BUILDING WITH THE
BREATH OF LIFE - Tom Bender - revised
draft text 8 Jan.1999
1.
OUR NEED FOR THE SACRED IN OUR SURROUNDINGS
Sacredness is essential to our everyday
world. It is not a once-a-week kind of thing, but something which must permeate
our entire lives. It underlies, but is distinct from, the religious expressions
of the sacred which often tend to separate us from others with different
traditions of the sacred.
Whenever we allow ourselves to know a place, person, or thing intimately,
we come to love them. We see among their inevitable warts and wrinkles the
special and wonderful things that they are, and their existence becomes
as precious to us as our own. Loving them, we come to hold their existence
inviolate - or sacred - and any action which would harm them becomes inconceivable.
Openness, intimacy, knowledge, and love are the essential foundations upon
which any healthy existence and any true sustainability must be built.
To many, the sacred seems "optional" and nonessential to our surroundings.
We find it difficult to conceive of the value to our communities of creating
sacred places and holding them inviolate. We seem puzzled as to what would
be gained by spending money to enrich our homes, public buildings, and community
places with hand-crafted work. We seem confused as to what we would personally
gain from changing our work and our workplaces to enrich skills and embody
supportive values rather than minimizing the use of skill and seeking minimal
costs for our surroundings.
Only because we fail to see the commonness in the many symptoms of illness
that arise from its absence is the sacred ignored today. We don't understand
how the sacred affects and nurtures our lives and our health. We see ourselves
surrounded by apparently intractable social problems - violence, alcoholism,
drug use, crime, child abuse, apathy, failing schools. All are reaching
epidemic proportions. All seem resistant to resolving.
These are not, however, separate problems. They are all symptoms of disease
- not in our bodies -but in our psychic "immune systems" which
keep endemic situations from escalating into epidemic problems. These social
problems all arise out of the same lack of self-worth, lack of re spect
by and for others, or lack of opportunity to be of use and value to family
and society. These problems are all a single disease of the spirit.
This disease of the spirit is what we see in the eyes of people
who have been defeated - individually or as a society - and who have seen
what they love and value destroyed, lost, or taken away. It is what occurs
when wealth and comfort make us too self-satisfied to reach out for the
vital nourishment and understanding arising from work, community, and giving
to others. It is the result where we lack the nurture of meaningful
and honored goals, roles, responsibilities and power. It is what is produced
by a culture that doesn't honor individual gifts, purposes, skills and differences.
Restoring the place of the sacred in our lives is essential to healing this
disease of the spirit, because it nurtures these very aspects of our relationships
whose diminishment has resulted in these seemingly separate problems. In
its nurturing of our souls, the sacred is central to sustainability of society
and preservation of the ecological health of our planet. And it is the core
of a meaningful existence.
<<<>>>
The sacred in our surroundings is essential
for our well-being. We cannot have strong and clear intention that leads
to real success in our lives unless all parts of our lives have coherence
and resonate with the same core values. As our surroundings concretely reflect
the values which were inherent in their making, it is essential that we
bring both our places and our values into coherence as they reflect back
into our lives.
The true role and importance of the sacred in our lives is very different
from our customary beliefs. A piece of it can be glimpsed in the words of
Malidoma Somé concerning the nature of work in a Dagara community:
....Our vision is the starting point of a primal technological power, which is the ability to manifest, to make Spirit real in material form....Spirit and work are linked among indigenous people because human work is viewed as an intensification of the work that Spirit does in nature.
For villagers, the product of any work must be engineered not only to serve the collective good but also to be an extension of the goodness of the collective. For instance, when women get together to make pottery, they are acknowledging that their ability to create is a part of nature's design, a part of their purpose. Before a woman participates in the work with clay, which is the earth, she will first gather the signs and images she has seen in nature, and she will bring these signs into the circle of other women. In the interest of producing something that is an extension of their wholeness, the women will begin by chanting and singing together, echoing one another.
....They are seated in a circle, and they chant until they are in some sort of ecstatic place, and it is from that place that they begin molding the clay. It is as if the knowledge of how to make pots is not in their brains, but in their collective energy.....The women can sit all day in front of two dozen mounds of clay, doing nothing but chanting - until the last hours, when in a flurry of activity all kinds of pots come forth.....The product of work here, the pot, embodies the intimacy and wholeness experienced by the women over the course of the day. The women understand that it is necessary to reach that place of wholeness before they can bring something out of it....
Most work in the village is done collectively. The purpose is not so much the desire to get the job done but to raise enough energy for people to feel nourished by what they do. The nourishment does not come after the job, it comes before the job and during the job.....You are nourished first, and then the work flows out of your fullness.
