http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article3485-transcending-cultural-stress.html

Things seem a bit busy currently.

High summer and the 5^th meeting was set to be outside around a fire. There seemed to be 2 people coming this time and my partner Sarah was away on holiday.

I had decided to make some vegan kebabs with a Satay sauce so turned off my work and walked up to the village at about 3pm to get some supplies. I was back by 5 to light the fire which had been lying under a plastic sheet, waiting since the last Resurgence Readers’ meeting.

It was great not having to hoover the house or move furniture around and I set too making the kebabs. From the garden: courgette (the first), broadbeans, kohl rabi, stacks of salad greens. From the shop: tomatoes, celery, mushrooms and red pepper. I also knocked up some mixed nut falafels to put on the sticks and the Satay sauce made from peanut butter.

Mark arrived first as I was tending the fire and I made him tea while we chatted about gardening mostly. I was showing him around our garden when Simon arrived and I made more tea – this time from a ‘chocolate mint’ plant from the garden which turned out to be the most delicious mint tea I have ever tasted.

We retired to the top of the garden laden with food. My (not quite vegan) kebabs, (the nut falafel had some egg), Mark’s delicious stew made with home-grown veg. And Simon’s (from Vanessa) mixed fruit crumble warming in the oven.

Finally, for this meeting I had read the right issue of Resurgence, cover to cover, finishing it a couple of days before the meeting. I kicked off with a comment about how I preferred this issue to the last. It is based around storytelling and on opening it to start with I felt all the excitement of having a ‘Christmas Annual’ from a favourite source (some of you won’t know what this is – sorry – it’s a generational thing). The promise before me of favourite authors, lovely illustrations and even a special on Schumacher a personal ‘hero’.

It didn’t really take and the conversation switched to why there were only 3 of us at the meeting. A couple of people had contacted to say why they couldn’t come and it is quite a small group anyway. I confessed that I had thought about cancelling the meeting but didn’t feel it was right. (In fact now I’m not going to cancel it even if it’s just me!). Raymond, the artist from Boscastle had died since the last meeting – taken by a nasty cancer. A couple of people were too busy – Cornwall has a strange local economy, it can be very busy in the summer and quiet in the winter. Someone was in London, another busy in their village…

The conversation evolved into one about Resurgence and its unique demographic in the context of expanding its readership. Our group seems to be very specifically clustered around the 50 ish age group. We share interests in gardening, nature, ecology, ‘slow food’, authenticity and self-awareness, along with an appreciation of arts and crafts, with all of us ‘creatives’ in some sense.

It’s a strange demographic; highly specific in several different interest zones – each of which could find a specialised audience but which together hit a unique, but limited  set of demographically hard-to-reach individuals. The magazine is integrative in a culture that leans towards specialisation. Its readership has been shrinking in an age where magazines are seen as a luxury and new media is becoming the norm. Although Resurgence is adapting to this eg it has a blog (for which I am a contributor) and strong online presence, neither Mark nor Simon had accessed it due to different media consumption patterns. I suspect that although the magazine is now online that its unique formula has yet to find appeal for younger consumers more conditioned into specialisation. But please correct me if I am wrong (comments below).

As the night darkened around us and the lights of St. Breward awoke on the other side of the valley, the fire warmed us and its smoke swirled around, engaging us in an occasional seat change. Although the clouds drizzled on and off, the canopy of leaves protected us from the damp and the fire immediately evaporated any that got through.

The conversation moved onto media consumption patterns. Simon and Mark both enjoy their Ipod type mobiles and I have a ‘brick’ I turn on now and then. Simon’s object of desire is an Ipad, mine the Kindle I still haven’t bought. We compared notes on laptops, computers, TV and so on – coming to the conclusion that one day all of the channels will be available on just one device that will be too complicated for anyone to work…

But then as the cloak of night settled in around us, we found ourselves inside ‘archetypal time’. Three authentic ‘Resurgence’ blokes, opening ourselves to each other, disclosing personal things about life, the universe and everything. We compared our spiritual values, which were surprisingly diverse, sitting round a fire in the heart of ancient Cornwall. But what was so special is that we were totally accepting of the diversity of each other. There was no ‘my God is better than your God’ here of the fundamentalist-competitive type, just a total being in the moment, a sharing and acceptance of each other, a deep relating between men. Time disappeared.

