‘Elm Grove as a Trial Balloon’ re-visited – Rev. Alan Wright
I have recently enjoyed reading an article from back in 2000 written by our former director, the late Rev Alan F Wright (an educator, academic and Baptist Minister) for his memoir.
Alan’s profound words still resonate clearly today in our world. A world that is challenging so many people as they search for ways to cope with the chaos confronting our world at this time. One can recognise the increasing need for places of connection, on so many levels, in order to enable us to find the resources to be able to walk with courage, to bring change and to restore hope for the future.
Elm Grove as a Trial Balloon – Divine Initiative in Creating a new ‘Space’: Spirituality, Religion, Ecology and Education.
By Rev. Alan Wright
(This article has been slightly edited and condensed.)
Introduction: An International Perspective on “New Spaces’
At a weekend Conference/Retreat at the Elm Grove Sanctuary in the Snowy Mountains in September, 2000, Dr. David Tacey led our reflections upon Youth Rites of Passage and Spirituality. He had just returned from some weeks in Europe and the U.K., being an invited guest and resource person at:
- A U.N. sponsored Millennium Conference on the theme – “What can the religions of the world do to promote Peace?” It included leaders from the world’s great religions, and the religions of indigenous peoples, plus invited resource speakers of which David was one. It was a first step in this direction, and as such profoundly important – it is a new space for dialogue across all religions and within the International Community.
- In the U.K. the Blair Government has taken a significant step for the re- organisation of Curricula with its systems of education. By 2003, education will have a focus upon education for Citizenship within 4 major headings:
- social awareness
- moral awareness
- cultural awareness in science, technology, and the arts
- spiritual awareness – the development of spirituality, with input from the world religions, and atheists if they want to contribute, but not religion as such, nor under the control of the churches.
Inspectors will assess schools on their contribution to all four segments of this “Education for Citizenship” Course. But many people in education are somewhat dismayed asking, what on earth do we mean by spirituality and how then can we be assessed on our contribution to it. David Tacey was invited to England and Ireland to contribute towards developing a new consensus in this area.
A few relevant comments in passing –
- The Blair Government didn’t dream this up out of a new zeal for religion or spirituality. It had been forced upon them by the recognition that the sense of community in the U.K. is becoming threadbare. All sorts of troubles are escalating because people seem to lack a commitment for preserving, caring for, or nurturing the communities of which they are a part.
- It is a very significant separation of Church and State. The Churches, by and large, are concerned, but will in no way be denied the opportunity to contribute. It’s up to them.
- While in some sense it is a leap into the unknown, it is creating a space in educational curriculum for the exploration of spirituality. If, as Tacey maintains, there is now a spiritual vacuum which youth are wanting to explore for themselves, then, in a secular society, the opportunity will be there to do so with resources, and the people to help them. This, I think, is a significant comment on where we are within Western (Christian) civilisation and the beginning of the 21st century.
The Elm Grove Sanctuary as a ‘New Space”
Elm Grove Sanctuary is just one of many communities being formed to give new expression to spirituality, religion, concerns about ecology and the quality of human life on earth, and then developing educational programs appropriately. I have been a Director at Elm Grove Sanctuary for the last ten years and it is just so happening that the invitation to write the book about the Carey Chapel has come at a time when my reflections about the spirituality embedded in the Chapel symbols, co-incided with my participation in a significant new model at Elm Grove of relationship between spirituality, religion, ecology and education.
If the William Carey Chapel represents the Sacred in the life of the students, staff and The Board of Carey – including the Baptist Union of Victoria, its sponsoring body – then any account of new shapes that the Sacred is taking in our world at the beginning of the 21st Century will be useful, even while recognising that each institution’s needs must develop their own shape from the way the Dynamic is operating within their particular forms.
It will help if I outline the significance of Elm Grove’s development under separate headings which can help our exploration.
A. Creating New Spaces. Our institutional “forms” tend to develop a momentum that after a while possess a life of its own, which may or may not now best serve our human or Divine purposes. By creating a new space, there is opportunity for a “breath of fresh air”, a release of creativity for the reformation, re-synthesising and testing of the ideas which are needed for conscious spiritual evolution.
At Elm Grove, by Divine initiative, a new space was created. Its birth was out of human experience, in this case a Near Death Experience followed by revelations of an unmistakable clarity, – including a later “out-of-body” preview of the Elm Grove site at Goobarragandra. From this two people, who previously had been at least agnostic in their belief system, created the foundations of Elm Grove as “A place of rest and solace for many”. (The full story is recorded in Chapter 10 of the book “Life After Death – The Evidence” by Ian Wilson & now in their memoir “The Elm Grove Story – a mystical journey” by Edwin & Laurel Lloyd-Jones).
Laurel and Edwin Lloyd-Jones were so convinced that the One, the Presence, experienced in the NDE had communicated directly, that they sold their business and home in Sydney. They both changed their careers and invested in the Elm Grove property. They deeded the property to a charitable Trust who would be responsible for its use and development according to purposes thus broadly outlined in their constitution:
- a) It would be a place of rest and solace, where people could come for refreshment, for a re-discovery of the spiritual purposes of their lives.
- b) It would be a place where the grandeur of the natural environment would nurture a new approach to care for the earth, our home.
The Blair Government in the UK. has “created space” for schools to explore the spirituality dimensions in all education. Elm Grove Sanctuary was created for the exploration of human spirituality, and ecology, and latterly education.
