Sacred Space

I arrived on the Indonesian island Bali Monday morning after a two and a half hour flight from Singapore. Denpasar, the capitol, is like any other city -- busy, fast, noisy, dirty. The roads are a mayhem of cars, trucks, and scooters -- legions of scooters, every where, with one to a half dozen people squeezed on each one. Driving on the left side, vehicles pretty much go where they will and form as many lanes as they can.

As we move out of the city and north towards Ubud, the roads narrow until they are a single lane. Nearing Ubud, they cut through rice paddies and suddenly dip and twist into deep river gorges and through banana plantations.

Located in the lower central highlands, Ubud is the centre of Balinese culture and religion. Traditional music and dance are performed nightly, temples abound, and spicy Balinese cuisine is served up.

My hotel is idylic. Situated 1 km from the village, it is perched on the side of a river gorge. The reception and dining areas are at street level, overlooking the river valley with the villas terraced down to the river. Mine is 91 winding steps down, thatch-roofed, high-ceilinged, with a large traditional serambi (veranda) extending out into the lush, dense vegetation. I hear the waterfall, look over a shrine, and am across from Pura (Temple) Gunung Lebah. An elaborate ceremony was taking place earlier today, the sounds of gongs, percussion instruments and priestly chants wafting across the river. Incense is rich and luxurious as it drifts on the heavy, humid air. I catch glimpses of the colourful sarongs and hear the laugther and chatter of the worshippers.

Brenda Newell, a member of St. Mark's who died a year and a half ago, inspired me to come to Bali. A few years ago when we did the series "Sacred Space" she described this Indonesian island in the Java Sea as the most saced and respectful place that she had visited.

One could always trust Brenda's judgement. I will make an offering in her honour at the Temple.

Singapore

Seven hour flight from Adelaide today.

Hot.
Humid.
Crowded with people.
Streets busy.
Markets.
Clean.
Courteous, gentle people.

Singapore.

I have only a short stop here. Too bad, it looks like an interesting city to explore. Did go to St. Andrew's Anglican Church for evening service tonight. This was a miracle service, the third the evangelist priest had led today. He read emailed testimonials of people thirsting for Christ and finding Christ. Praise choruses were led by two vocalists and several instrumentalists. Slow, repetitive, droaning. Many people stood with arms raised up, eyes closed, swaying. Others were asleep or reading books. I attended a service in Adelaide that had similar music and theology. It was packed with young couples and children. I'm obviously missing something.

Down South Bridge Road I kicked my sandals in the pile by the door and went into a Hindu Temple. Incense. Colour. Music. Teeming with people of all ages. Prayers. Candles. Offerings. It was alive with energy and faith.

Hmmm . . .

Back track tomorrow 2 1/5 hours to the Indonesian island of Bali.

Adelaide to Singapore to Indonesia

Moving on . . .

Moving on . . . Semaphore Beach, South Australia, today . . . I am reluctant to be leaving. I've loved the ocean, the sun, the beach, the heat, the family, the space to be a b s o l u t e l y nothing.

But it is time.

On to Singapore and Indonesia.

Family

In many respects, despite being one of five children, I grew up as an only child. My closest sibling is eight years older and I was eight when all four left home. The five of us have gone our own ways, done our own things, and our lives have seldom intersected in the last forty years, with the exception of my sister with whom I’ve always been close.

As an adult I have experienced a much more tangible sense of family with those I have drawn into my circle and whose circles I have been drawn into. These are good, safe, satisfying, challenging, nurturing circles. I thank God for them. St. Mark’s has been one of these family circles. It is a respectful place and an honourable place. It is a good place, good people.

These last two months in Australia with my brother, Barry, has restored to me the family of my birth, that family I was last a part of in 1966. These have been good days, and nights. We’ve reminisced, shared stories, and forged relationships, with each other and with our siblings.

There are the little things. I’ve discovered that all of us used to crawl behind the wood stove in Mom’s kitchen to get warm on cold winter mornings. I thought I had imagined this because who could crawl behind a hot stove? We did! Barry’s description of Dad’s smell of sawdust and sweat when he came home from work sent shivers through my body. Dad died 25 years ago. It is 30 years since I lived in his house. Yet the aroma filled my nostrils as fresh and safe as when I was five.

