Parallel Community

Newsletter

The Parallel Community is a linking network and a platform where people can express and

develop their positive contribution for change - human,

social, ecological, creative and spiritual.

May 2012

JOURNEYING ON THE WAKA

By two Stone Carriers – Ba Miller and Mo Strangeman

In Maori tradition the South Island of New Zealand is known as the Waka. The early ancestors of the Maori, the Waitaha, travelled in a waka, a wooden canoe-like vessel, across the Pacific Ocean from Easter Island to New Zealand. Their mythical story tells how Maui, a distinguished Navigator, arrived on the land of Aotearoa (New Zealand), stood in its centre and with his fishing line hooked up a fish, which represents the North Island. Stewart Island, off the southern tip of the South Island, acts as the anchor holding both islands firm.

The inspiringly peaceful Waitaha were a mixed Nation formed from Polynesian and three other distinct lines of peoples: the dark-skinned African peoples, who brought the knowledge of agriculture; the yellow-skinned Asian peoples, who carried the knowledge of stone; and the pale-skinned peoples of Europe, the Americas, Canada, Russia etc, who brought the skills of navigating with the stars. Their founding principles were to live in peace and harmony with each other and the land, while communicating with a common language. This Nation remembered and honoured the lives and events connected with their Ancestors, by imbuing their spirit into the stone, rocks, shapes and contours of the land. And so it was to these places that we were drawn. Ba was returning to the Waka (the South Island) for her fifth time; and for Mo it was her first time, both of us wishing to experience the energies held at significant places where the Waitaha were known to have lived, imprinting their

consciously harmonious way of life into the very earth.

Our first touch of a Waitaha sacred place was in a peaceful sunlit spot within the glades of forest bush at Riwaka, where water gushes out from limestone hills through a womb-like opening into fern-clad pools. Here they would bring their newborn infants to be bathed in these sacred waters as an initiation ceremony. The songs of birds and the sounds of flowing waters from Mother Earth still evoked the feeling of complete peace and tranquillity.

Our next encounter was dramatic: within the Abel Tasman National Park, where dense and lush native bush reaches right down to the gloriously sandy shoreline.

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The Pools at Riwaka

Golden Bay is the site of an imposing stone figure, the legendary Navigator Ra Kai Hau Tu, who made landfall in a great double-hulled waka about 2,000 years ago. Dropped by boat at Mutton Cove (named after the muttonbirds, food of the Maori people), we walked easily along the coastal track. Framed by a rocky window was our first view of “him”, seated gazing out to sea as if looking for the next wave of wakas. Luckily the tide was out so we could walk all around; Ba dowsed the energies emitting from the stone, and was pleased to find the 18 radials and two lines crossing which Hamish had previously

discovered. A young woman strode along the beach and asked us to take a photo of her by the figure. Although its identity was unknown to her she had been passing a couple of days before and had thought how much it looked like a Moai figure from Easter Island. Coming from Israel she told us the reason for her travels was “to find peace”. We mentioned Parallel Community and its concepts reflected for her something of what she was seeking. As is often the case we found this kind of sharing happened naturally at these special ancient places. We paid our respects, and before we left we had a swim in the clear turquoise blue waters which were beginning to lap the Navigator’s feet.

We travelled further south and inland, up over Arthur’s Pass to Castle Hill (Te Kohanga), centre of the Waka, where Barry Brailsford lives. He has written many books about the Waitaha, including The Song of the Old Tides, and also co-authored In Search of the Southern Serpent with Hamish and Ba. He shared with us how Te Kohanga was the special place for teaching the Waitaha children chosen by the Elders to receive their knowledge according to the talent and promise they had shown. Living his life based on Maori ways, he blessed us and gave us a slice of pounamu (the sacred greenstone, a jade unique to New Zealand) with which to honour the spirit of the places we were to visit.

