exposures. It might have taken me 3 to 4 minutes at most. Then I got back in and drove home. The thought occurred to me that perhaps I should have taken longer, perhaps I should have walked around some more, that perhaps I should have experimented more with my exposures or the framing. But there didn’t seem any real need at the time. The message was plain, so the technical aspects and the composition of the image kind of fell into place.

Processing it didn’t take that long either, since I had had a degree of clear previsualisation around the photograph. It was always going to be black and white, and I wanted the sense of having shot it with an old school black and white film, so I could reference photography’s documentary tradition. I turned out an A2 print just to check my Seeing. Firmly in the traditional documentary photography camp. But there was more.

Since I made it, The picture has continued to sit there, pinned to the wall and the front of my mind, irritating and disturbing me. Over the last week, whenever I have looked at it, something about it has been bugging me, wanting me to engage. It is as if the picture has more to talk about, as if it has a more profound story than just one about a rundown, disused service station, too close to the city for cars to stop on their way into town, but too far out for anybody living nearby to bring their car for attention. In some way I’ve had this sense of it as a metaphor, or perhaps an allegory.

Then over the last few days, a thought has begun to filter through. You see, it lies in the strange juxtaposition of the rundown garage, the old innocence and the general dereliction and shabbiness of the place. These things are in huge contrast to the bright statement written across the front of the garage awning. The message is eternal, around 2000 years old, and, while it may be written in paint that is crumbling and flaking, somehow the message remains bright and obvious. It is just that the structures containing it are mouldering away.

As long as I can remember, Christianity has been a part of my life, sometimes coming brightly to the front, but more often gathering dust in the background. And Christianity as a part of our social structure is pretty much the same. If you look for it, it can often be hard to find. Throughout Western European civilisation, churches are falling into disuse. With attendances at mainstream churches dropping at an alarming rate, you have to wonder how long it will be before the core Christian faiths shut up shop in the face of materialism and Mammon. At first glance you would think that the Christian message is on a hiding to nothing. People are not turning up to church for all sorts of reasons, which might include inconvenience, irrelevance or even a lack of belief. Many of the orthodox churches, if you visit them, seem to be populated by people who are not that far off getting the opportunity to test drive their faith by meeting the Creator face-to-face. It is almost as attending church is an optional extra for the retired or those close to it. After all, some might unkindly say, if Christian observance has become a consumer item, then what is the point of going to church anyway? What is the point of buying into the very scary teachings of Jesus Christ and their implications for life and belief, when the children have to be taken to sport on Saturday morning or a leisurely Sunday brunch passed up in favour of perceived obligation. Faith as duty, as obligation. And I am a slave to my job/family/life, so why should I give up my weekends, the only spare time I have?

Anyway, life is far too busy … is it not?

But here, on the side of the road, in a place you wouldn’t even look at a second time, and one which really doesn’t justify having its own name, the message stands out firm and clear. The message shouts brightly, even though the structures around it are crumbling and fading away. In time somebody will come along with a very large bulldozer and demolish the lot. Perhaps they will erect a cafe and “Art Gallery “(not a bad idea when you consider that there is a whole township being built just around the corner), and people will come to elegant lunches. and probably on the first pass of the bulldozer, the awning which once sheltered people as they filled their petrol tanks and heavy windscreens cleaned, will collapse, and the letters which brightly proclaim the truth will split and shatter in an unseemly shower of brittle fibreboard. And the message will go.

Or will it?

Here, it seems to me, is the real message which has been bugging me for the last 10 days or so, the metaphor contained within the photograph, the message in the medium. In fact, the message will remain, firm, clear and unchanged. And unchangeable. The same message which has been broadcasting for nearly 2000 years, a clear voice singing in the darkness, will remain. Granted, it will now be will apparently non-existent, hidden behind the latest architectural design and obscured by the hiss of a four-group coffee machine. But it will be there.