After Dad died I found his work overalls hanging in the closet. I brought them to Toronto where for the last 17 years they have been forgotten in the back of a cupboard. Seeing Barry come home from his handyman jobs, covered in dust and looking like Dad, I knew they deserved a more respectful home. I emailed Art to pack them in his suitcase. When he brought them out we were all in the courtyard around the table. The recognition in Barry’s eyes was immediate. The tears said it all: family.

Barry and I have talked a lot about how different we five are, how differently our lives have unfolded and how differently we live than our parents lived. How did we come out of the same household, we ask each night!

What I have come to realize is that as different as our lives and life experiences are, the five of us share much in common: each one of us has a passion for what we do and never shy from hard work; we have a steely determination and strength of will that drives our spouses mad; we relish a challenge and go looking for them when they aren’t waiting for us; we laugh readily and are never far from our private sorrows and anguishes; we all place a priority on engaging people with respect, hearing their stories, and making a place for them at our tables. Ah yes, tables – they are a common feature in all of our lives: tables of plenty; tables for many; tables of friendship.

As Mom’s health deteriorates and she is swept out into an ever deepening sea of confusion and dementia, and we become the "senior" generation, it is good for both Barry and me to know that we are bound by a thread of family woven by our parents that is proven more durable than time and distance.

This has been a blessed time here in Australia with Barry and Kay and with their gaggle of tenants and friends, their family. I am grateful for the privilege of sharing their hospitality and, especially, for meeting again for the first time the family from which I have come, that has nurtured and shaped me, that is still mine to claim and in which I still live.


(Alan photographed with Mom, November, 2005)

All together on the chorus!

Photo taken by Alan on a range near Cape Spencer, South Australia

Hildegard of Bingen

“The earth should not be injured! The earth must not be destroyed!

As often as the elements of the world are violated by ill-treatment, so God will cleanse them,
God will cleanse them through the sufferings and the hardships of humankind.”


12th century theologian and church leader, Hildegard of Bingen, in her works “Meditations”.

Art Comes and Goes

Art flew into Adelaide on the 11th and left on the 19th. It was great to have him here, even if for only a week.

We spent the first couple days with Barry and Kay and their gaggle of tenants, including an overnight sortie to the Yorke Peninsula, one of the largest grain growing regions of the country. I had difficulty getting around my Canadian geographic up-bringing – vast fields of grain dropping off into craggy ocean coastlines just did not compute! Lots of fun. Lots of laughter. It is great to hear my sister-in-law laugh again.

The highlight of the excursion was a visit to the Wattle Point Wind Farm at Edithburgh. 55 windmills standing 68m tall churn day and night generating 91 MW of clean, green, renewable energy (Google “Wattle Point Wind Farm” for more information). From a distance they are elegant. Up close they are mesmerizing. Standing under them they swoosh. Australia outpaces every other nation in the world in per capita greenhouse gas production. Canada and the United States take second and third places. Why are we not doing more with clean, renewable energy sources? And after seeing the Great Barrier Reef, the question is all of the more pertinent. More on that below . . .

Wednesday we flew up to Cairns (pronounced “Cannes”) in Queensland.

The Great Barrier Reef

Queensland. 4,000 km from Adelaide.

It is monsoon season here in the tropics on the 14th parallel south of the equator. The temperature is in the low 30°s and the humidity is 100%. The first evening at our hotel I crawled into a hammock with a glass of wine and was immediately hypnotized by the crashing rhythm of the Coral Sea, part of the Pacific Ocean, at my feet. From our balcony, through the swaying palm trees, the undulating sea conjured up the images we all saw a year ago of the tsunami waves inundating holiday beaches across the South Asia basin. Tonight I am feeling frightened by these waves, by their potential to swallow and destroy, by the raw power of the realm. At the same time I am awed by and respectful of the awesome, tenuous, fragile connection we all have with life.

Thursday we booked a daylong Great Barrier Reef snorkeling trip. Not cheap (nothing in Australia is). But, I must say, worth every cent. The rains were pelting down with a tropical vengeance when the van picked us up at 7:45. Any one who knows me knows I don’t do mornings, especially mornings during the monsoon season. “Are you sure we should be doing this today?” Art asks the driver. “Why not? You’re going to be wet anyway!” is the reply. An hour and a half later we are 50 nautical miles out into the Pacific on the edge of the Outer Reef. And, as predicted, we are wet.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef system in the world, home to 1,500 species of fish, 400 species of coral, and 4,000 types of mollusc. It stretches from just south of the Tropic of Capricorn to the waters of Papua New Guinea. There are 3,400 identified reefs. It has been designated a World Heritage Site. Check out http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/154 for more information.