Eventually Mark looked at his watch and found it was midnight and we broke up the meeting as we all had work the next day. But I was left wanting more of this. I get so disappointed and ashamed even, on workshop courses such as recent one at Osho Leela when the men form a ‘group’ and suddenly become ‘the tribal UG’ – the lowest common denominator seemingly behaving like a Neanderthal. We sometimes seem to have such low expectations of ourselves.

This excellent meeting of three male minds round a fire was most unexpected and enjoyable. I also think that this open intimacy of mind between men is at the heart of healing many dis-eases of our culture. You want bumper sticker? How about ‘Resurgence men do it quietly in the moment, with authenticity’!

I kept the fire going all next day as a tribute to these fine guys who shared moments – and in memory of Raymond.

My personal challenge is to ‘go with the flow’, yet be holistic in the moment in relation to whatever I am doing. To stay in the stream that leads our culture from GDP and the economic-political model to something more wholesome, organic and sustainable. With mainstream media, government, family and acquaintances unfamiliar with the ethos of this journey, I wanted to find a tribe on a similar journey.

My subscription to Resurgence is a link to all that seems sane in this obviously crazy world. Its long-held but adaptable values are a blessing in these ‘interesting times’. I deeply appreciate the well-informed and thought provoking articles, the emphasis on positive outcomes, the basis in arts and craft, the world viewpoint, the compassion, the beauty of this magazine. So it came to me to start a Resurgence Readers’ Group locally because I knew that there must be other people like me nearby and I had to find them.

I am not disappointed. Recently I hosted the third meeting of the North Cornwall Resurgence Readers’ Group. Ok, it was only a small party of eight but we feasted on delicious shared food and common values. One way to stay sane today is to choose our physical and mental nutrition carefully and reject the force-fed media diet of consumer-serving conformity. Resurgence Groups are a great way to do this and now we are even planning outings!

Ode to a Resurgence Reader

Raise an herb tea to Benoit Mandelbrot who died last year.
Mandelbrot crop circle might be the best yet,
Mystery of crop circles, mimetic verses ‘genuine’.
Have you seen the Julia Set? Fractals, nature’s formulas for form.

Urinating on the compost – can one put human faeces in a wormery?
Composting toilets with and without separating the streams.
Moveable toilets on legs which ready the soil to plant trees.
Do you have a Green Joanna or an open composting system?

Dark caves in cliffs under a tin mine at low tide.
Enjoying nature, walking the cliffs of the Cornish coastal path.
Holy wells, leylines, Hamish and Paul, ancient pathways and the songlines of churches in Cornwall.
Movie nights for the group, did you like Age of Stupid? The Emerald Forest? Avatar? Sit down and watch the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy all in one go.

Where do you go shopping for vegan produce? How do you store apples?
Trees and weeds, swapping seeds and sharing nettle soup.
Cooking short-grain, organic, Italian, brown rice on a home-made rocket stove.
Boiled in spring water with powdered turmeric and a piece of star anise.
Rice wrapped in Nori to make sushi rolls, topped with wakame and a splash of soy sauce.
A delicious, creamy, vegan Thai curry made with home-grown vegetables.

Pelyn Woods and the tree surgeons, 200 acres of wild trees.
Roe Deer, Red Deer, Muntjack. Wild boar snuffling in the woods.
Watching adders on the sun-dappled path in the warmest April on record.
Home-made greenhouse destroyed by the breeze.
Training a Springer Spaniel to be a truffle hound.

Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein, Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst.
Dartington, Prince Charles and Cornwall.

