Posts Tagged ‘woodwork’

A Big Tree Falls: Three Principles of Taoism

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

I was really touched by a recent service at First Unitarian Universalist here in Richmond. Our Taoist group led it, and the three principles of Taoism resonated deeply with this Deist and Eco-Pagan: Compassion, Patience, and Simplicity.

Every day since the service, I’ve been checking passages in the Tao Te Ching, a work I have taught in an academic setting many times.  It reads differently now that I’m considering it from a spiritual point of view.

My other daily bit of inner work is to recall the three principles. It amazes me that one is always harder to recall than the others, and it often corresponds to what seems missing in my day. I’m neither a patient nor particularly compassionate person: Nietzsche is more my philosophical ancestor than is Lao Tzu.  And yet…simplicity has been the goal of my Sacred Gardening practice since it began.  The non-striving of a gardener who works with nature, rather than against it to force his will on the Good Earth corresponds to Taoist ideas of non-striving. The wise gardener shapes and does not hack.

In fact, Nature likes to hack back at such hubris. She’s doing so to our species daily.  Is this a form of racial karma?

I had a chance to practice the three virtues recently, when I had to clear up a huge pine, nearly 3 feet in diameter, blocking one of our farm roads after a heavy snow pulled it out of the ground.

First, there was non-action, the returning to the uncarved block. I studied the fallen giant for a long time, walking under it as soon as the nest of vines and branches beneath the main trunk had been cleared to permit my passage. Silently, I observed the balance point and where the limbs held great weight. To cut the wrong one could lead to, at best, a stuck chainsaw. At worst, a limb would rebound with the force of a catapult’s arm and slay me.

And yet this tree had to be cut. I could not reach the rear of our farm, including the path to our pond, on the tractor or in my truck. The woods to either side are thick with green briar and more: copperheads and poison ivy. It’s nothing to wade into such a thicket and return with half a dozen ticks on your body.

Finally, as I realized that my saw was not big enough, but I recalled the Cook of Ting, mentioned by Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu. The cook could carve a side of beef with an old knife, and he never dulled its blade. He knew where to cut because he applied a type of compassionate thinking: where on the animal did the joints move? With fluid strokes, how could he avoid striking bone? How could his cutting hand become part of the work?

My version was to think like the pine: soon I took ever larger wedges from the bottom and top, until only perhaps 8 inches of solid wood held what I thought to be the balance point. Each move was done with respect for this great tree, so different from the Loblobby Pines planted for a quick harvest by the timer companies nearby.

Unlike the Cook of Ting, I planned an escape route in case the many-ton trunk rolled toward me when the top half came free. Even the bottom half, now only a long  beam as thick as  a frigate’s mast, could twist toward me under the enormous forces released when the tree parted.

I then made my final cut. With a loud but not catastrophic “POP” the two halves of the tree separated, perfectly balanced. The top half, many tons of it, wiggled in my hand when I gently nudged it. I felt no pride, but I did feel gratitude and compassion toward this once-living thing.  Then I began to make chopping blocks and a couple of seats, each so heavy that it took the backhoe to move them later.  At that moment, however, the  tree seemed a toy, and the forest got very quiet indeed.

By not contending, but by patiently accepting and shaping, I had good fortune.

Compassion, simplicity, and patience. Why are they so hard to recall?

Bright Blessings as the days grow hot and close; tempers will flare at things beyond our control or perhaps our will to admit as problems.

You’ll need all three virtues.

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Beauty Has Its Price

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

I would never have chosen to plant a Magnolia Grandiflora so near my house. Southern Magnolias are magnificent trees, when I see them on someone else’s property.  And besides, I’m not fond of the hokey reverence for the Old South, where one thinks of belles in hoop skirts and dashing gentlemen mixing juleps, not people bought and sold like livestock.

But I also cannot bear to cut down Blanche DuBois, as I have come to call this tree.  She’s a messy beauty, never picking up after herself, clogging downspouts, and casting a shadow over everything so dense as to exclude other lesser plants.

Thus Blanche is a Southern Belle with issues, like her namesake.  When the illusion of control for gardeners is most complete, in early Spring, she begins shedding leaves. And shedding leaves. And shedding leaves.

By early June, Blanche is done with her little pity-party and she explodes into blossom. Then we are back to enjoying her for another nine months.

My paganism keeps me from firing up the chainsaw, so here are a few tips if you too have to deal with your own Drama Queen of a tree, some advice:

  • Rake up the leaves weekly and mow them when you cut grass. The leathery leaves are very slow to decompose otherwise. When chopped, however, they make a decent mulch.
  • Lift up her skirt!  Blanche was not that modest, despite her pretensions. Just don’t be a Stanley Kowalski about it. Approach the Magnolia gently and remove the lowest limbs that droop down so you get some light under the tree. I tend to make this a mulch island using the chopped leaves.
  • Enjoy the other nine months, because Magnolia blossoms floated in a bowl of water are lovely and fragrant, and the sprays of green are handsome in deep winter. I cut a few and bring them inside in the dark half of the year.
  • Learn what Magnolia Grandiflora teaches us about how some trees develop; she looks like a deciduous tree yet sheds like a pine. Her behavior, all about herself and not about we tidy humans, puts us in our place because it shows us how temporary the order of a garden can be.

Mix a julep and go enjoy her company this summer.  Burdock’s Julep Recipe (per drunkard):

  • 1/4 cup simple syrup, chilled
  • 2 oz Bourbon, chilled
  • 2 big sprigs of mint, bruised by rubbing in your palms

Combine syrup and whiskey in a glass and mix. Add mint springs to Julep cup and add crushed ice. Pour syrup-Bourbon mixture over ice and mint, stir, and enjoy.