As we

entered the site, at the foot of the hill, we placed this pounamu on the

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The Navigator: Ra Kai Hau Tu

Ba placing the Trencrom crystal

Touchstone, the Welcoming Stone, sprinkling it with water and expressing the intentions of our visit. Spread across Castle Hill are three rocky limestone outcrops, wholly different from any other hills in the locality. They personify the three strands of the Waitaha Nation, to the left the Stone People (Asian), in the centre the Gardeners (African), and to the right the Navigators (Europeans etc). It was in the large circular African Marae ( a central gathering area and place of learning) that five years ago when Hamish was meditating, sitting with his back against two enormous stone “Beings”, that he became aware of the Ancient Ones talking to him about their sorrow at how the world was being mistreated and destroyed. This so deeply affected him that on his return to England he felt he had to do something: and Parallel Community was born. Ba had brought with her a tiny quartz crystal from Trencrom Hill, which is beside Treviscoe, Ba and Hamish’s home in West Cornwall. This she placed this in a cleft between these two Beings, thanking the Ancestors for their message, their vision and encouragement to help create a better future. The rest of our time there was spent climbing amongst and honouring the many Ancestors personified in the stones of this highly charged and special place.

Our travels took us on down through the startlingly beautiful mountain ranges and lakes of the west coast, to the last tip of the mainland at Bluff. Just along from there is a tiny islet, accessible at low tide, where tradition has it that the last of a series of stones was placed by the Ancestors. The first was on their homeland, Easter Island; and the others were placed down through New Zealand, designed to tie the land into the star constellation of the Southern Cross, so that they could always navigate their way home. Once more we honoured them for their clear legacy that everything and all of us are connected within the Universe. Nearby, we were privileged to meet a man who acts as a ‘guardian’ to this spot, who through his ancestral links and personal searching has come to acknowledge and understand its significance.

With dolphins and albatross as companions, we crossed over the Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island, in

Waitaha tradition the anchor of the Waka. This small island’s natural beauty and wildlife, together with its calm, unhurried pace, is a haven of its own. It also transpired that it was the place where Mo was to set an unusual black stone she had carried from the Gambia in Africa, which through a series of visualisations had revealed itself, and the fact that it represented the fiery heart of Africa, and was apparently meant to help re-establish the energetic line with New Zealand that has become dislocated. So, on a remnant of old Gondwana, in an enchanting native forest dappled in sunshine with a small stream running by, dowsing found its niche was to be at the foot of a big Fuchsia tree, a tall New Zealand variety with a buff orange bark which peels off. With Ba tuning in, the stone was slid gently into the

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The Navigator

Riwaka

Castle Hill

Onawe Pa

Bluff

Stewart Island

soft mossy earth around the tree’s roots; the stone seemed to be sucked into its new ‘home’, ready for what the Universe wishes to do with it.

The completion of our journey on the Waka, after wandering through the Southern Alps and around Mount Cook, was in Akaroa, the hugely volcanic region to the east of Christchurch. Here on a sunny afternoon we walked along the back of a long peninsula looking like a whale shape in blue waters, Onawe Pa – a Maori fortified refuge and homestead. In more recent history there had been feuding and bloodshed here, totally against the ancestral Waitaha’s original concept of peaceful life. Towards its head is a mound of large stones, the remains of what once formed an important look-out to sea, Te Pa Nui O Ha (Pa of the Great Wind Spirit). Some years ago Hamish, Ba and Barry had visited and dowsed this meeting place of powerful earth energies, and thus a sacred site. Once more we offered a Karakia (a prayer, sacred words) to heal the lands and the people of their wounds, to bring about peace in the present and future, for those still living on the Waka, and for all of us on the Earth, connected as we are over time, distance, continents and worlds. Our final blessing was with sprinkled water on our pounamu and an honouring of this place and our journey with our hearts, saying a deeply grateful and very fond Ka Kite Ano (until we meet again …)

SINGING THE LINES

This Saturday 5th May at 3pm, come and “Sing the Michael and Mary Lines”! Wherever you are, and whoever you are, come and join in this wonderful connecting event happening not only across the UK, but all around the world as well: we're all together on this beautiful blue dot, whoever we feel we belong to!