There are twenty of us are on the trip. Pulling (and I mean pulling!) on lycra sting suits (the monsoon rains wash the box jellyfish out of the Mangrove swamps, where they have spawned, into the ocean; one sting from a box jellyfish can send you to ICU; two stings and Kim and Rebecca are arranging your flight from Queensland), we let ourselves into the ocean 200 metres from the Reef.

I’m not sure about this. I’m not a great swimmer; I really don’t like the water; I’ve seen the movie “Blue Water” or “Black Water” or “Too Much Water” (what ever); it is a long way down; it is a heck of a swim to shore . . . then I reach the reef . . .

The only way to describe the experience is to quote a fellow sailor upon return to the boat an hour and a half later: “I don’t need to see Jesus now.”

I can’t think of a better description of the experience.

For those of us for whom the experience of God’s presence in our midst is most dramatically experienced in the complex wonder and mystery and beauty and awe of creation, the Great Barrier Reef is the ultimate religious experience. The orthodox Jesus of death can’t compare, though the earlier Jesus’ respect for the awesome wonder of God’s Will for Life draws Jesus front and centre to this experience. Jesus, if he experienced such awe without witnessing the Reef, what insight and blessing he must have been part of!

I wish I could describe to you the vivid colours, the complex, wondrous, symbiotic relationships that exist on this shelf. There is a “cleaner fish”. It exists to clean parasites off of other fish. We watch one work. There is a queue of fish, every colour, shape, and size waiting its turn. There is no elbowing (finnning?); size doesn’t matter; each one in turn. We see a sea cucumber. It cleans sand, in one end and out the other. There is a tiny fish that swims in the “other” end, cleans the cuke’s intestines, and swims out its mouth. We saw the cuke, not the cuke’s cleaners. The sea clam. Wow! I found one wide open, a full metre in length. Its mouth was deep, mautled mauve. From its fore-centre a hole would open and a tower emerge. Moments later the tower retreats, closes, and disappears. Litres of seawater have been inhaled to be filtred and processed, nutrients drawn out of it to nourish the clam.

Clown fish! Ha! Skitting in and out of anemones. Parrot fish, with their silly little fins flapping madly (they swim like I do). A school of sixty or so iridescent blue fish 40/50 cm in length envelope me. I want to panic! but don’t, they are so calm. For several minutes they swim with me and then, in a flash, are off. For those moments I felt like part of the clan!

Coral. Where does one begin. Black coral. Like a thick wig of the blackest imaginable hair waving effortlessly in the wind. I swim closer and see that each feather of hair has a ruby red spine. Blue, green, yellow coral; tentacles waving, grasping, undulating; fish nibbling, cleaning, pruning. Everyone lives and works together here, providing for, sustaining, and nurturing each other.

I am back at the hotel and back on the beach. We have had a lovely meal and conversation earlier in the evening with folks from Switzerland, California, Washington and Belgium. The Coral Sea continues its relentless crash on the beach at my feet. Tonight I am not feeling frightened by it, though. Visions of towering tsunamis are not playing in my mind. Now I am thinking of the awesome, tenuous, fragile complex connection we all have with all life.

The awesome, tenuous, fragile, complex connection with life

In the course of the day out on the Reef I had several conversations with Andrew, our guide. Young, agile, tanned, he grew up in Queensland. After earning a degree in environmental sciences he went to work in the mining industry which he described as a “numbing” experience. While “ecologically sustainable development” is the official mantra, it means nothing when “economic profitability” is compromised. Profitability always takes precedence. He went back to school for a Masters in Marine Biology and is now doing Reef tours to build up the required hours for his skippers ticket so that he can compete for a position on a Southern Ocean (Antarctic) research vessel.

Andrew talked with passion about the Reef, the value and place of it in the global community. While the largest of the reef systems in the world, it is the youngest, maybe 200 million years old. At the current rate that we are destroying it it will be dead in 40 years.

Rainforests originally stretched to the shoreline the whole distance of the Reef. Now large portions of this reach of land have been cleared to make way for sugarcane fields and urban development. The monsoon rains that were held by the dense rainforest floor now cascade over dramatic mountainside waterfalls and move quickly through the cane fields, picking up and carrying into the ocean massive amounts of silt, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, upsetting the ecological balance, and killing the coral. And with the coral, all that lives around it and depends upon it.