Spring was definitely around. After this winter even slightly tepid feels warm. I did my best to get the cottage up to 18 degrees but granite seems to take so long to heat that this time of year its often warmer just to go outside and do some gardening. The wood burner was on all day, maximum insulation, an hour’s central heating treat at 6pm and we had a habitable room ready for the third meeting of the North Cornwall Resurgence Readers Group.

My lovely Sarah offered to help in the kitchen this time and well, having set the meeting up twice already it all seemed easy. I didn’t even start arranging the furniture until 4.30, making sure to hide the TV which seems like a huge, one-eyed intrusion of celebrity consumer capitalism even when it is switched off.

I had made a particular effort to read the whole Resurgence cover to cover before the meeting, especially since one of the group had emailed me with: “I hope that we cover subjects which are specific to Resurgence magazine at a little more depth at future meetings”, after the second meeting.

I had almost decided to include the very interesting-looking recipe for ‘Christmas cheese and cranberry pâté in crispy baskets’ in the evening’s food. Having finished the magazine – right down to the adverts at the back – I checked back, slightly puzzled at the ‘Christmas recipe’ in the Spring Issue to find I had studiously re-assimilated the Christmas issue.

Somewhere after starting the 45^th anniversary March / April ‘Intrinsic Values’ issue I had picked up an old issue. Not that it matters. The person who sent the email didn’t make it to the meeting and, as I discovered later, time, space and distance are relatively meaningless constructs when it comes to reading Resurgence.

I took the last container of ‘Turk’s Turban Soup’ (non-vegan) from the deep freeze and made some bread. While I mixed it I thought about William Shatner, the actor who played Captain James T Kirk, and how he was recently delighted with selling one of his kidney stones on Ebay for so much money that he bought a complete stranger who had been washed out of their home in Louisiana hurricane floods a new house. So that would be time, space, distance and any financial parity for earthlings. A quick change of clothes and I was ready.

Simon and Vanessa were the first to arrive, with platefuls of tasty treats. A fresh, multi-ingredient bean salad and what turned out to be the most gob-smackingly amazing vegan chocolate cupcakes. Sarah handled drinks in the kitchen and the three of us chatted about gardening. It transpired that Simon is a tree surgeon we discussed the huge tree in the garden taking the winter light from our solar PV panels and the ethics of harvesting the wood to increase our solar panel payback time.

‘Dark Mountain’ Sarah (nb Sarah is neither dark nor mountain-like in any way – we share the contact from the Dark Mountain Project), arrived in the middle of this with fruit and chocolate, also Jason, along with a delicious vegan stew which he claimed he had burnt but hadn’t. He contributed the classic Buddhist decorators’ dilemma, of what to do with spiders and their nests when decorating external window frames. He painted round them and we discussed other dilemmas, eg ‘what do you do with an attic full of flies?”

Jason was in fine form this evening and went to the edge of rant a few times, concluding ‘Don’t start me off on that one…’’, which kind of became the evening’s catch phrase. It can be so easy to enter the ‘negativity stream’ of un-positive happenings but all of this group avoid ‘ain’t it awful’ games and share positive ideas. What is so refreshing in these meetings is the complete lack of dissing, micky taking, egocentric one-upmanship (or womanship) and energy vampirism that seems the norm in social settings in 21^st century British culture.

Robin arrived with a very interesting crumble and yoghurt, also Cornish apple juice, then Mark with home-made bread and cheese, and strangely enough a huge home-made Christmas cake (which we didn’t eat) – the group was complete for the evening.

Simon inside the icosahedron dome greenhouse

As proud as William Shatner of his kidney stones, I mentioned the five-eighths icosahedral greenhouse I had just finished making that day in the garden, from hazel twigs and poly-tunnel cover (for just £30), and we all traipsed upstairs and out into the upper garden for a look ‘in the dark’ while the Sarah’s chatted in the kitchen. Then onto dinner, once again a mouth-watering gastronomic event of serendipitous proportions.