Nothing lasts forever. Well nothing man-made, that is. The traditional churches are under increasing pressure, if falling attendances and increasingly-ageing congregations are anything to go by. Extrapolate the trend and you might logically expect that with an a few short years the mainstream Christian churches will have faded away, that Methodism and Anglicanism will have joined Zoroastrianism in the dusty halls of historical irrelevancy. It seems to matter little whether they trend towards more conservative and traditional practices (Roman Catholicism) or whether they embrace the bright rock-band surface enthusiasm of the fundamentalist churches. Attendances at Western churches (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic) is on the decline. Rather like the faded glory of the garage at Saltwater Creek. And perhaps it may come to pass that they fade away along with the Age of Pisces. Or they do not and suffer a glorious resurrection.

What is important is the message. For 2000 years, nearly 2 millennia, that one simple statement has remained, unchanged. Human beings, driven by their need to make God in their own image, have adopted and adapted Him for all manner of reasons; power, influence, a helping hand in hard times, a guide to right living. The message is however simple, unequivocal. You accept him as Lord. Or you do not. You accept the statement, with all the obligation and potentially terrifying journey that is involved, or you choose to walk away. For whatever reason, you decide that Jesus Christ is not Lord. And you make your own decisions based on that. However the message is the same one which has drawn people for 2000 years and will, no doubt, continue to do so for another 2000. Unchanged, immutable, pure. Churches will come and go, cathedrals will rise and fall, self-proclaimed prophets will come offering a better destiny, rise before the weak and gullible, and then be found wanting, but the message will remain.

As I sat there, looking at the photograph I had made, I began to unpick the metaphor, to unravel the Truth which lay nestled up and purring inside this photograph. I began to see one potential explanation.

The confusion here lies between the message and the medium. The crumbling garage with its faded sign offering fertiliser for sale, and the dodgy old Nissans could be seen as a metaphor for the orthodox church. If Jesus Christ is Lord, then why are his supposed representatives on earth doing so badly? Why is organised Christianity in such a parlous state? Surely this means that the Christian faith is irrelevant, and those of us who seek to follow God would do well to follow faiths which appear to be in much better health, for example Buddhism and Hinduism? Perhaps we should all become Moslems or practice Shinto? Should I check out Sufi? Maybe they are onto the REAL SECRET. Choice. Religion as consumption. If the churches are fading and no young people are going, perhaps it means that human beings have finally realised that all along it was a brainwashing trip designed to keep a few people living in the style to which they wanted to become accustomed.

A cynic might say that. The disaffected would definitely say that. Those who, deep down, realise how profoundly true and how frightening the implications of acceptance of this simple statement may be, will definitely want to say that. It doesn’t change anything in the message. The message remains, every bit as powerful and profound as it was on that day when Jesus came out of the hills and preached the Sermon on the Mount.

Truth is truth. It can’t be changed, altered, edited. I am. You are. It is. Approach the verb to be at your peril. The truth contained here will change you forever.

Do you dare?

The core remains, along with the choice to believe and follow. Faith, pure and simple. Take it or leave it.

The only choice we really have.

Icarus at the crossroads-2

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”

– Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

It isn’t easy being Libran.

I think that there may be some things for which we Librans have an instinctive loathing or perhaps fear. One of those would have to be the crossroad. We get to a crossroad and we must  make a decision. We must choose.  This of course throws most Librans into a spin, for making a choice implies committing oneself to a particular course of action and living with the consequences. They may work out well. Or they may not. We may have made the ” right” choice or we may have added up two plus two and given ourselves an answer of five. We will set out, confident we’ve made the best possible choice, only to find out later on that it was not the right one. And then we are faced with either being told we are wrong or, worse still, sitting there in the darkness, telling ourselves we were wrong, that we should have taken an altogether different route, made another,  in hindsight, wiser choice. Perhaps the fear lies not so much in the act of choosing but rather in the consequences of the choice and the possibility of a future self-beat-up.

Crossroads come, of course, in minor versions, where we can probably live with the consequences of either option. We may go to the movies and, after buying our tickets, order an ice cream. We opt for a scoop of Neapolitan teamed up with a scoop of triple spearmint rum and raisin, because at the time it seems like a good idea. An hour or two later our whole body is telling us that there was not the best choice, and that  and that the consequence of that particular flavour combination is making us feel distinctly nauseous. If we make it through the night without throwing up however, we will probably emerge the following morning somewhat rueful but otherwise unscathed. Several glasses of water and the memory fades quickly. We will probably never order this particular flavour combination again, but then again we may do just that. Either way there is little or no impact other than on our waistlines.

