reEDENing

(re-EDEN-ing as a practice, as a social and physical exploration)

Has there ever been such thing as Paradise? My interpretation might look and feel entirely different to yours, so who is to say that it does, can, or has ever existed.

Allow me to posit this; that this planet is Paradise.

This very planet that we evolved not upon, but rather with, in, through, is paradise. It is a veritable Garden of Eden (Eden as the original image of the garden of biodiverse delights in which all our needs for sustenance, sensory diversity and natures mirror reflection to us existed, and could be further explored.) What we have done to Eden does not detract from its existence — anything that is Sacred holds the memory of sacrality — and Earth is truly Sacred. Being that we are living breathing extensions of this planet then, it is not too much of an extrapolation to say that we are Eden. Our capacities to hold complexity can allow us to entertain this idea. Yet dare we even whisper this to ourselves, that we are Eden?

How do we trace a memory, how do we live a whisper? What can it possibly mean to practice the art of re-EDEN-ing?

The “traditional” story of the garden of Eden, tells of the banishment of the first humans Adam and Eve from a garden paradise. Having disobeyed God’s commandments, and succumbing to the temptation of the forbidden fruit, they fell from a state of innocence and bliss to a state of knowledge and suffering. Enter the existential dilemma of these prototype humans (and seemingly many humans that followed). Eating the apple firmly placed us in the realm of the physical, and so began (mythically or archetypally at least) the ultimate task of the humans; to reconcile our Spirit with the physical; to live in this earthly plane with all its earthly delights housed in these earthly bodies with the reality of pain, transience and death as companions to the Spiritual aspect that accompanies us throughout existence, from primacy to the beyond beyond.

No wonder the illusion of separation has plagued us for centuries. No small task, this being human!

The illusion of separation, separation between physical and spiritual, separation between us and all that is Sacred.

It can be said that there is no such thing as a non-sacred space; there are only sacred spaces and desecrated spaces; only spaces that hinder life and those that allow yet more life to flow. Similarly for acts, people, relationships. That which allows yet more life to flow.

You see, in Eden, the apple had to be eaten, the illusion of separation had to be dissolved. We have to pluck fruit, kill, digest, die, return to the soil…life can continue no other way. Life receives life, death gives it.

The apple had to be eaten. The greater sin of our times, is to deny the eating of the apple, to deny ourselves full and total immersion in the physicality of this planet, to deny or block the complex interactions that support all of life, to deny death, pain, suffering, to deny ourselves connection to it all. There is no separation (perhaps only our skin!).

The apple had to be eaten.

So what then, can it mean to practice re-EDEN-ing?

What happens when a group of humans come together for one weekend in the beauty of Brandenburg in response to this invitation?

We spend a weekend immersed in systems theory, connective exercises, ritual, music, dance, grief ceremony, embodiment, pooled resources of child minding, and much more. As Kaa Faensen describes so articulately in her piece (see below) — we become a sudden village, with all its beauties and all its challenges. We somehow hold within us the incredible privilege of gathering in places and spaces like this, whilst also bravely (?) trusting our own vulnerabilities.

There is an air of incredulity, a faint trill of excitement or relief that we get to be here, after the months that have preceded, and the brutal realities that continue across the globe.

As a prototype weekend, as a first exploration into this concept, we hold high desires of the Commons of what can be available to all. A keynote speech on the weekends intentions attempts to root our weekend in egalitarianism and sovereignty.

Will we achieve this? We will certainly endeavour to.

We come as openly as we can; we are willing.

We heal in the interstitial tissue. We grieve collectively, and collaborate on behalf of both sorrow and joy. We cultivate ancestry by not denying the past, and neither denying the future. We green not only our gardens, but also our psyches and our souls as well as our toes.

Such privilege, yes, but I am reminded of the necessity of gathering like this — in community, in openness, in as much honesty and brave warm truth as we can muster, in following our hearts knowing, following its desire for a landscape that lies beyond our current trodden soil. A landscape rooted in complexity, in admitting that we do not know, in the reality of imperfection. A landscape where we are willing to turn our attitudes and minds to the space where something is wanting to emerge and offer ourselves as conduits for that emergence.

We are willing.

We are willing yet more life to move through us.

Willing ourselves to step ever closer to the centre whilst also fiercely and tenderly care-taking the edge.

A new centre, one that was always there (within, without).

But now the journey, the distance, the miles, the yearning, the adversities, the missteps, the mistakes (yes, the mistakes) the whispers from beyond, have lead us back to a circle where the edge and the centre are one, and it spins by the practice of re-EDEN-ing.

re-EDEN-ing, which is an ever dancing flux of remembering, opening, listening, wandering, couraging, repairing, comforting, and tending to a place within and a space without. It is a task we cannot abandon, cannot become complacent with. It is Sacred work, but it is work.

Tending to each other, to the land, to all the revelations of thought and science and anthropology and the stars and allowing all to settle together for a moment, like pebbles on a beach, and say “Here. All ingredients are Here.” Let us rejoice, until the next wave comes, and life is tossed anew!

Yet the pebbles keep pebbling, the wave keeps waving, the tide keeps turning, the shore keeps holding and shifting, and all these parts contribute to a system far far more complex than mind can muster.

Through all parts converging, in their selfness, a magic is born, one that each part could never achieve alone.

Here we are; Eden, both Here and We, by our interactions, by our participation, and by a stroke of magic otherwise known as luck.

I am blissfully brutally aware of how lucky we are.

Here we are; re-EDEN-ing.

All parts vital, all necessary, all required in their selfness, their own (capacity of) wholeness, their willingness to contribute to the whole.

All ingredients are here.

So perhaps what is needed is the whisper — the memory of re-EDEN-ing.

How do you trace a memory, how do you live a whisper?

We extend Eden from within, where it has always been, but not where it was meant to remain, locked away in our private individual chambers. It has always been within, AND it has always been between. The fullness of it only ever to be revealed through the interactions of our relationships. It can only ever be shared — tasted like the apple.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ~Louise Erdrich

As mentioned, Kaa Faensan has written up a stunning report of our weekends explorations… https://medium.com/@kaa_works/a-capacity-for-desirable-futures-68e7eb7109b8

I acknowledge the potential difficulty in a term like re-EDEN-ing, in all it’s religiously-embedded, colonial-remnant muddled history. We use it in our endeavors as a purely archetypal phrase.

The work continues, in the emergent unkown, and we will explore re-EDEN-ing in more gatherings over the coming months, for more information, stay tuned on Dandelion.