The evening just vanished in discussions very much centred around values at the heart of Resurgence. Shared values, shared nutrition – what an awesome combination.  As a total foodie-political-idealist-pragmatist I can think of no more rewarding group activity except possibly dancing (I love salsa).

This was a smaller group than last time and it almost felt like a party. I certainly felt amongst friends. I proposed we have an outside meeting around a fire next time as the evenings will finally be light – and warm – enough. Perhaps there will be a spontaneous outbreak of dancing? We also discussed a group trip up to Dartington for the Festival.

One of the questions that had come out at an earlier meeting was ‘How far back do you go with Resurgence?’ I know I had quite a pile upstairs, the earliest dating back to 1994. Mark brought out from his rucksack some even earlier issues, going back to March / April 1984. Its amazing to see how far Resurgence has come stylistically in the 25 years worth of magazines we had, (and the 45 years it has now been in existence). It is also good to know that the values it holds and promotes remain utterly steadfast (but highly adaptable and completely relevant) in the face of a deeply changing world.

I dipped in and quickly found an interview between Maurice Ash (who provided me with an ‘Elmgrant’ in 1982 for making a forest walk near Exeter) and Satish Kumar, discussing the values for which Resurgence is known, the same ultimately humanitarian, ‘specietarian’ and ‘planetarian’ values it holds now, as Jason so perspicuously expounded, “the truth is the truth is the truth”. Mark left the issues behind for me to read and now I’ll never be ready for the next meeting because I will be reading even older issues.

So here we are at 4pm on the day. The curry cupcakes are made, the TV taken upstairs, the dog bed hidden under the table to make room for the sofa, the hoovering done, chairs arranged. People would start arriving in 3 hours for the second meeting of the North Cornwall Resurgence Readers Group.

There was still one vital action to perform. I had to read my copy of Resurgence. Although it had arrived before Christmas I still hadn’t found the time to open the cover and start reading.

Now generally I savour every word in Resurgence and read it cover to cover over a space of two or three months. I will read an article and ponder over it. There is nothing else like this magazine that I have found. Articulate, erudite, intellectually stimulating, interesting, unusual – even revolutionary, inspiring. I had never speed read a copy of Resurgence, but now only had a couple of hours before the guests arrived to start discussing it.

The theme of this issue is ‘leadership’ and how we are all, or can be ‘leaders’. Our current economic and environmental crises cry out for new forms of leadership as the leviathan of our economic and cultural system carries us ever closer to the edge of the abyss. There were articles from Tim Smit on Maverick Leadership and the Prince of Wales on ‘The Making of Harmony’. There were articles on stewardship and environmental leadership, training leaders, Maasai leaders, leaders as dreamers, collaborative leadership, heroic leadership and leaders with humility, amongst other articles and reviews.

Nice big letters on page 29 summed up my own thoughts and gave them back to me:

“This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists…The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a non-conforming minority…Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
Martin Luther King, Jr