As a result of our work practices, the indigenous
notion of abundance is very different from that in the West. Villagers
are interested not in accumulation but in a sense of fullness....Abundance,
in that sense of fullness, has a power that takes us away from worry.1
In the spirit world lies the root of our existence, our purposes, our nurture, and our potentials. Restoring communion between the material and the spirit worlds is vital to the outcome and rightness of all our actions. Sourced in communion with the spirit world, our surroundings and the product of all our actions are permeated with the vital energy and rightness of spirit.
<<<>>>
Simply put, the sacred deals with "honoring". It deals with respect and reciprocity - with what the
Christian Golden Rule distilled into, "Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you." Honoring the sacred restores us to the
wholeness needed to reconnect with our own hearts, our neighbors and the
world around us. It give us the strength to summon our vital inner resources
and to guide the powerful tools of our technology into right paths.
It helps us see the importance of community- and ecologically-based economics,
and of not excluding from our decisions costs passed on to others. It helps
us understand the importance of "fair trade", rather than "free
trade" whose only freedom is that of exploiting the less powerful.
It gives us also the basis for transforming and creating institutions which
work to support rather than deplete the lasting supply of world resources,
biosystem health, and the capabilities of human and global systems that
constitute our real wealth.
And finally, we have a need for the sacred in our surroundings because it
is an inherent aspect of how our universe operates. New things rooted only
in the material world lack connection with other life, and are inherently
destructive. In contrast, something new manifesting from rootedness in the
spirit world maintains its wholeness with all Creation, and creates a new,
non- destructive balance . Evolution (and life) requires a dynamic balance and tension
between harmony and stasis on one hand, and emergence of new possibilities
on the other. Love, giving, and holding sacred are the glue which maintains
and holds together this churning, chaotic dance.
Sustainability requires a true transformation of our basic values, the
development of a spiritual core to our lives and society, and a building
of institutions that direct our actions in harmony with these values.
Like a garden, our lives need to be weeded if they are to produce a good
crop. Spiritual values are excellent cultivating tools. With them we become
clearly aware how our conventional world splits us through the heart. We
divide our time and lives between work and leisure. But rarely do we allow
our work the leisure to be enriching. And rarely do we allow our leisure
the purpose and reward of doing things of value and benefit. In a world
of such contradictory values, wholeness is not possible.
How do we honor each other, ourselves, and the world which surrounds
us? How do we honor old people, children, the sick or dy ing? How do we
honor workers and those outside the workplace? How do we honor life's changes?
How do we honor our neighbors, our past, our communities, or our adversaries?
How do we honor plants and animals; the earth, air and waters; our planet
and the stars from which we are de scended? And how do we honor all these
things in how we make and use our surroundings? Expressing a sense of honoring
in our surroundings is but a small piece of a sacred world, but one which
permeates and connects to everything. And it is one which constantly surrounds
us with concrete images of what we value.
All economics, and all cultures and communities derive from distinctive
assertions of value. If the values chosen reflect consumption, greed, and
violence, they create a far different world than if those values derive
from the sacred. E.F. Schumacher, in his path-breaking "Buddhist
Economics"2
remarked on the characteristic kind of economics which arises from the values
of Buddhism - on the role and importance of enriching work, of obtaining
the maximum well-being from minimum consumption, and of the importance of
non-attachment to wealth. He has shown also its effectiveness in creating
successful life, culture, and tools.
Reestablishing a value base to our communities involves discovery of the
real meaning of a whole range of sustainable values tied to the sacred.
Austerity, for example, is important. But it does not, as we might
think, exclude richness or enjoyment. What it does do is help us be aware
of things which distract us from our real goals in life.
When we understand austerity, we see that affluence has a great hid den
cost. Its possibilities demand impossible commitments of time and energy.
It fails to discriminate between what is wise and useful and what is merely
possible. We end up foregoing things necessary for a truly satisfying life
to make time and space for trivia. As we relearn the value of austerity,
along with stewardship, permanence, responsibility, enoughness, work, and
interdependence, we create a new and enduring kind of community.
<<<>>>
The pathways by which the sacred affects our lives are many, varied and sometimes unfamiliar. The sacred affects our bodies in giving us the security of support and nurture by others and obviating need for continuous tension of solitary responsibility. It affects our hearts by balancing the ever-present negative emotions of life with the healing and supportive emotions of love, caring, and being of value. It affects our minds through making visible the positive interactive pathways through which all life cares for us. And it affects our souls through direct connection with the spirits of all Creation.