The British Society of Dowsers is celebrating National Dowsing Day on this day – the birthday of Hamish Miller, the founder of Parallel Community. At the same time, the Earth Singers have chosen this day for “singing stewardship of our land, and loving our planet through sound and song.” These two events have come together and formed the “Singing the Lines” event, to which all Parallel Community members are warmly invited.

On the node points of the Michael and Mary lines, and at other special points along the way, as well as across the world from Sweden to New Zealand, people will be joining at 3pm BST to sing a chant composed by Danu Fox of Earth Singers - a chant to say thank you to our planet, to Gaia, to Mother Earth – or to sing whatever song they feel moved to sing. They will drum, dance, sing and connect down the lines, just as our ancestors and the indigenous peoples of our planet have done for generations. And where does dowsing come in? Dowsers will be dowsing the lines in different places before and after, at 2.30pm and 3.30pm, to see what effect this has had on the energy of the lines, and reporting their finds back to the BSD (British Society of Dowsers).

From the ruins of St Margaret’s Church at Hopton-on-Sea in Norfolk, to the Iron Age cliff castle at Carn Lês Boel just south of Land’s End, West Cornwall, the Michael and Mary lines weave their way across southern England, crossing every twenty or so miles at node points, where the energies are strongest. But do join in the singing wherever you are, if you’re unable to reach the lines themselves.

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Onawe Pa

Useful links where you can find out more … There’s lots of information on the web. The chant by Danu is at http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=danu+fox+michael; and You-tube has a lovely film of Danu singing the chant at Carn Lês Boel http://youtu.be/pUFvcZta8xU

Earth Singers have a Facebook page where people can register their interest, at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Earth-Singers/281119381943225; and the British Society of Dowsers’ website gives more details about dowsing events and demonstrations on the day, all over the world, at http://www.britishdowsers.org/whats_on/international_dowsing_day.shtml ; they also have a Facebook page all about the day, at https://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Dowsing-Day-5-May/358507857501391

A group in New Zealand will be linking up, singing to a sacred mountain there; and there are going to be people meeting on Hampstead Heath, at Deacon Hill, near Hitchin, and at Holy Island, Lindisfarne. In Cornwall, people are meeting at Carn Lês Boel, Boscawen-Un on the Mary line, on the beach near St Michael’s Mount, at Carwynnen

Quoit, and at Resugga and Lostwithiel; further up the line people are going to the Hurlers, Temple on Bodmin Moor, Cadbury Castle, near Crediton; Brentor, Creech St Michael, Spinster’s Rock on Dartmoor (Michael line); Avebury; Sinodun Castle (at the Poem tree), Dorchester Abbey, Wittenham Clumps, Ivinghoe Beacon, Bury St Edmunds, Royston Cave (hopefully), and finally at St Margaret’s, Hopton.

Wherever you take yourself, and whatever you sing, you will be with so many people singing together to gift song to the land, so please know that you really are part of something wonderful!

Ringing in the bluebells at Treviscoe!

On Sunday 6th May, when the bluebells should be in full flower, Ba says that all will be welcome to come along to the gardens at Treviscoe, from 10am to 4pm. Refreshments will not be provided but do feel free to bring a picnic. Donations will be invited in support of Parallel Community. Parallel Community is not having an Open Day as such this year, but members are welcome to come along to Treviscoe to enjoy the gardens.

Happenings at Hopton-on-Sea

PC member Brian is organising the restoration of the ruins of St Margaret’s Church, Hopton, on the Michael and Mary lines, and has sent us details of current happenings there.

A busy time at St Margaret’s this week. Mary and Michael will be playing host to a number of visitors as the springtime arrives and projects start to grow. The first of course is the reawakening of Bel, on her return from a winter’s sleep. Beltane sunrise will be observed from the coast and then at the ruins. Dowsing will take place and results logged again as previously.