The Resurgence editors are so good at finding these. Once again, although speed read, Resurgence turns out a great collection of fascinating writing themed onto a highly pertinent subject. I resolved to read it all again later but felt informed enough to organise a discussion group formed around Resurgence readers.
Well, I say organise, but refuse to impose a formal agenda beyond what people bring to the meeting. It’s an anarchist’s dream, calling a meeting with no agenda!
Sarah came home at 6.30 and we chatted and got ready. About 7 the phone rings and its Jason, Louise and Jack in a car and getting close, not to sure where they are. I guide them by their various mobile phones which conk out or drop out, not telling them I don’t drive anyway. I seem pretty sure they are heading down the hill off the main road, towards the cottage. We are talking edge of Bodmin Moor, no street lights, rainy, muddy, misty, murky, dark, just so you get the picture.
Sarah suggests I go outside in case they pass in the dark, so I do and find Sarah from Bodmin just arriving and welcome her. We met by my joining ‘Dark Mountain’ online and finding my nearest member. This is a collective of writers and artists engaged in a dialogue about the breakdown of civilisation. We had had some interesting chats by email and resonated about human ‘denial’ concerning this and the power of great art to turn ‘poison into nectar’. There didn’t seem to be enough people around here to start a group so I invited her to this one. As I ushered her towards the front door I saw another car coming up the hill and for some reason flagged it down to find Jason, Louise and Jack on the edge of lost.
Cups of tea with milk, with soya milk, green tea, chai, a glass of home-made cider later there are 11 of us sitting round the cosy living room getting to know each other. Raymond, Robin, Vanessa, Simon and Teresa all arrive within a few minutes of each other. Mark phones, a little late and arrives with cold food to go into the oven, delaying the meal a bit and threatening to burn Raymonds lentil bake which I take out. We really must get a new butler. Oh Hangon – I’m the butler. I should write ‘leadership by butler’ and send it in.
Twelve of us. What a great turn out for the second meeting, members from as far away as St. Austell on the south coast to Boscastle on the north coast. What a smashing bunch of people to turn out on a dark, damp Cornish winter night.
Soon the room is aflame with discussion, warmed with the lovely wood burner which we have recently named ‘Katie’. I kick off about needing a ‘new mythology’ – the current mythology of ‘economic growth at any cost’ being, as I see it, a root cause of cultural malfunction. I question whether it might be a special role of artists and writers to dream, visualise and describe new mythologies which might serve us better than the present. There are at least 3 artists and 2 writers in the room that I know of. Resurgence seems to have a special appeal for ‘creative’ types.
I love the way the evening develops organically and the discussion extends to include all. We focus for a while on the Eden Project and Tim Smit – it being close to home, with several of us having had direct interactions with the project. Personally I have always had mixed feelings about the Eden Project, ever since I visited early on and found, in a cabinet labelled ‘Useful Plants’ some genetically modified seeds, it caused me to wonder about the sponsorship of such a project and whether they would accept pharmaceutical industry sponsors or petroleum manufacturers to get the project working. Some of my uneasiness was endorsed by others in the room.
Eden encompasses many hypocrisies – it has to. It claims to be pro-nature but hosts the biggest car park I have ever seen. Tim Smit, in some ways the ultimate charismatic leader promotes ‘curiosity’ in his article, yet Eden itself remains very sensitive to questions and seems closed to criticisms, even constructive ones, because of a fear of negative press damaging its image and affecting its grant potential. To locals it can sometimes seem like a closed shop.
Success at Eden seems determined by footfall, the money it makes from the people through the door. It certainly has been and is of great benefit to Cornwall economically, but in an age where economics itself is at the heart of the problem will be less likely than, say Prince Charles, to ‘say what needs to be said’. In some ways I feel the Eden Project is a zoo for plants, nature caged and dominated, the ultimate anthropomorphism.
Unfortunately the Prince’s article ‘The Making of Harmony’ didn’t get discussed, but I personally resonate with the gentle prince and his self-adopted role as defender of nature from the forces of consumerism, despite some very personal attacks.
From a quite detailed discussion about our experiences of the Eden Project we meandered into the ‘education verses indoctrination’ discussion. Just at a time when we need to be educating creative people to solve problems in new ways – the government and its muppets seem to be more controlling over the curriculum of conformity. Great examples from Raymond on a Russian Schooling program that goes even beyond Steiner principles or the Small School in Hartland – true Socratic learning experiences are about but sometimes seem remote.

In fact the meeting itself was a Socratic dialogue, with people contributing to the understanding of the whole group, joining in dialogue to discuss and enjoy, rather than practice the more adversarial Roman tradition of learning where I, the pedagogue am right and you sir, are wrong and ignorant. Shutup and listen. It’s great, a group discussion without ego !