Making an unwise choice of clothing store may lead to us feeling foolish, regretting spending the money on something which has served only to deflate rather than inflate our ego. In that sense, if we recognise that the choice we made was based on a perception of self quite at odds with the reality, if we learn that, for example, we do not suit harem pants, or that skintight jeans make us look about as alluring as a freshly-plucked chicken, and thereafter wear a style that works for us rather than lining the pockets of a mass-produced delusion, then the choice was worth making and the harm is minimal.

For those are low-grade crossroads. Those choices can be made in a way  which will impact less upon our future. It is the big crossroads, the ones where we have to choose without really having any real idea of the outcome which truly terrifying SuperLibrans.

There is a film, a favourite of mine, called Crossroads, starring Ralph (Karate Kid) Macchio who plays the part of Eugene,  a young wannabe blues player. After an unhappy experience with the Juilliard School, Eugene goes on the road, determined to become one of the great blues guitarists, and  he seeks out blues legend Willie Brown to help him. However, the film takes its name from a crossroads in the Deep South where, according to legend, the great blues player Robert Johnson (sic, Willie Brown) made a Faustian pact with the Devil. The crossroads is presented as a barren, grainy sepia place with no road signs to speak of. He waits, guitar slung over a shoulder, until eventually the Ancient One arrives to offer him the contract. He has manifested his desires, to Satan turns out to offer him what he think he wants. Of course, like all Faustian pacts, the contract has a sting in the tail, and things are not what they seem. Inevitably, in contracts of this kind, the applicant gets to lose. Be careful what you wish for. So it is with Willie. Bitter experience has taught him much, and it is left to Eugene to save him.

I have often wondered why that film has such an extraordinary attraction for me. It is probably because in many senses it is a 20th century morality play, one which points out allegorically the link between cause and effect, between choice and consequence. Crossroads are, as I said, potentially terrifying things for Librans. Or indeed, for anybody who sees choice as a potential adversary. Librans, for example.

I have come to realise that the vexation lies in the fact that Big Crossroads offer choice without a manual. They don’t have road signs indicating where the choices lead, or the potential destination. There is no clear roadmap to indicate that if I take this road, I can expect x to happen and logically y and z to follow. Many of the crossroads (small crossroads) we meet in our lives have this sequentially alphabetic structure to them. If I study hard for this exam, and pass it, then I will be able to go to university, where I will be able to get a degree, followed by a Ph.D., which will lead me to a very comfortable existence working in a research laboratory in Ulan Bator. This is a crossroads with alphabetically sequential road signs. Whichever option I choose, the results are relatively predictable (leaving out acts of God, terrorist activity or being hit by a transcontinental road train).

The crossroads to which I refer are the ones which have few or no road signs, which are completely devoid of any alphabetic sequentiality, and which promise nothing. They are even scarier because we know that whichever choice we make (and make it we do-or it is made for us), there is absolutely no sense of where it may lead or what we can expect as a consequence of making that decision. Deep within ourselves we know that the road we take will have an effect upon the remainder of our lives, with no possibility of retracing our footsteps. Fortunately, I believe, for most of us those choices, these particular crossroads occur only rarely. As the Libran, I would rather they did not occur at all.

But choose we must. The longer we tarry at those crossroads, the longer we dither, the more unhappy and out of balance we become. We are compelled to make a choice or one will be made for us. The Universe does not stop simply because we do. If we are to travel smoothly on the river of Divine Intention, then we must be prepared to go with it, to follow it downstream. Sooner or later the beaver dam which we are naturally inclined to build is going to back up so much pressure behind it that the river will sweep it away. At that point the consequences for us can be devastating. Making a choice, especially when there is no clear sense of where it may lead can be a very painful process. And therein perhaps lies the whole point of the crossroads.

For often, when we come to those moments of decision in our lives, it is because we chose to do so. We needed to arrive at a crossroads where we would have to choose without certainty of the outcome. We may perhaps have been testing our faith (in our Creator or indeed ourselves… or both) or perhaps want to reaffirm a sense of ownership in our own journey. Whichever path we choose, we can thereafter say that it was our decision. Times like this can bring a lot of fear, but also a lot of ownership and self empowerment.