Hint: I don’t use my single-barrels for this. I employ a common Bourbon that Stanley would belt down during poker night.

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The Small Voice of Spring

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Harry Lauder in the snow

The stove is whispering to me. The cold rain alternates between a patter and a slanting hiss on the remaining snow, but I do not listen to it. Once, before the world began to warm steadily, that landscape of melting snow–even in Richmond–marked the turning from deep to late winter.

Today, I listen to the rain no more than I listen to those who say “you see, the scientists invented global warming.” No, I don’t listen, because one season is not a climate and we forget that not long ago, every Virginia winter could be this biting.  In a few years, even those doubters will listen, but for now, I’ll enjoy a winter that is as familiar as a childhood memory of snow. I like how it slowed us, how it told us “the world is not about you.”

So I listen to the stove.  The porch is cold, and I can see my breath as I carefully clean out the fire box, sending ashes into the tray and retaining the good embers. Then I crumple a few sheets of newspaper on top. With care, and thanks for my ability to make fire, I take up the hatchet and split a few bits of kindling until they are as thin as pencils. These go on top of the paper, and to get the chimney to draw I put in a flaming wand of paper with one hand, then light the fuel.

The result is dramatic, as always, but my fire-hand is armored with a thick stove-glove. As the fuel catches I close the door, and the crackling is like laughter. “Let me be a moment,” the stove says, as I wait, watching the rain wax stronger and steadier into a full shower.  Soon all the kindling is blazing well, and I begin to build up the fire gently, choosing mindfully each piece. In half an hour, the chill from the porch subsides, and I pull up a rocker and a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune near the stove.  Over the adventures of Paul Muad’Dib the stove reminds me of its purpose: fire as preserver and, if one is foolish, destroyer.

South is not my element, but I respect the sun’s power. In the long run, cold will be the fate of all things, but long before that, and long after humanity has passed form this world, Mother Earth, even Mars, will vanish into the surface of a bloating red star that once made our gardens grow.  Such thinking about Deep Time, however, is personally no more troubling that Herbert’s evil Baron and how Paul and the other characters become pawns in a galactic game.

The stove settles down to a rhythmic chugging, a lovely old freight-train noise. The pipes on the chimney ping a little, as they expand from the heat. All too soon, I’m pulling back the rocker from my closeness to the fire. Like the wheel of the year in miniature, the stove waxes strong, and I’m drawn from both my book and the rainfall.

Spring will come and after it, summer in her fulness. Then, the fire will ebb and only embers remain.  But between now and then, there’s work to do.  The other day, I noted the calls of the birds had changed.

They know what is coming. Do we stop long enough from our scurrying and worrying to notice?

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First Fires: Time for Stillness

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Poet William Everson, a Catholic monk for nearly two decades, told an interviewer that he’d stopped giving public readings for a time “in order to go through a period of silence and withdrawal in order to prepare for a new phase” (Meltzer 51).

And so it is now with the garden, a moment in the turn of the Wheel of the Year I call First Fires.

Everson, who left his order but maintained an abiding faith in the sacred mysteries of Catholicism, knew well the values of quietude and daily practice.  These bring energy and renewal, and Everson’s precept applies not only to the facts in the garden but  also in how we regard realities such as the changing of the seasons.

It is tempting for non-pagans to see the great spectacle of a Mid-Atlantic Fall as merely a last swan song before death and sadness, but modern pagans, like our spiritual ancestors, have a different view. For us this is the time of the wise Crone and, in some traditions, a dying god who lies in his tomb until his rebirth at Winter Solstice.For those like me who follow a solar calendar instead of the Wiccan Samhain, Yule is the start of the year.

But until then, it’s time to chop wood, bank up the fire, and withdraw even further into solitude for introspection or merriment with carefully chosen company.  In my home we celebrate with a few simple rituals I’ll describe here.

  • First Fires Rite: I save the last cuttings of herbs from our garden to kindle a fire. Usually stems from sage, oregano, and mint will start a roaring blaze. If at all possible, I find a bit of wood left in the wood stove or fireplace from the prior year’s fires, an aspect of ritual reminiscent of ancient Yule-Log traditions.  We build the fire with well seasoned wood from the woodpile, read a blessing or poetry, drink toasts to the departed summer and its harvest, and we share a meal of seasonal and, if possible, home-grown or at least locally grown food. The rite has its springtime counterpart in what others call “Vital,” a ritual of tapping the trees with a staff or wand, then bidding them to awaken.
  • Putting the Garden to Sleep: I am blessed to have “brown gold,” in the form of fallen oak leaves, on our property. So near the time of First Fires I rake them (leaf blowers / vacs  generate more pollution per gallon of fuel burned that several autos).  Raking is good cardiovascular exercise, though I often chop the leaves first with my lawn-mower so they will decompose faster and not blow about.  Then I put the leaves several inches thick in our garden and flowerbeds, like tucking in a sleeper.  The leaves provide a winter mulch and, as they decay, compost to enrich the soil.
  • Wassailing / Libations: One need not wait until Yule to salute the apple tree. I  carry a cup of wine to the garden when I put it to sleep, and I’ll give a bit of wine to the earth with a simple blessing.  Throughout the dark half of the year, I repeat this in the garden or woods, to let whatever spirits dwell there know that I remember them and thank them for leaves, firewood, good soil, and renewal.

And, come spring, they’ll give back to us.  Monks like Everson knew the value of quiet. Perhaps, in our very different religious perspective, we can likewise honor the wellspring of all faiths with silence and wonder.

Blessed Mabon and Samhain, friends.

Cited:

Meltzer, D. San Francisco Beat: Talking With the Poets. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

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