At the end of November, I asked that anyone who enjoys this blog might consider contributing to one of the schemes that invest in the future for poor communities in Africa and elsewhere by way of a Christmas remembrance.
You guys came through brilliantly: several goats, enough fresh water for 60 people, and seeds to grow crops were only some of the gifts that you pledged to make. I’ve just added an allotment as my own gift.
This is community in action and I am so very, very grateful.
Image by PSD
Elsewhere:
Elizabeth, aka Dragonfly from Secret Garden, paid this space a visit the other day, which gave me the chance to go and explore the beautiful poetry and images on her own blog. And Roxanne has moved to a new cyber-home, where today you can find this love list.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Tess, from the foot of Mount Fuji, Japan, thank you and end-of-the-year greetings to you. I just found your blog and am joining the conversation.
Different faiths, creativity, ecology, and simple living are my interests, too. I live a naturally-connected life in a 300-year-old minka in the mountains and am the founder and president of a small Japanese publishing company, Energy Doorways. From this part of the world I would love to share my website/blog, especially a recent post I wrote about sounding our unique note in the world. Please visit and comment if you have time. I look forward to sharing perspectives with Anchors and Masts. Thank you and warmest wishes for 2010.
Hi Catrien, and a warm welcome to my blog. Thank you for your comment. Your way of life sounds fascinating and beautiful. I’m intrigued to know what a minka is. I shall be exploring your site very soon.
Hi, Thank you Tess for dropping by to my Blog and so glad you enjoyed the visit!…and I am really enjoying the linking up through your Blog…I too am curious Catrien {hello!} about what Minka is?
And I was also intrigued/excited to read Catrien when you refer to ‘our unique notes’ as I have gone to some amazing workshops with the sound healer Stewart Pearce whose work is with supporting people to find and sound their own unique notes. We are all born into the world with our own unique notes. Like the music of the spheres. Our divinity. I have a link to his web site on my blog.
Warm greetings, Elizabeth
Dear Tess, thank you for welcoming me to your blog. And Elizabeth, thank you and hello to you, too. I very much appreciate hearing about your experiences of ‘our unique notes’ in the world. A minka is a Japanese folkhouse, built totally by hand from local materials. In my 300-year-old minka each one of the hewn ceiling beams that span the minka’s breadth is a whole tree trunk! They are blackened from decades of smoke from the interior irori (open fire). Restoring this old minka is an ongoing labor of love, and a task that may never end. Greetings to you both from a snow-clad Mount Fuji in Japan.
Hello Catrien,
How wonderful a Minka is, that you’ve restored and living in one. An alive organic dwelling. And by Mount Fuji. You have chosen to be with much beauty. Much wonder. Much joy. Much celebration of divinity. Wow! I live in the city and I ask why I continue to choose to live in this city. And there are so many of us humans could we all live in such wild beauty in the city? That is what I struggle with.
In the ‘urban jungle’ a city of endless mirrors self-reflecting human culture. I struggle to see my soul in concrete. I yearn for un hewn stone, moor, sea.
Even though I have sought the most ancient building in the city ~ St Pauls where chorus of angels sing above. It is the wild angels I want to hear call.
Hello Catrien! I am probably the only reader here who knew what a minka is. I lived in Japan many years ago. I lived in a manshun (apartment building) in Hiroshima-shi. I only lived in Japan for 14 months, but it was an unforgettable experience. Is the irori your only source of heat or do you supplement it with stohbu (kerosene heaters)? Do you use it also for cooking?
Tess, I am pleased that your invitation to assist poor communities in Africa and elsewhere received such a good response. How wonderful that you got that ball rolling! Brava!
Elizabeth, thank you. Life here is wonderful, but also hard in terms of practically living in the mountains. Your longing for unhewn stone, moor and sea must have led you to the Outer Hebrides. Thank you for your photos on your wonderful blog – I tried to post but couldn’t (is there any way you can set up a Name/URL choice, too?). But the soul of nature still sings in hidden pockets in the city – we just have to make time and look harder.
Barbara, did you have a chance to enter a minka while you were in Japan? We had four irori in this old minka, but we decided to dismantle them and instead build a huge masonry heater by hand (in a corner of the former doma). On the coldest days we still use stohbu, too! By the way, I am delighted to find that you are the Barbara of Barefoot Toward the Light – I was already preparing to send a comment to you. Thank you for your story about Humphrey. I will be commenting on your blog in the future. Tess, thank you so much for starting this conversation.
Hi Catrien, I’ll look into adding a Name/URL choice too and
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Thank you for dropping by
What a lovely continuing conversation this is. Barbara, I was hoping you’d check out these comments, given your love of Japan. Catrien, thank you for these explanations and for continuing the conversation.
I find the whole thing very interesting because I’ve never visited Japan and it feels in many ways a very alien culture to me. I don’t mean that in a negative way, just that what I’ve experienced of Japanese culture does seem so different from the West. Years ago I worked in a publishing house and was given the task of selling rights to some of our titles to a publisher in Japan. It was a very small part of my job – almost an offhand request to see if we could do it, and no-one knew anything about the Japanese market. It took me months to realise that they wouldn’t say “no”. I kept plugging away trying to get what I thought was a straight answer at the same time they thought they’d given their answer by not saying “yes”.
Elizabeth, this question of cities and seeing your soul in concrete: I agree it is very difficult, AND I think it’s possible – perhaps if we can open our hearts to hear the wild angels in the city, we can hear them anywhere.
Tess, very interesting, because an outright no is rarely given in many business and personal situations. But for the Japanese there are perfectly clear clues in Japanese as to when no is being expressed – and both sides understand that continuation will be difficult, probably impossible. Few foreigners pick up on these hints – which is a great bane to the Japanese! Even after all these years in Japan I still sense my alien position – in 2009, especially. Which probably means that some inner shifts are once again occurring. Growth continues. Thank you very much for this continuing conversation. Elizabeth, thanks for considering the Name/URL choice.
Tess, I’m adding on at the end of this, so no need to respond. But your comment on saying “no” by not saying “yes” captures the Japanese way of “saving face” to perfection! Thanks for A&M’s always divine innuendo.
Catrien,
I’ve reset my blog to accept Name/URL…I’m new to all this so hopefully all will work!
On more ancient dwellings…while I was in the Hebrides the group I was with stayed in modernised Blackhouses. From the outside they were just the same stone and thatch but with modern insides. They have the same structures as the dwellings of people who built the stone circles and hardly changed. The last people to have lived in Blackhouses ~ named coos the smoke made the houses and people black from the fires ~ were in 1950′s where outside people bought the land and by force moved the people out of their homes and land to more inhabitable parts of the Hebrides. They were put in ‘civilized’ White houses. One remains which is a museum and that family managed to stay in their new home for 2 weeks before going back. So there has been a long history of ethnic cleansing here in UK…
While I was in the new Blackhouse I shared with loads of mice and Starlngs which are the Northern equivalent of magpies. I would wake to hearing all sorts of mammals and machinery in the walls….before I worked out that it was a pair of starlings nestling!
The BlackHouse people for the most lived to the ages of 80′s and 90′s unlike the more southern UK residents…
Like Tess Japan is not a part of the world where I feel at ‘home’…and find it exciting to read/hear of similarities….I have thought I must read up on Japan’s Shamanic History but have not gotten around to it.
Tess, Elizabeth, you would be surprised how “at home” you would feel in Japan once the “oddness” is acknowledged and accepted. I have been told that once you live in Japan two years, you never leave. I was only there 14 months.