Twice in my life I’ve come to such crossroads. Actually I’ve come to them often, but only on two occasions can I remember that the experience was both literal and symbolic. The first one occurred when I was leaving a town I used to visit frequently. My life had quite frankly got itself into a major mess (as it tends to do from time to time). I pulled up at a crossroads and was confronted with a choice. If I continued on, I would return to my existing life and the difficulties would compound. I knew it couldn’t last, but to continue straight ahead would allow me a little more breathing time before it all unravelled. If I turned right at the intersection I would take a different path and everything would change. Things would never be the same again. Deep down, at an instinctual level, I was aware that whichever road I chose would impact upon the remainder of my life. One road was the same old, same old, while the other, painful though I knew it would be, offered me an opportunity to start again. I had no idea of the consequences that would ensue if I chose option b, so for 10 or 15 minutes I sat there. Then I gave in, tossed a coin, and followed my heart.

I was right. Things did change, and remarkably quickly.

If I reflect back, I can see that it was indeed the only choice I could make. The question however becomes: faced with the same situation again, would I make the same choice?

I would like to say a resounding: yes. But I am not so sure.

The photograph of this article came about because I reached another crossroads the other day. A Big Crossroads. Remarkably, it was the same as the other one in construction and layout. I pulled up because instinctively I recognised that here I was again. A crossroads with big decisions to make.

I got out, this time with my camera, and walked around for 10 minutes, photographing the road markings and tar seal. It enabled me, as photography for me so often does, to step away from myself and see things in a different way, in a way that it once objective, at once allegorical. Somewhere in the process of the 50 odd pictures I made, I got a sense that I had gained a little more insight, that I might be emerging from the shadow of my current confusion…

I realised that the lesson in crossroads lies not in the decisions we make and how they will impact upon us, but rather in being willing to make a decision at all. It lies in realising that we are empowered by the act of choice and that the power lies in the acting. When we do this we are moving in harmony with a Higher Purpose, exercising the Extraordinary Gift of Choice given to each and every one of us. It is when we attempt to plot the consequences of Big Crossroads that we get in our own way, our false selves interfere and we make choices that do not work well for us.

And Big Crossroads, for all the terror and confusion which can accompany them, are a rare gift, to be treasured and honoured.

Icarus chasing his own shadow

The day I received this e-mail for a good friend who chooses to remain unnamed. Well, at least I think he does. From time to time I receive e-mails like this, and I simply cannot let them lie. On the one hand I feel an obligation to provide a considered response to what has obviously required a considerable amount of effort. On the other hand, I suspect, the e-mail is pushing my buttons and demanding a response of me.

This is a longish response, so you may want to curl up with a coffee and some time…

Hi Tony,

On your blog I get great enjoyment reading the advice, instructions and especially your musings. The former two are invaluable but the musings are thought provoking and challenging. Thank you for taking the time and effort to share your thoughts! It goes without saying (but I’ll say it never the less) that our different life experience and backgrounds affect the way we meet life’s challenges, and when it comes to pressing the button, how we see the world.

Far too frequently I find myself asking, as I look through the viewfinder “why am I bothering?” It’s quite an effort to suppress this thought and get on with producing an image that reflects how I see that particular piece of the world. Plenty of times the goal is merely to make an aid memoire – “a nice post card” was the expression you used. Looking at the image later reminds me of the pressure of the wind, the smell, the way I felt at the time, and so on – usually pleasant memories. It’s when the scene, conditions and mood all come together and kindle a desire to try and produce something “special”, that’s when the excitement and enjoyment of trying to create a memorable (for me) image becomes one of life’s great pleasures.

