From the Guest Editor...

"Be Here Now"

Guest editor Françoise Ducroz works internationally (in French, English, and Spanish) in the fields of environmental sustainability and personal development. She teaches a contemplative form of yoga and consults on green living and the ecovillage movement. She recently spent three years at the premier intentional community and environmental center, the Findhorn Foundation Community in Scotland, where she worked in guest departments and fundraising; she also helped establish a United Nations-affiliated environmental program. Françoise holds a master's degree in Art Therapy from the College of New Rochelle in New York.

My father, a pragmatist and a declared non-believer, loves his garden. He has loved his garden for many years. The youngest son in a family of mountaineers living at the foot of magnificent Mont-Blanc in the French Alps, he was taught early to bring in the hay and to harvest the potatoes. At 82, he no longer prepares the ground for planting or puts the garden to bed before the frost. He reluctantly delegates the task to one of his sons. But he observes from the living room window, commenting on the rain and the wind. Nothing could matter more to him than those rituals and those gestures.

Every spring since he was a boy, my father has toiled the soil. For food, not for poetry, mind you. And yet!

In his garden, the world was more beautiful and felt kinder to him. He could more easily accept a devastating late snowfall on early cherry blossoms than one of our rebellions or disobediences. Nature somehow he understood, even in her betrayal and slashing of hopes. My father did not meditate in a learned way; and if he prayed sometimes, he never told us. But the garden behind the house was his temple and his canvas. Summer after summer the earth and the gardener fed us on many levels. Now he misses attending to it, but perhaps what he really misses is himself. A happier man he was in his garden, his lighter heart in a place so precious, so cherished that he will again this spring watch his son repeat the rituals he taught him. He will approve my brother's competent and gentle touch of the earth. And he will go to sleep reassured and content.

The Tree of Contemplative Practices Click on the graphic above to open a larger image © The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

I am from a generation that did not have to plant crops and feed animals. I went to school. An introvert, I was able to indulge my desire to study, to contemplate, to meditate, to write, to listen to nature without the pressure of extracting a harvest. Yet, just like my father, I express my inner life and values through my work: Karma Yoga or service through work. Over time, I have settled on my own chosen and compatible practices. Looking at the beautiful Tree of Contemplative Practices from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, I see them listed: Yoga, stillness and centering prayer, journaling, deep listening, work and nature.

This Summer 2008 issue of Itineraries invites its readers to contemplate the Tree. In doing so you might recognize or discover your way to the conscious stillness and the "awakenings" within that we so much need as a balance in our lives.

For your summer reading, we offer an array of articles addressing our inner best in as many ways as we have contributors. Enjoy them and share them with others!

• Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning and On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself with Mindful Creativity, writes on Mindfulness and Mindlessness.
• With poignancy and humor, Wolfe Zucker writes of the hard-won wisdom gained by surrendering, in Inner Life, Inner Retirement.

• Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, author of From Age-ing to Sage-ing, the seminal book which inspired the conscious aging movement, shares his thoughts on Expanded Awareness and Extended Consciousness.

• Our resident philosopher, John G. Sullivan, offers his thoughts on Living Mindfully Through All the Hours of Our Days.

• And, finally, book page editor Barbara Kammerlohr immerses herself in of  two Eckhart Tolle's books: The Power of Now and The New Earth. Thousands followed Tolle and Oprah's online course where the power of technology, the charisma of a television Diva, and the clarity of a convincing teacher combined to deliver the strong, simple, ancient message which is the theme of this issue: Be here now.

The issue is illustrated with photographs which I took earlier in May and June at Selby Gardens in Sarasota, Florida and on Block Island in Rhode Island. You will find many of them scattered throughout the issue — sometimes popping out unexpectedly as your cursor drifts over another image (like the two above); these and others photos are also collected on a separate page. Trees are the subject of many of the photos AND of two drawings which also illustrate the issue: the Tree of Contemplative Practices (above) and (below) a beautiful pencil drawing by Barbara Dondero, a former nun, artist, and children book illustrator.

Happy conscious reading!

Françoise Ducroz
 

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table
and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked,
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

— Franz Kafka

Mindfulness and Mindlessness

When we are mindless, we are trapped in rigid mindsets, oblivious to context or perspective. When we are mindful we are actively drawing novel distinctions... When we are mindless, our behavior is rule and routine governed... In contrast, when mindful, our behavior may be guided rather than governed by rules and routines, but we are sensitive to the ways the situation changes. ”
 

 
Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of Mindfulness and On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself with Mindful Creativity

Even after reading Eckhart Tolle, when it comes to surrendering, I am more of a bandit than a Buddha. My editor, who is also my wife, tosses back my first draft and says: "Go deeper. Describe the inner life. Describe freedom. Describe surrender. Talk from the place of awaking… You can still be funny". She adds happily.

 
Wolfe Zucker, MSW, is retired from psychiatric hospital work, most ambitions, and his shoe collection.

Artist's Statement: This European Weeping Beech Tree was the first in a series of “Notable Connecticut Trees”. I enjoyed a five-month relationship with this tree. Under her stately branches, I learned to revere all of nature in its fullness. What a privilege!

 
Barbara Dondero is a life long seeker of quiet, spiritual and artistic expression who pioneered an approach to drawing as a dialogue between the dominant and non-dominant hand.

Awakening is what made the Buddha become the Buddha — the word Buddha meaning: "the awakened one"... Every spiritual tradition has addressed this issue and in my own writing I’ve often pointed to the opportunities for extended awareness that are one dividend of our extended lifespan... If we don’t have extended consciousness to match our lifespan, we are dying longer instead of living longer...
 

 
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is the author of the seminal book on aging, From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older

So in the end what we are seeking is always with us, before us everywhere we go. As close to us as a pearl embedded in our forehead. Present before us in the here and in the now, seen deeply and loved ever so tenderly. ...
 

 
Author-philosopher John G. Sullivan is a member of the Second Journey Board of Directors and author of Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality.