WRR@LARGE

by Joy E. Stocke

The Upaya Zen Center nestles into the mountains a sufficient distance from Santa Fe that I'm sure I've made a mistake walking into the hills without a map. When I ask two police officers in separate cruisers where the center is, they look at me with raised eyebrows as if to suggest I turn around and fly back to New Jersey.

I stop a third car, and a young man says, "You're standing in front of the entrance. The monastery is hiding in plain sight." And then he drives away...

His words could be a mantra for what is about to transpire within the walls and gardens of Upaya, where Abbot Joan Haifax, Roshi, presides over a gathering of artists, scientists, architects, writers, poets, philosophers, mathematicians and spiritual leaders, which include Mary Catherine Bateson - daughter of antrhopologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson; her sister Nora, who is making a film of her father's life; mathemetician Ralph Abraham, an expert in chaos dynamics; poet and farmer, Wendell Barry; the Reverend James Parks Morton, former Dean of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and founder of the Interfaith Center of New York; and Saul Mendlovitz, Director of the World Order Models Project.

We are guests of cultural historian William Irwin Thompson, one of my mentors. In 1972, Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Fellowship, an association of creative individuals in the arts, sciences, and contemplative practices devoted to the study and realization of what he calls, "a new planetary culture."

What Bill means by that is not so easy to quantify. In her opening remarks, Roshi Joan sums up the early years of Lindisfarne: "We felt a sense of urgency in those years. We thought the world was uraveling. And so we created a consort - summed up best in the work of Paul Winter - a consort that was wild and safe and where our relationships were vital."

Joan Halifax, Roshi

Joan spoke of the philanthropist Laurence Rockefeller who had "extraordinary faith in Bill," and "who made it possible for us to take risks." She also reminded us that this is the first meeting of Lindisfarne Fellows in ten years and that as the orginal members age, "there will be a point of discontinuation of people who have transformed the landsape."

"It's important to bring us together now," she says. "Not to look at what we're doing, but to see what lies ahead. Elders cary the possiblility of prophecy. So let's sit with our mortality and remember that Lindisfarne is a process, not an institution."

We are sitting in semi-circle, our shoes off, some with notebooks poised. She seems to look at each one of us, particuarly at the younger faces in the room, "This could be our swansong," she says, "or maybe we swans will lft up our voices and sing."