I’m still puzzled as what causes some images, no matter what the medium, to have a powerful emotional effect on me. Frequently the reason is barely skin deep and easily bought to the surface. Sometimes I remain puzzled. On my recent trip, we camped in Zion National Park. I visited a photography gallery of a man who has spent most of his life taking photographs of this utterly extraordinary landscape – with an 8″ x 10″ film camera. http://www.fatali.com/ He prints using Cibachrome and mounts his very large pictures in a way that they stand proud of the base board and appear to float just behind the covering glass – most effective. Very large prints are always seductive but one of his images blew me away. I felt tears sneaking into my eyes. It was a view deep in a canyon, no sky, the incredible red tinted rocks, sculpted into extraordinary shapes and bathed in reflected light and all bought together in a impeccably composed image. I sat there and thought “why am I being so strongly affected by this image?” Many of his other images where wonderful too, but this particular one was getting to me. I could only come to the conclusion that it was the total harmony of the image, my recent exposure to this country, my tiredness after a day clambering, and the lack of coffee – all had conspired to trigger off my reaction.

You frequently allude to your spiritual beliefs and how they colour your approach to life and picture making. I’ve worked my way through my inherited religious and cultural beliefs, and emerged out the other side with a view of the world that is probably quite alien to your model. In my more active sailing days there would be moments when a particular view would cause me to proclaim “Look at that – it’s balm for the soul!” yet my beliefs don’t have a place for the soul. Very slowly I’m coming to the conclusion that, just as in my reaction to Fatali’s picture, one’s response to a sensory experience is coloured by everything one’s experienced before and most importantly, it’s transient. Placed in front of that photograph today, would I have the same response? I doubt it.

Thank you again for your “essays”.

-Zealous of Zaire (name withheld by agreement)

Zealous:

Many thanks for what has obviously taken some effort to write. I deeply appreciate the thought and feelings that have gone into this e-mail. I also feel prompted to reply, in part out of respect for your friendship and what you have said in this e-mail, in part because it has prompted me to think about what I photograph ( again…still) and the thinking behind it.

For what it is worth, from time to time I wonder myself why I bother making photographs and whether there is any point to doing so. After all, the Creation, as we and our cameras perceive it, is perfect anyway. How can the act of photography in any way improve upon it? The immediate answer is that: it cannot. So why bother? Why not just sit there and enjoy what is before us, remembering of course that what we perceive is contained within the outer limits of our sensory organs. I know that the green spring foliage on the trees outside my window is pouring out vast quantities of infrared radiation. I know that while I sit here, gamma radiation is poring through me and it sitting out the other side of the planet. At least, that is what I have been taught. But I cannot perceive any of that, nor is it particularly important to help me get through my day, and in no way does it detract from my appreciation of the beauty around me. And yet I insist upon devoting my time and resources to making images of that beauty. Why would I bother? Am I some sort of photographic Prometheus, doomed to spend my life pushing a stone uphill, to have it roll back down again. I often wonder.

So you are not alone.

Let us get religion out of the way right at the beginning. I suspect that is a topic for an extended conversation between the two of us at some later date. And certainly not here. From what you have written, it would seem that in” emerging out the other side, ” you have taken a stance that does not involve a god. I, on the other hand, am firmly heading in the opposite direction. Spirituality and my relationship with my Creator is a core concern for me, and colours more and more of who I am and what I do, as I begin to get out of my own way and allow it. I might add that there is an enormous and significant difference between religion and spirituality. But let us move on.

So why then is that photography has the power to move us? Why is it that the photograph can cause us to stop, stare in wonderment and utterly engage with it. In this post I’m going to try to come up with a response to that.

I took the time to check out the website you mention. Frankly, the pictures, as displayed on the website, moved me only marginally, if at all. They led me to realise that I was looking at the work of an extremely competent photographer. How did I reach that conclusion? Well, the way in which he describes making photographs assist in that decision. Having shot with a large format camera (although never an 8 x 10), I know how hard it is and the degree of dedication required to simply make an image, let alone an excellent one. So I am impressed by his technical prowess.

I am also impressed (according to what I can tell from the website) by his composition and the way he presents his work. But moved I am not. I think the reason for that is that it is almost impossible for me to form any sort of emotional response without being present to the work, occupying the same space. In order for me to respond, I need to be standing in front of the work itself.

I remember when I first saw an Ansel Adams print. I think it was that one of late-afternoon sunlight on aspens. My jaw dropped open and I stood there captivated. It was as if the Great Man had taken the essence of that simple scene and translated it into silver. The photograph simply glowed. I was entranced. Here was the very soul of Nature exposed for any passing viewer. My respect for Adams went up 14,000 notches! All I wanted to do was reach into the photograph and touch those trees. A couple of years later, I saw a similar print by John Sexton which had the same effect on me. So the question becomes: was my response due to the emotion contained in the photograph, or the photographer’s technical mastery, along with a desire to achieve that myself, or (Libran moment here) all of the above?I’m going to go with the last option.