Then there are greenhouse gases, produced in excess by our gas guzzling habits. Remember -- Australia is the world's largest producer. Don't get smug -- Canada is second. As global atmospheric temperatures raise the temperature of the seas, the alga which grow in the coral producing oxygen vital to the coral, overproduces and burns the coral. The coral expels the alga. And then it suffocates. Vast portions of the Reef are displaying extensive coral burn.

Furthermore, Andrew went on, global warming is melting the polar ice caps, pouring vast amounts of fresh water into the North Atlantic, diluting its salinity, and thus inhibiting the capacity of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream to sink to the bottom of the ocean off Britain and Portugal where it is pulled back to the Caribbean basin and re-circulated. The Globe and Mail ran an alarming article this weekend on research showing that the Greenland ice cap is melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The ultimate result will be the stopping of the Gulf Stream and its massive transfer of energy from the tropics, bringing catastrophic climatic changes upon the world. This has happened before. It resulted in the Ice Age. A rather extreme way to solve global warming, no?


Friday we hired a guide and went into the Daintree rainforest. Ron also spoke with passion about the ravaging of the forest and the impact upon the Reef, the moneyed interests and political machinations that perpetuate the destruction, and his fear that it is too late to turn it back. Densely vegetated, humid, teeming with birds and animals, with snakes and insects, it is a wild territory with a complex interweaving of dependencies and interdependencies. Just like on the Reef. We toured some 300 km in Ron’s 4WD, fording roaring rivers, climbing to the top of the mountain range, riding in a river boat during a blinding lightning storm in search of salt water crocodiles hiding in the mangroves, and hiking a forest trail. At low tide we ran barefoot out onto the beach from where we could look back towards the towering rainforest covered mountains shrouded in mist.

We spotted two adult male cassowaries and their chicks. Related to the emu and the ostrich, these flightless birds, little changed since prehistoric times, were hunted to near extinction and their natural habitat, the rainforest, was cut down. Now protected, this endangered species is making a slow come back. More than seventy species of trees in the rainforest are dependent upon the cassowary to distribute its seed. Without them they would only exist in limited areas, diminishing their chances of surviving. There are another eighty species whose seeds are also spread by the cassowary. Seeing one is rare. Seeing four is unheard off. Ron regales us with stories of how after the female builds the nest and lays the egg, she “buggers off”, leaving the male to tend the nest, incubate the eggs, and rear the chicks for till they are a year old.

Like Andrew talking about the Reef, Ron is impassioned when talking about cassowaries and taipans, crocodiles and sulfur crested white cockatiels. “We just don’t get it, do we?” Ron proclaims with frustration.

Sad, isn’t it? We just don’t get how awesome, tenuous, and fragile our complex connections with life are. I’m not ready to give up, though. We can get it. We can choose the vehicles we drive (oh, that BMW is fading), how our energy is produced (“Wattle Point” in Ontario!), whether or not we will continue to use styrofoam and plastic dishes in our church, blue, grey, green boxes . . . .

I raised with both Andrew and Ron the amazing capacities of our natural realm to regenerate, the sense that God's Will for Life is tenacious and more durable than our capacities for destruction. They both agreed. The capacity is beyond anything any of us can begin to imagine. But Andrew was quick to note that we have used this awareness as a license to rape and pillage the earth, assuming that all will be restored tomorrow.

I was reminded of Jeffrey Pugh's comment, in his book "The Matrix of Faith", when discussing Augustine's concept of original sin. He describes Augustine's doctrine as an awareness that we are a people "in love with [our] own destruction." (p. 53).

Is this so? Are we destined self-destruct? Do we, literally, love ourselves to death as Augustine thinks we are condemned to do?

Images of Semaphore, South Australia, where I have been living.

With my Brother, Barry, on Sunday

OK taking a poll -- do we look a like?? Barry says "not on your life!" I say we do -- same height, same shoe size, same . . OK, he has hair and hair colour . . . you vote!

Which Side?

I keep forgetting that here you have to look RIGHT, not left, before stepping off the curb.

I’m OK, but the driver of the car I stepped in front of may need to have his heart checked out by his doctor.

Australians drive on the left, the steering wheel positioned on the right side of the car. I was anxious about this when I picked up the little, expensive convertible I’d hired in Sydney. Sydney has become a hard-edged, unforgiving city and there is a major re-investment in urban infrastructure resulting in extensive rebuilding of roads and expressways. How would I manage to get out of a strange city, driving on the wrong side, in one piece?

