"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.
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The Tree of Contemplative
Practices
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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.