My feeling is that for us to make any work of significance, either for ourselves or for others, we have to be fully present to what it is we are photographing. If photography for us is an opportunity to get away from family, home, and daily commitments, then the picture we produce will say just that. We took a couple of hours off, packed the picnic basket and the Thermos, and headed out into the country. We stopped, had a nice cup of tea and made some photographs of something that amused us. We have allowed ourselves a couple of hours to make some photographs. With scone in one hand and shutter release on the other, we have produced a photograph. If the photograph fails to move anybody else, perhaps that is because it is clearly expressing the degree of our emotional involvement with the subject. Or not. It may also (and here I stand on dangerous ground) be clearly expressing the amount of our emotional involvement with both ourselves and our own lives. Remember: the camera points both ways.

So, if we are to make those photographs which talk to both our own and other people’s hearts, we need to do a couple of things. We need to really be present to our subject, we need to think about why we are passionate, and what it is that causes us to feel that way. In other words, we need to actively engage with our subject. This is not necessarily mean spending every minute of your life photographing, for photography without purpose really does beg the question: why bother? We do need to allow ourselves time to consider the back story behind our photographs and our reason for photographing.

I have a dear friend who is passionate about wedding and portrait photography, who in my humble opinion, is on her way to becoming one of the best in the business. Whenever I look at the portraits she makes or the tender moment she captures at a wedding, my jaw drops open and I look in wonder at her sensitivity and gentleness and presence to the moment. She is already standing clear of the rest of the herd, not because of her skills with off-camera flash or having 243 amazing Photoshop actions to dig her out of the mud, but because she simply loves what she does and is fully present and committed to it.

So often, we try to be all things in photography. I know that I am as guilty of us as anybody else. Over the years I have attempted my hand at portraiture, documentary, commercial, landscape, and even (on odd occasions) birds and fungi. The last 2 I have not done well. The reason is simple: I’m not particularly interested in photographing birds (although I can stand and watch them for hours) and spending hours cuddled up to a minuscule fungus on the forest floor while the rain pours down upon me simply has no attraction. I’m happy to wander through a forest and enjoy the Big Picture of nature. From time to time I get passionate about photographing the forest, but it isn’t a continual thing (although I am a forestry brat). Over the years however, the strands in the basket which is my photography have begun to simplify, to narrow down to 2 distinct threads which I return to time and time again. Allow me to share two images from one of theses threads with you.

I think one of my favourite ways of making photographs is simply to go out and make photographs. I know that sounds simplistic but bear with me. While I am passionate about photographing the landscape, I’m also fascinated by the human condition and its concrete expression through the lives I observe and the way in which Society orders itself. Landscape photography requires a quite different skillset to documenting Life. Because I am continually attempting to gain a greater understanding of Life, the Universe and Everything, of the Great Scheme and my place in it, I tend to look around me for postcards which will give me greater insight. And, of course, they are always there.

One way in which I do this is to simply walk. I will load my favourite street camera bag (I have many camera bags!) with a camera body, a short and medium zoom lens, plenty of memory cards and maybe a water bottle, plus wallet and phone.. I put on some comfortable clothing and good walking shoes. Then I let go, get out of my own way, and simply walk, observing and being present to whatever is before me. It may frighten me, or amuse me, or bore me or fascinate me. I may be drawn to the human activity, which will cause me to stop, observe and consider why I am drawn, or I may be attracted by the colours or symbolism of the moment. As I see it, everything around me is a metaphor for something else. The world is richly symbolic and life itself, as I observe it, alludes to a much deeper level of Meaning. I try to be at once detached from what I see, but completely present to it. Walking helps me to fully interact with it. If I walk through a crowd, then I’m part of that crowd and my interaction with it has an impact upon it. In that sense I am fully present. It is also great fun, walking, observing, and interacting.

I have a passion for the land, but somehow the photographer in me and a human being within me responds strongly to those moments where the Creation reveals itself, where the Creator reveals himself in the space between.