* One of the least familiar but most important mechanisms by which our health is affected is through the vehicle of chi energy, which provides generative and nurturing energy to our lives. Chi is just becoming understood and acknowledged by our culture, but has been central to the philosophical, healing, and cultural traditions of virtually all other cultures. Our internal "chi" energy impacts and al ters the energy of the places we inhabit, and in much the same way, the energy of the places themselves affects us.
* Intimately related to chi is the role played by intention which is vital in directing and focusing chi energy. It also works independently in giving coherence and focus to our actions in the shaping and use of our surroundings, and in their ability to embody our values and dreams. Any action inspired by love, for example, conveys that love and the importance of it to others.
* Ritual, experience, and our patterns of use of places is vital in giving depth of meaning to our experiences and in bringing visible commitment and embodiment to our values and beliefs. It affects our experience, our places themselves, and the energetic interchange between them. It is an important vehicle in invoking change in chi energy, opening us to the spirit world, and sustaining community health.
* Embodiment of core values or of actual spiritual manifestations in design elements and embodied symbols provides yet another means by which our surroundings can bring us in contact with the sacred. Unfamiliar to our culture, this has been an important tool in virtually all other cultures.
* A final way that the sacred can affect us through our surroundings is when, because of their innate nature, design, or use, they become portals through which we can access the wisdom and support of the spirit world.
We are clearly not distinct and separated from
the world within which we move. Influence and awareness move both ways across
our skins and entwine us and the rest of the universe into a single organism.
Harm we cause to our surroundings returns to cripple and diminish our own
lives. In this kind of world, there is no excuse for taking from
our neighbors and surroundings. There is only reason upon reason for giving
and enriching life on both sides of our skin. The implications for how we
shape and use our surroundings and our lives are immense.
Giving, as a basis of action towards our surroundings, opens immense
new possibilities. When we as designers or clients stop saying only what
"I want..." in a project and start asking, "What can this
give?", we begin to find exciting new opportunities to strengthen
the web of community in our cities. Planting street trees gives pedestrian
shelter and lessens summer heat for the whole community. Building placement
can create useful outside public spaces. An inexpensive public walkway or
bridge may create pedestrian connections between parts of a city. Proper
juxtaposition of uses can encourage community and 24-hour life in our cities.
Our surroundings themselves are worthy of honoring. They give vital support
to our lives, can give us joy and beauty, and have lives and souls in their
own right. They also express our values and convey to others our inner strengths
and fears, pride and hungers. They speak of our relation with nature.
They reflect our patterns of work and what we do or don't gain from that
work. They show our relations with others, and what paths we take to self-respect,
balance, and growth.
They reflect our goals as a society. They tell how we build, live and love.
They show whether we know ourselves as part of the great and all-en compassing
drama and adventure of our universe, or if we see ourselves apart from it
all. What they reflect back to us today is not inspiring.
The shaping of our surroundings can be a tool for healing ourselves and
our relations to others. In a sacred society our surroundings become a source
of meaning, power and strength which we lack today. To make our surroundings
better, our hearts need to be in a better place - which we are learning
step by step. If our surroundings are better, they make us better. Strength
leads to vitality, just as weakness leads to impotence.
Sacred places and sacred building are vital to a healthy society. We all
know of places with such power, that should be held sacred. What is enshrined
in such places is not necessarily something inherent in the places themselves,
but, most potently, our act of holding something sacred. Sacred places
boil down, again, to honoring. And that is key to healing a whole
complex of social diseases.
<<<>>>
The first step to both sound community and sound
design is to reaffirm the sacredness of our world and establish that value
as a touchstone of our society.
Life in a sacred society is difficult for many to comprehend, for we now
have few remaining comparisons to the kind of support, strength, free dom,
meaning, and confidence - and therefor health - that arise from being part
of a community of respect.3
One dimension of it can be seen in a Quaker or Japanese community, where
consensus and shared decision-making, shared responsibility, and respect
for others is still a central strength. Other dimensions can be seen in
indigenous communities throughout the world which still maintain fragments
of ancient ties to land, spirit, and wholeness, and in the surroundings
and patterns of life which were shaped by such traditions. This different
world comes into being as ripples outward from even the simplest act of
bringing the sacred into our lives and our surroundings.
There is opportunity in every act of building to honor and show reverence.
A spiritual base brings often subtle, but powerful, changes. A window can
greet us in the morning with sunlight or a view into a garden rather than
a dark or dreary room. Natural materials can honor their sources. Putting
a "1% for heart" clause in construction contracts for ideas from
the builders to enhance the environmental, esthetic and spiritual quality
of a project can end up making all of the project better while simultaneously
enriching workers' skills and self-esteem. Creating peaceful silence and
shadow can give breathing room for users and space for new creation to occur.