The second is the Dowsing / Singing the Lines ceremony at the church, as part of the national event. I’m hoping this event will be attended by quite a few people from all over the country: a grand opportunity to meet up with new acquaintances, and make new friends, and spread the PC word. A blessing will take place prior to the event at 2pm to honour Mother Earth and the lines.

The third event, on Bank Holiday Monday May 7, is a new event for us: a traditional village Mayday ceremony complete with maypole dancing, children’s arena events such as ‘Obby ‘ Oss races, spoon & flower races, sack races and handbell-ringers. Adults will have a tug-o-war, and Dorris-dancing (we couldn’t get a Morris side: the ladies of the team are strutting their stuff here!) There will be a bar, a barbecue, loads of homemade cakes and pies and more. We have 30 stalls so far including a PC tombola stall; and a bar with real ales and of course cider.

On another note, we have had a meeting with the preservation officer with regard to our HLF bid and he believes he has found a way forward to success the next time. Update later in the year. Spring cleaning and planting has started on the surrounding gardens, all of which look really good this year. Thanks to all our volunteers for this work.

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Photo by Frances Watts

David Kelf, at Hopton, has let us know about the first Community Walk along the Mary line there, from Hopton-on-Sea to Lound, which took place on April 14. He says,

“The first of our walks started at the cliff-top beacon where the Mary Line emerges from (or disappears into) the sea. A refreshing north-easterly breeze was blowing in from the sea. Ten people, mostly locals from Hopton, walked from here to the Old St Margaret’s ruins, picked up three more walkers, then on to the new Hopton church where a Saturday afternoon wedding was taking place. From there, after crossing the main A12, we walked by lane to Cuckoo Green checking the Line a couple of times where Brian Howard had previously marked it. Then, striking westwards by footpath, we aimed for Lound where we visited the lovely St John the Baptist’s church, which lies just off the Mary Line but is connected by a minor energy line and by a footpath. Following a short walk through the Lound Millennium Green we completed the walk by the Village Maid pub where the Line crosses the road. Most of us then returned, without pausing, to Hopton by the way we had come. The weather was bright and cool but excellent for walking. Everyone was interested in dowsing for the Line and following her track across the countryside.

“Our next walk along the Mary Line will be from the pub in Lound to the Bell pub at St Olaves, via Ashby church, on Saturday May 12, meeting at 2pm. Ashby church is the one most like our own Old St Margaret’s but of course is still complete and in good shape. Join us at Lound if you can.”

The Earth's Prayer (to the intonations of the Lord's Prayer)

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The Community Walkers at Lound Church on April 14

Pathways to the PastAn event that might well be of interest to Cornish PC-ers is being organised by CASPN, the Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network, later this month: “Pathways to the Past”. It’s the weekend of Saturday May 26 and Sunday 27. There will be guided walks galore, to Sancreed, Lanyon Quoit, Bosiliack Barrow, and Pendeen fogou, in the company of researchers and archaeologists; and talks, by Paul Bonnington, Cheryl Straffon, and Andy Jones, about hunter-gatherer communities in the south west, stories of ancient stones, and recent excavations and finds. Each individual event will be £3; full details can be found at http://www.cornishancientsites.com/events.htm

Healing Light FestivalParallel Community are having a stand at the Healing Light Festival at Falmouth Princess Pavillions on Sunday June 10. If any members would like to come along and help, or say hello, they would be very welcome.

A message to the next owner of my garden

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Our Gaia, whose art is nature -abode of our life,Your time has come, your battle wonfor people's planet-consciousness.Teach us each day, how to be and livethrough observing nature's models.Those models that bring us into harmonyand not into conflict with life's source.Home to humanity,in sacred diversity.Deities in unity,our dream.