I did, without a problem.
I didn’t go round any round-a-bouts the wrong way; didn’t pull out onto busy roadways into the wrong lane; didn’t hit any kangaroos and had no encounters with road-crossing koalas or penguins. I periodically did a double take when I saw the “driver” of the car in the lane next to me reading the newspaper or obviously asleep, until I remembered, gratefully, that that was the passenger.

The real challenge came when my sister-in-law tossed me the keys to her SUV and said, “Drive me to the mall.” No problem, till I realized that it has a manual transmission. The stick shift is on the left. I am right handed and, while I’ve lots of experience driving manuals, they all had the gearshift on the right! I passed the test and was presented with my own set of keys!

Until the other night. We went over to Addison for dinner at a highly reviewed Vietnamese restaurant. Excellent food. We were included in the celebrations of a wedding party and ate excessively of things we could not name. The designated driver, I knew I was in trouble the moment I got into the truck – it was dark outside. With fewer reference points to keep me on the right, I mean left, side . . . .

We did get home, with the coaching of many back-seat drivers, and I lived to step in front of a fast moving, but well-braked, BMW yesterday. If I was going to bite the dust down under, at least it was a BMW that was going to take me . . . .

Gasoline prices . . . higher than ours, as you can see ("Autogas" is natural gas), and they go up every weekend and holiday.

A Day in Semaphore

Life in Semaphore has a very different rhythm than I am used to. It begins with a cup of (instant) coffee on the patio with fellow tenants, reading the Adelaide Advertiser, having a swim, listening to the CBC World at Six online, responding to email and reading the Globe and Mail.

Then I head down to the beach for a walk. This morning I tuned in last week’s CBC 3 podcast downloaded to my iPod. The largest decision of each day is whether to walk north or south. I chose south today. An hour later I’m at Tennyson Dunes. My feet ache. I’m not a bare foot person (I put it down to my Protestant Nova Scotia upbringing) in a land where men don’t own shoes. I’m trying to adapt. It is not easy.

I decide to press on to the jetty I see in the distance.

A half hour later, reaching it, I am feeling a bit like a man in a desert: exhausted; dehydrated; desperate; hallucinating; in need of a drink. Like an imagined oasis there is a café on the beach. Tea smoked duck with a salad of watercress, ruby grapefruit, orange, red grapes, in a citrus vinaigrette.
I am delusional. A Killakanoon Killerman’s Run shiraz convinces me that this is a delusion worth indulging.

The French couple at the next table are experiencing a major life crisis. OK, the French guy at the table next to me is experiencing a major life crisis. My French is rusty. I need to sharpen it before I get to Paris. But there is something about finding oneself, a new identity, sense of himself. His female companion looks bored. I can’t determine if she has known this for a while or has heard it before. Three German businessmen are going on about big catches. I think it is fish they are talking about, my German is less than my French. I think the references are to sharks and who’s is bigger. A lot of boasting. Cell phones keep ringing as business in Frankfurt and Berlin is executed. An Australian family arrives. Mom, Dad, and three teens. Mom busies herself with her Blackberry, catching up on email. Dad reads yesterday’s newspaper. Daughter natters on her mobile to friends in Sydney. Son #1 text messages his friends. Son #2 just sits, staring beyond the ocean, bored beyond words, wishing to be any where on this planet, or not, than here with his family.

A rabbit runs by in the dunes. A momentary diversion for every one.

Tunisian orange and almond cake with orange medallions and saffron custard, a long black (more on coffee in Australia later) and a shot of Black Label complete the repast. Time to head back to Semaphore.

It is raining.

I consider calling Barry to come pick me up but he and Kay have been so generous and gracious I don’t want to put them out further. I Zip-lock bag (every traveler’s best friend) my camera; I tune my iPod to a collection of Bach organ fugues; I zipper my Goretex-lined fleece jacket (which the Aussie’s laughed at when I arrived and all now want when I leave); and I set out. It is cool (OK, 27° is not cool, but when you’ve gotten used to mid 40°s 27° bites). Knee deep in the warm surf cool is soon forgotten. Bach is a good choice. Jogging in the warm, incoming tide, it is an hour and a half back to Semaphore jetty.

It is cocktail time at Seacroft before we go off to Glanville Warf for tea.

Another day in Semaphore.