She came here to stay and work with Avianna, one of those who grew up like her in the echo-boom of the work done by Fazal Inayat Khan in his intentional community in a Surrey country house in the 70s. Their parents were all part of that community and though shattered diaspora-like in the 80s after the community was unable to continue as it had; in the attempt to create continuity after Fazal's death in 1990 some 10 or 20 of a second generation grew up meeting periodically. Attending workcamps together in the retreat centre that the Surrey house became from the ages of 8 - 18 the two girls often worked together as part of experimental groups (experimenting with what, you ask? too many things to describe here without losing the thread, but probably just the self, in the end - or was it the group? never could she distinguish clearly between the two...) . After the retreat centre was deemed un-viable, closed up and sold the connections between all these young people persisted.
To continue this work is why she came.
This story is part of the greater one, it's hard to tell and comes in pieces.
It's cold windy and rainy in JC today but she has been meaning to write about the roof of the apartment she's been staying in. It has views of Manhattan through downtown Jersey City from the Empire State all the way round past the Statue of Liberty, who even in the mist, and tiny is visible and visibly triumphant.
The first night she was here and most nights since she has stood and watched the lights, the columns of smoke, the planes taking off and landing. Macro gradually conceding to micro and the entire scale visible as her attention shifts.
The Statue of Liberty speaks to her of this city as a shrine. A pilgrimage site and a node for all kinds of relationship and connection shrunk onto an epic skyline, the lit-up landscape here is a shrine to the relational. Here even has she come, to plug-in to something, to seek allies, to nurture and feed existing connections and to allow new ones to germinate. She is reminded of the last place she journeyed to; Delphi in Greece, the belly button of the universe. Was that the 'Big Apple' of what was it, the 6th century BC? Neither journey was conscious pilgrimage for the sake of pilgrimage, both were motivated by smaller, more specific connections, opportunities arose and were taken and paths followed and then...
There she finds herself.
To continue this work is why she came.
This story is part of the greater one, it's hard to tell and comes in pieces.
It's cold windy and rainy in JC today but she has been meaning to write about the roof of the apartment she's been staying in. It has views of Manhattan through downtown Jersey City from the Empire State all the way round past the Statue of Liberty, who even in the mist, and tiny is visible and visibly triumphant.
The first night she was here and most nights since she has stood and watched the lights, the columns of smoke, the planes taking off and landing. Macro gradually conceding to micro and the entire scale visible as her attention shifts.
The Statue of Liberty speaks to her of this city as a shrine. A pilgrimage site and a node for all kinds of relationship and connection shrunk onto an epic skyline, the lit-up landscape here is a shrine to the relational. Here even has she come, to plug-in to something, to seek allies, to nurture and feed existing connections and to allow new ones to germinate. She is reminded of the last place she journeyed to; Delphi in Greece, the belly button of the universe. Was that the 'Big Apple' of what was it, the 6th century BC? Neither journey was conscious pilgrimage for the sake of pilgrimage, both were motivated by smaller, more specific connections, opportunities arose and were taken and paths followed and then...
There she finds herself.
for more information about the life and work of Fazal Inayat Khan including the recently published book Heart of A Sufi please look at the work of Arch Ventures
No comments:
Post a Comment