Our Gaia, whose heart feeds all creaturesalive on this Earth.Attuned to that flow, our knowledge growsof how interdependent we are.Give us this day a new way to be -Born guardians of all life formsIn a heart-based nature - nature at its heart.Our new role in life to honour themRespect and protect, share in the caringto sustain the futureTheir destiny our own,at-one.

Our Gaia, as a part of youWe are your natureYour kingdom of life, your will survives.Give us, this day, new eyes to seeEyes that embrace the whole world and not just me.A metamorphosis.The land, like our bodies,The sun our inner fire,Rivers, life-blood of earth.Parallel universe,Wholistic perspective,Oneness. PC member Ann Palmer

PC member Marianne Griffin has sent us this poem …

The gentle breeze swings through the trees,The cherry blossom dances in sheer joy,

A squirrel runs down the acer treeAnd darts across the lawn ….

Wood anemones sparkle after the rainLike a cloak of precious diamonds;

Inquisitive blue periwinkles stand up highAnd daffodils send out their trumpet call …

“Spring is here!” The garden’s alive -It’s calling us to go outside,

Waltz through the veil of awakening branchesAnd sing with the amethyst azaleas ….

“Alleluya!”Sing an anthem, sing a chorus,

Sing a love song, sing a prayer for us. We’re the guardian angels of this garden;

We want another owner who will care for us.

We are so fragile, we need love and care,So that you can enjoy us and stare

In constant wonder from out the houseTo love us and keep us, free and tall.

Whisper a prayer for us.We are the Spirit of this home.

Look at us and promiseThat you will love us and let us grow.

An Intellectual Property Law for Nature?

PC Member Ann Palmer, from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, has sent us the following article … Contact her at plyons.gress@tiscali.co.uk if you would like further details.

We are looking for people in the environmental world who might be interested in taking up and running with the idea of introducing an Intellectual Property Law for Nature.

Just to give you an idea where I am coming from... In 2009, I was fortunate enough to win the Earth Vision Nature Writing Contest, and then received the even greater accolade of being asked to judge this competition in 2010 and 2011. For decades I have squirmed in fury at seeing advertisers use animals and birds to promote their products: products which may, actually, be harming the ecosystem on which these animals and birds rely for their life. It seemed to me a particularly invidious form of 'passing off' – to connect, particularly in a child's mind, the cute and cuddly ' happy, jolly, jokey' with a product light years away from that animal’s welfare or interest.

Whether to dub this initiative 'the Lighter Side of Animals’ Rights' or 'Intellectual Property Law for Nature' will depend on the audience you are addressing. I can see a fantastic potential for the proposal below. I think today's more eco-conscious children would immediately and intuitively latch onto the ethical – the rightness of this suggestion. Therefore, it would be a possible petition-initiative in schools across the UK.

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Obviously, in the bigger picture, it would be good to have every organisation involved, even peripherally, with nature, to push the Environmental Minister to introduce a Private Members Bill to bring in an 'Intellectual Property Law for Nature'. It closes the gap between the reality of the ecosystem and today's commercial driven world. I just thought you might be interested in taking up this idea and running with it, because it will need someone in the 'public eye' environmentally, to get it off the ground. An O.A.P. who swims with seals in the Outer Hebrides isn't quite the right image!

Proposal for an Intellectual Property Law for Nature

Rationale

When a person or organisation wishes to use something belonging to someone else to promote their goods or services, they cannot, by law, just do it. Permissions and fees are involved. People who infringe the law are taken to court, fined, penalised.

There is no such protection afforded to animals, birds and all aspects of nature in the world of marketing, promotion and advertising generally. This is a gap in the law which, in our more eco-conscious world, needs to be addressed. But it also needs presenting as an attractive proposition to the commercial world if they are to take it on board, and see its potential to improve their image as eco-friendly; to take them beyond 'greenwashing' as a policy.