I made the header photograph a few weeks ago in Cape Town. I was drawn by the bright colours of the buildings in the lives of the essentially Moslem community who live there. Using my usual wander around and photograph-whatever-talks-to-me technique brought me up some back alleys to this place. Birds were swirling and turning in the mid-day light, but I was so entranced by the shapes and the patterns and the colours and the light that I paid them little mind. As so often happens, the surprise did not reveal itself until I was later editing my shoot. To my utter amazement, at the moment of capture a bird must have flown across the Sun and left it shadow on the wall of the house. The message had arrived in the 250th of a second while shutter was open and the viewfinder closed. Is the shadow on the wall the Icarus in me who seeks to fly ever closer to the Sun? I’m pondering that one.

Man and blue Toyota, Calitzdorp

The other photograph is a very simple one. We were stopping in Calitzdorp for something to eat. I got out and, for some reason, Intuition told me to take the camera with me. It happened to have the 24-70 Vario Sonnar lens on it. As we were walking to the cafe, I looked across the road and noticed the wonderful colouring of the buildings. The next thing I observed was the old blue Toyota Corona parked on the opposite side. Blue/yellow. Complimentary colours on an essentially formal geometric design. As so often happens with this type of photography, once you begin seeing it, the rest falls into place. The man with the hat walked out from the kerb, propped himself on the back of the car and rolled cigarette. I stopped, framed and began shooting, adjusting my framing with each shot. As I did so, he turned and looked up the street. Perfect. In that moment, it seemed to me, the whole point of life was neatly summed up.

I am.

In the time since my return to New Zealand, I’ve been working through the back catalogue of all the work shot in Africa, looking for trends and messages I may have overlooked. There is work which I was excited about when I shot it which no longer moves me. Excellent. That is as it should be. I have landscapes that will make beautiful wall prints when I put them on paper. But there are some seminal images that are really scratching at my soul, which are really asking all sorts of questions, and which are generating an intense emotional response. The two I have mentioned are just that.

Somewhere on my website I wrote: Why do I photograph?

Perhaps I hope to see God looking back at me from one of my images.

I realise now he has been looking at me all along in the postcards I have been writing to myself. I realise now I have been looking at me all along in the postcards I have been writing to myself.

As have you.

As a number of you know, my life journey has continued to evolve, particularly over the last few years, as I have made my way to a place where I can be of maximum service. To do so has meant making some scary decisions, investing in an uncertain future. Now it has reached another crossroads. After a period of travelling and learning, of stumbling and falling, then getting up again, I have now come to a new awareness of who I am and what I would seek to achieve in the time remaining to me. These things are not set in concrete. They continue to shift.

Welcome to Life.

You see, I have a dream. I have a dream of creating a sanctuary, a place of peace,, where I can write and teach and guide and be of service, where I can make new work, where all who come can rest. I can see a place where people can, for a time, retire from the mainstream to regroup and recharge ,and where I can be there to help.

Last year I turned from making a good ( well, reasonable) living as a commercial photographer to following a path of personal growth and service. There are those who would say it is all a matter of Faith. So it is. It is what I feel compelled to do, what I feel called towards. Manywould say that this is a dangerous path to take. I could not agree more. It is fearsomely scary. But if some of us will not take that path, then how can others know that it is possible? I was buoyed by the comments of a good friend who has only a short distance to travel on the Path, as a horrible illness consumes him. It is because you are willing to dark journeys, he said, that the rest of us can have Hope. This comment gave me enormous support. The downside is that choosing to make this journey has eroded my personal circumstances to a point where they are now parlous.

My personal circumstances have changed and it is time for me to move on. Read into that what you will. Now I am seeking a place to rest, to be, to live and to build that sanctuary. I am looking for a place that is reasonable to run. I am seeking a place near a town but not of it, preferably one where Nature is omnipresent and which has an extra building for people to come and stay,one suitable for small workshops. It can be anywhere, although I am drawn to working in Aotearoa.

Writing this post is possibly the most difficult thing I have attempted. It is an issue of pride which i need to (and will) grow past. Therefore, if any of you have ideas or something to offer/suggest, please let me know.

Nga mihi ki a katoa.

In deepest respects.