Our places need to convey a spirit of greatness in our hearts, of celebration
of the universe we inhabit and of our connection with it. We need to create
homes for our spirits as well as our activities. We need to express the
special spirit of every place and our own unique time in our surroundings
- and to celebrate the rain, the winter, the night, the heat - and find
ways to live comfortably in harmony with them.
The power of place has always been in the realm of its meaning, and its
ability to align and marshal the invisible inner forces of our spirits with
the invisible forces of nature. Spirit and sacredness are the root of that
power; and place, not space, its manifestation.
Sometimes we may stumble onto one of those rare places that bring us into
powerful contact with the primal forces of our world - a remote farmhouse,
a forgotten temple garden, a simple barn, or possibly a famous cathedral.
They make our hearts overflow in the same way as does a grove of ancient
redwoods or a mountain top sunrise. We know then with certainty that the
surroundings we create can and should power fully move our
hearts. They can give deep nourishment to our lives and provide us with
concrete visions of what is needed and possible in all our actions. We can,
without question, create places with a soul.
It is time to put heart back into our places.
<<<>>>
Communities, too, have personalities and reflect
their makers. Present efforts to improve the sustainability of our urban
and cultural patterns have so far ignored the vital human and spiritual
components of enduring patterns. A city can have the best conceivable design
of green space, homes, neighborhoods, efficient transportation, and material-
and en ergy-efficient construction. That does not make it capable of moving
our hearts.
It is our dreams, our passions, our distinctive cultures and ways of life
that give shape to our cities and give them the power to move our hearts
and affect our lives. We can live without wealth, but not without love and
meaning.
We need places we can love, and enjoy, and about which we can be fervent.
We need to rediscover how to make the communities where we live able to
raise our passions and move our hearts.
Part of the specialness of places that touch our hearts are those unique
qualities - climate, geology, history and community of inhabitants that
make a place distinctively different from others and which gives root to
a unique personality and spirit in its inhabitants.
The "Paradise Gardens" of Isfahan give a unique sense of its desert
world. The incredible water and temple systems of the Khmers harnessed river
floods to supply water for a sustainable agriculture, tie it into the cosmology
of their beliefs and provided for the distribution of chi throughout the
kingdom. The Winter Cities of Canada have grasped the power of imagery,
meaning and emotion of winter living and transformed their communities into
wonderful celebrations of winter with ice skating, winter festivals, skiing,
snowmobiling and sled dog races.
An enduring wonder graces a village like Amien or Mt. St. Michael in France,
or places like Giza in Egypt, or Chichen Itza in Mexico, where a quest for
expression of the exultation of life and creation has transformed an entire
community into a magical manifestation of that power. That wonder is possible
in our communities also .
Power of place can arise from layer after layer of the simple everyday acts
of everyday people, as well as from great inspiration. Love of a place can
even evolve invisibly out of our simple but fundamental act of belonging
to it. When founding a new village, Native Americans bury a rock during
their ceremonies of founding. The rock is not necessarily be in the middle
of the planned village, or a special rock, or prominently visible. It is
important, however, as marking an action establishing commitment and relationship.
It says, "In this place we will live. Our lives will be centered here,
and we will see the universe and our surroundings from this point. Our lives
here are a connection with this place." And out of that kind of commitment
arises a sense of connection with a meaningful, valued and loved place.
In a related way, the great cities of China, India, Egypt, or Mesoamerica
have been built upon an image of the cosmos, the nation, nature, and our
place within it, which gives unique and potent meaning to the lives of their
inhabitants.
Our lives are sustained through our hearts being moved by the places where
we live and visit. The power of those places evokes a similar will to self-esteem,
to dreaming great dreams, and to the will to achieve them. We can transform
our communities into something which draws forth the love of residents and
visitors alike - in the physical fabric of the city, in the celebrations
it supports and nurtures, and the way of life it empowers.
It is human passions and failings, dreams and hardship, that dominate the
spirit of place of communities and give them the power to arouse our feelings
and our will to maintain, refine, and enrich them, and to ensure their life
into the future.
Make our communities places to love. That is the sustaining force of
life. When we have communities we are passionate about and which nurture
our souls, we will want them to endure. With that love, we will seek and
assure the changes in infrastructure, land use, building practices and patterns
of living essential to that survival.
TOM BENDER
38755 Reed Rd.
Nehalem OR 97131 USA
503-368-6294
© 8 Jan. 1999
tbender@nehalemtel.net
2 E.F. Schumacher, SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, reprinted Hartley & Marks, 1999 .
3 Malidoma Somé's writings give a good sense of this in African tribal culture .