A flexibility in choice of ways to 'thank' the birds, animals, or aspect of nature they wish to 'borrow' for their own purposes would take this beyond a merely financial payout. The money raised could go into a fund to promote a greater environmental awareness, thereby causing the money raised to work twice, doubling up on the benefits.

Benefits of the Intellectual Property Law for Nature

* Psychologically, the move to genuinely bring the commercial world and the natural world into symbiosis is powerful: gap-closing, integrative, more 'real'.

* Animals, insects, birds and nature cannot stand up for themselves. Only we humans, if we clearly see the imbalance, can fully take on our responsibilities as guardians, not exploiters.

* This is not an 'in-your-face' initiative, like marine conservation, or reintroduction of a species. Yet it has the power to change the relationship between commerce and the ecosystem at a much deeper level, where it becomes a change in consciousness, in the way we see the relationship between ourselves and the natural world: Biosphera Integra, not Anthropocentrus Rex.

* To have to pay for what you take makes you value it – more. To no longer be able to 'take it for granted' is a big wake-up. Presently, using animals promotionally is a freebie that has been exploited for so long that paying for it, will, for some, feel like a culture-shock.

* The presence of this law will cause people to re-assess and revalue their relationship with the natural world. The tipping point will come when an organisation decides they deliberately want to use as much of nature as they can in their advertising, to show they really care about ecological matters and want to show the buying public this high degree of caring. This is a big plus point developmentally, moving towards greater honesty and integrity.

* A natural outcome - an annual Award for the most ecologically-minded creative advertising.

* A law brings credibility and status to a 'new way of seeing', such as happened with the Race Relations Act. So the outreach, spin-offs from an Intellectual Property Law for Nature is conscious-changing at the cultural level, in line with ecological reality.

* The Intellectual Property Law for Nature needs to incorporate a Gold Standard, a Silver and Bronze one, so commercial organisations have some freedom of choice concerning their degree of commitment.

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Relationships

By Core Team member Lynn Forrest

We humans have a unique existence. We are capable of the awareness of being in relationship to everything around us.

We know we are in relationships with our parents, family, friends, partner, workmates, neighbours etc. etc. On a human level that's one thing; but on a planetary level, are we really that aware?

I can see most of you nodding. "Depends on your level of consciousness," I hear you say. Well, perhaps we ought to raise the consciousness levels of our fellow man and woman.

For not as many people as we would like to think are fully aware that everything they think and do affects everything and everyone around them. Yes, Siree, the responsibility of acknowledging our relationship to everything scares the pants off most of us.

We don't need to overwhelm ourselves with the burden of it all though. We just have to do the best we can, consciously. Once you know the enormousness of ourselves in relationship to everything else, you begin to realise we are all connected. Ergo, we are all One. And if each one does their best, we all get to enjoy a bit of it. Sounds like fun to me ... I feel a party coming on.

So during the auspicious May full moon (Sunday 6th May) make a promise to yourself: that you will treat all your relationships as you would like to be treated yourself.

If you want loving, nurturing human relationships, go hug a tree as well as your friends. Create a home that's as much a sanctuary for you as it is for those you invite into it. How do you feel about your workspace? Can you do something to make it a more creative and productive place for you to work? How do you feel about your place in the world? Is there anything you can do to better contribute to it?

Do you nurture the relationships you have or do you neglect some and take them for granted? You know what they say: wherever you go, take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints. And by treating everything as you would be treated yourself you may just have enhanced all our relationships for the better.

The deadline for the June 2012 newsletter is Friday June 1st (please note – this is later than usual). Send articles, letters or comments direct to Frances at watts@penare.ndo.co.uk, or by post to the address below. We’d very much like to hear from

you. Please do pass this newsletter on to any friends you feel might be interested.

The Parallel Community, PO Box 11, Hayle, Cornwall TR27 6YF, UKinfo@parallelcommunity.com

www.parallelcommunity.com

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Listen to the mustn’ts, child, listen to the don’ts

Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts

Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me

Anything can happen, child, anything can be.

Shel Silverstein