One family

I’m pretty much in touch with the “community” of Windgrove and nothing excites me more than to walk around with my camera and photograph discovered compositions of connected kinships everywhere. After 20 years of walking this land, I do feel an easy familiarity to all this; my local family. But what about the greater global community?

Martin Luther KIng, who was arrested in 1963 for taking part in a nonviolent civil rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama, wrote a famous letter from his prison cell responding to criticism of the demonstration and the role of “outsiders” in it:

“I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

There is a young boy, aged fifteen years, called Choeyang. He spent three days at Windgrove this past week. Nothing extraordinary in this as I receive lots of young people here, but this visit seemed more special than most because Choeyang is Tibetan, a Buddhist, lives in Dharamsala in northern India with his parents who run a foundling-home for Tibetan children, and, has only been in Tasmania for study for three months.

The relationship between myself, Choeyang, King and the plant and animals comprising the community of Windgrove should not be lost on anyone. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. As above, so below. As here, so there, so everywhere.

I lent Choeyang a wet suit and my boogie-board and “introduced” him (somewhat nervously) to the powerful thrill of the surf at Roaring Beach. Somehow this seemed literally and metaphorically appropriate for his young developing soul; a way to gain positive acquisitions to deal with the joys and cultural challenges of his global life (at the boarding school where he is staying there are a number of Chinese students).

What did young Choeyang go away with after spending time here? Who knows. But I do believe in an “Emergent” quality to life where one can never know whether our actions will have a decisive impact or not, but that by supporting one another, we do make this possibility more likely.

We don’t have to know outcome. Simply live life as a warrior of compassion and with a profound knowing of the interconnectedness of all life. Simply live life that is extravagantly accepting and forgiving of oneself and others.