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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER/ARTIST, Kathy Stiffney This is a series of images I took as a painting developed. They provide an example of working with seeming chaos , allowing (with inner guidance) the prime material to direct movement toward meaningful order.  
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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Jo Marie Thompson
The House You walked for years to this house knowing your work awaited, yet mysteriously unable to arrive: the map lost, the door chained, the price too high, the neighborhood in rubble. Stomping past promises, dreams plans, family, betrayals and suicides, assaults, careers and callings, animals, chances, books & statues, deities, death and more death, gurus, rivers poets, wars, medicines & metaphysics, canyons & their trails, the striving activists, mathematics, horses aplenty, inheritance, marriage, the state of New Mexico. Even wholeness did not hold. Finally, though possessing no carpenter skill, you began to build. Stone after stone, rafter on rafter. Feathers rained down. Toads watched, glossy eyed and silent from the slick logs of the trees you had to fell. At last, the doors were hung the windows tight and the stove in place. You stalked to your desk, snug by the wall, alone in an empty, airy room. The Work could begin. Day followed day, season on season. The cool air tangible inside, gaze fixed on paned windows while outside, fantastic scenes coarsed on -- arisings & vanishings, rivers & drought, flames of the rarest sort consuming impossible treasure, Gods at battle, ladders to nowhere, everything happening and nothing taking place. And still waiting; still and waiting. The Work did not come. Until one broad day in the countless teeming of days: a quiet breath, a turning, and there in the far corner -- your very own likeness and yet wholly Other in a shimmer of wings and a shrouding of cloud, shrugging and with a weary smile: “Now, may we begin?” Jo Marie Thompson Kevala Retreat January 28, 2021 FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Joan Yoder Miller
What do we want to say from Apple Farm about CHAOS AND CREATION? Shortly after the Paris bombing in November 2015 Apple Farm closed for the winter months. I wondered how we might stay in touch when the world seemed so full of fear. So the winter writing project launched in early 2016 was "What do we have to say from Apple Farm about fear?" Each winter we write -- story, prose, poetry, images. To stir the pot for our thinking about CHAOS AND CREATION, a folktale from China: Repaying Hun-tun's Kindness Long ago before the beginnings of the universe, there existed nothing except unformed chaos. At that time, Hu, whose name means "sudden," was Emperor of the Northern Sea, and Shu, whose name signifies "brief," was Emperor of the Southern Sea.* Emperors Hu and Shu were friends that were separated by great distance. They met halfway between their two domains in the territory of Hun-tun, Emperor of the Center, whose name means "chaos." Emperor Hun-tun was hospitable to these two friends making it possible for them to meet as often as they wished. During one visit, Shu and Hu said to one another, "Without the Emperor of the Center, we would be unable to meet this like this. What might we do to repay Hun-tun's kindness." After much thought, Shu and Hu said to each other, "But of course! Despite his wonderful qualities, the Emperor of the Center is different from the rest of us. He lacks the seven orifices that are needed for seeing, smelling, eating, breathing and hearing. Let us bore the necessary holes in him so that he too can have the seven features like the rest of us. This is the way we can repay his kindness." Hun-tun gladly agreed and gave permission to have seven holes bored into him. The next day, Shu and Hu began boring the Emperor of the Center at the rate of one orifice a day. By the sixth day, with six openings in his body, Hun-tun was appearing quite similar to them. Then, on the seventh day, Shu and Hu began boring the last hole. But much to their shock, as soon as their work ended, Hun-tun could neither move nor talk. Hun-tun, whose name means "chaos," was dead. And at that very moment, as Shu and Hu stood together and watched in awe, they also saw the beginnings of the creation of the world and all its inhabitants. *Although the words Shu and Hu combined (Shu-hu) means "lightning," it is thought that this was broken down by Chuang-tzu in this myth to denote the truth that when the illumination from light strikes chaos, it leads to the creation of life and the restoration of order. |
...it is in part by our response to the great stories of the world that we too can begin to find, each of us this individual story expressing the symbolic meaning behind the facts of our fate and behind the motives that determine the day-to-day choices of our lives. -Helen Luke, The Inner Story Archives
February 2021
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