Sometime within all this (well 8.20 pm) the food was ready and what a feast: In addition to my curry cupcakes there was a delicious and just about hot potato and cauliflower cheese, a tasty lentil bake, a big, fat, warming vegan stew, a smaller stew, crudités with lotsa hummus, crisps, grapes, smoothie, bread, crispbread, bananas, yoghurt, honey – all vegetarian and some vegan – and truly tasty.

It defied explanation in how it all went together as if Hester Blumenthal himself had been in the kitchen – and all without even a trace of snail porridge. It kicked off discussions on veganism and meat eating, Compassion in World Farming, Codex Alimentarius, seed and vegetable exchanges, gardening as a revolutionary activity, permaculture, LETS schemes and how, unwittingly the forces who are trying to limit our choices through legislation and licensing are opening the door to increasing our mutualisation and sharing of resources.

As the evening progressed and coffee came out, conversation fragmented into one on one as we got to know each other and opened up a bit. It passed all too quickly.

During the night I awoke (I never usually drink coffee that late), thinking about a new mythology, a new story that might change the way we see nature. What if we did re-connect with nature, the severed hand? Under what condition might we return to the ‘Garden of Eden’ in all its innocence and oneness with creation? The Eden story is certainly a seminal ‘Christian’ story of our being cast out from oneness with nature. I will think more on this.

But also, and far more important to a green anarchist on the edge of Bodmin Moor – I know I am not alone and that there are delightful people not so far away who share my hopes, my angsts for the people of this planet and at least some of my dreams for a world that works.

Fentonadle Cottage Stove

We had scheduled the meeting for 7 and Mark arrived a little early, just as I was slipping on some shoes. He lives in Bodmin, 8 miles away and conversation quickly took to gardening. Then Jonathan arrived with a friend Deborah, then Raymond. Considering we were all total strangers in a meeting without any agenda conversation flowed well and key themes and interests emerged.

Archery was the first and all of us seemed to be interested in different ways from the practice of Zen ‘one pointedness’ to the craft mastery of bowmaking and fletching. Gardening of course was quite central in a rural area such as this. Later on astrology also made an appearance as two of us had studied it for some years. In a situation where people are getting to know each other it provided a useful map of the psyche.

I did try and focus on ‘what is the purpose of this Resurgence group meeting’, but as I had suspected was just trying to impose my pragmatist fiction on other people. The consensus was that we should just enjoy sharing time (and food), which is what happened. Its hard to make notes on this since we covered a lot of conversational ground!

We agreed that Resurgence was occasionally ‘rhapsodic’ over practical but that we enjoyed this, most of us being involved in the arts in different ways. The inspirational and positive values of the magazine are central to our enjoyment. Raymond mentioned an article he had read (in Resurgence) describing the ‘perfect system’ in which a production cycle had its waste used as a material input for the next production, completing a circle in which nothing is wasted (if anyone knows which issue this might be in please let us know). Permaculture emerged as a topic of shared interest. Some of the inserts that came with the magazine were seen as having deeply practical designs, such as the playground roundabout built for children in a African viilage which powers the pump which fills the header tank, giving the villagers a pressure-fed water system from an underground aquifer. Such simple inventions are acts of genius and most life affirming.

The food kind of sums it up. I had provided some Turks Turban soup ( a squash, not involving the disrobing of any Muslims) with two sorts of home made bread. Mark brought a delicious casserole made from home grown veg. Jonathan and Deborah bought a tasty lamb dish with bread and cheese (and wine) and Raymond arrived with a sumptuous grain salad based on millet (I think). There were also some home made cakes and everyone tried the last bit of courgette chocolate cake.

Completely random food from four different sources went together like a meticulously prepared banquet, better than anything you might find in a top restaurant.

We all shared similar values and a structured discussion on magazine content didn’t seem neccessary for the first meeting. This was handy as somehow I got the dates quite wrong as the September issue of Resurgence was the most current (six weeks old). If anything I want the purpose of these meetings to emerge from the participants themselves which is going to make it hard to construct an agenda… there I go again !

The next meeting is scheduled for 7pm on 13th January 2011 at Fentonadle Cottage.