WEAVING NEW MIRACLES

WEAVING NEW MIRACLES

It's strange yet uplifting how life has a way of allowing one to appreciate its layers if we're just paying attention.

Over all the years I've lived here "on the farm" I've always been working, doing my project management thing away from home base and Karen has been the one to have spent the lion's share of time here as a working and studying artist in a home studio.

Consequently I never got to spend that time with any real day-to-day continuity to see the subtlety of nature and little miracles unfolding around me every day.

I've been watching the weavers, the beautiful golden masked ones making new nests for potential partners only to have the mama bird reject a sterling homebuilding effort for reasons known only to her. Tirelessly, the male will chatter to her, accept the verdict and begin the process from scratch on another likely branch and very often in a completely different tree.

But although I have witnessed this process off and on many times, I've never actually seen the relationship drama unfold between the birds themselves; the "conversations," the inspections, the obvious condemnation by the project manager on structural or aesthetic grounds and the resignation of the architect-builder when he is compelled, by unwritten contract, to source a new site for construction to recommence. And that, I thought, would be that - but it isn't.

Once the dwelling has been erected on site B, daddy weaver systematically demolishes the condemned building on site A. There's a whole complex dynamic on the go here. It's sublime to behold.

Yet other weavers are making nests in trees I only just realised had become big and tall enough to safely accommodate them, trees that were nonexistent when we moved here in 2004. This became even more apparent to me when I recently reviewed an old Google Earth map I'd used back then to plot the distance of our perimeter fence. The landscape was almost bleak in comparison to what's grown here in ten years, not least of which has been my spirit and absolute love of this beautiful place. I still get teary whenever I write about it.

I recall the same sensation overwhelming me in autumn then winter when I see the grass yellowing, thinning out and plants shedding their summer foliage - it's akin to artistic self-doubt - will the place ever be beautiful again? Will it recover? What if it doesn't? 

Will I ever be able to paint with words again? Will I find an audience? Will I be good enough to find employment in Australia? What if...?

And lo, the seasons turn, the rains fall, the paradise that is this place I am to leave behind, blossoms into new life, relationships and adventure and my faith in everything is restored, including myself.

And more than anything I experience sublime joy and gratitude for this eternal upliftment into infinite potential.

Whether there be some unseen divine hand guiding facets of life that we will never truly comprehend or whether this is just the great unfolding of an evolutionary yet cyclical order of things, I think the Native American view of observing the primary creative force of the universe through the natural world is perhaps the way it strikes a chord within me as the miraculous presents itself to me every single day of my life when I am savvy enough to experience it.

And now - other, strange, beautiful miracles await to be discovered anew.

I cannot wait.