B. Elm Grove Sanctuary was a space that was profoundly spiritual with a continual emphasis upon the mystical, the cultivation of a life-style that is simple, providing spaces for prayer, contemplative meditation, and of service to others who felt the need for the cultivation of these dimensions in themselves. The centre operated on a donation basis. Divine Guidance was sought and given for all developments with dependence upon God for the supply of material resources. People were moved and inspired to give of their time, effort, skills and finances giving substance to the vision. This meant that many, many people felt an “ownership” of Elm Grove Sanctuary. This place where the founders had both found and come to express themselves in ‘soul work’.
No money was borrowed for big developmental projects, so that in no-way was there room for them to be ‘carried away’ on institutional ego-trips. They evolved into becoming an Ecumenical Franciscan Community, following in the footsteps of St Francis and St Clare of Assisi. This was entirely appropriate.
C. Elm Grove Sanctuary became profoundly Christian in its commitment. As Edwin and Laurel needed spiritual and religious nourishment to support their life-style, they evolved through membership of the Anglican to membership of the Catholic Communion. There is an amusing side to this. When Edwin was given prayer guidance that he needed to “take on” the Church, because of his background, he was inclined initially to interpret “take on” in confrontational terms! The Catholic Missal of daily Bible readings has long been the basis of their daily meditation, reflection and prayer. There is a mystical dimension, so that it is the reality behind the words upon which they waited and then shared the insights that emerged and which led to honest personal and institutional reality-facing, with a commitment to following the insights thus given to them.
Because what Elm Grove was providing was not “Church based”, it became apparent that suspicions were around about “what strange things might be going on out there” – perhaps another “fringe religious cult”. So, their prayer guidance led them to invite and appoint two “Bishop Protectors” – the Anglican Bishop and the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn. They held no ecclesiastical power over what happened at Elm Grove Sanctuary – though their counsel was often sought and appreciatively received. Their intimate knowledge affirmed them publicly in that Elm Grove and The Community of the Little Followers of St Francis (LFSF) were profoundly Christian. The Bishops presided over services in which members, after an appropriate Novitiate, made Vows of Life Profession as Members of the LFSF.
D. EGS was profoundly Ecumenical – that is, while practicing deeply as a Christian Community, there was no exclusiveness of people of any religion, or of none, who came to Elm Grove Sanctuary for a re-discovering or renewal of their spiritual roots. People were encouraged to find their renewal within their own religious framework. From Edwin and Laurel’s own beginnings on their spiritual journey, they recognised that “The One” who brought them to Life and Spirituality is beyond all labels.
Affirming my experience with Roy Choudrey of the Ghandian Hindu Ashram, this approach to religion and spirituality, I am perfectly at home with this model. This includes close contact with and co-operation with local Indigenous Australians of the Walgalu people. The site of EGS was and remains an Aboriginal Sacred Site. They had an Aboriginal person as a Director, and there is an Aboriginal Sacred Symbol in the Chapel of St Clare. Elm Grove Sanctuary became a welcoming site for the renewal of Aboriginal Spirituality within their own sacred traditions.
E. EGS was profoundly ecological in both its intent and practice. Its commitment was focused in its vision for the Yindi Centre, based upon an understanding of the Universe Story, now empirically well established, and outlined. The development of a new awareness of the place and unique role of the self-conscious part of the whole creation, in becoming with God the Co-creators of the future of life and life-sustaining conditions upon Planet Earth.
The planned vision was for EGS to develop towards becoming something of a model for a self-sustaining eco-village. A place where youth and others could come for periods of time and through ‘hands on’ work to experience a different life-style in encompassing a world-view, which could be explored through an ecological resource centre linked with parallel developments across the globe.
F. Elm Grove – Part of a Paradigm Shift in World-view?
Education systems in the last 50 years have been increasingly shaped by a dominant Scientism which has been materialistic, atomistic and in which mankind viewed matter ‘objectively’. Matter was ‘out there’. The natural resources were there to be understood, used and manipulated for human progress by scientific technology.
In the “New Physics’, an entirely different world-view has emerged which amounts to a paradigm shift. Man, the observer, is NOT separate, objective to nature, but is part of nature. If you ask particle questions you get particle answers. Nature is now seen, not atomistically but deeply interconnected, relational, communal: all matter is energy vibrating at different frequencies within a universe that is profoundly one— in something like a holonomic model -the whole is each part and the part is intrinsically related to the whole.
This ‘mysticism’ within the new physics, though different in methodology and focus, is not incongruent with the mysticism at the heart of all the great world religions, in which we are consciously part of The One.
So, this world-view, and with it the empirically established ‘universe Story’ lays the foundation for an entirely new vision of the role of self-conscious human beings within the ecological systems of Planet Earth. We must choose whether to go on treating nature objectively, or whether to wholeheartedly accept our role, and awakened spirituality, mystically, to learn to become co-Creators with God, Consciousness, the Source of Energy, of Life.
But there is a deep cultural lag within our education systems. The momentum of our institutions will tend to keep us operating in the old-world view which is now so destructive of the earth. We must change; it is not a matter of if, but when. The best pedagogical guide that addresses these issues is a little book by Parker Palmer, ‘To know as we are known’, which starts with the fundamental questions of epistemology that are inherent in the new world-view. He unfolds strategies in schools and classrooms whereby educational institutions can become spaces in which communities of truth operate.
Young Australian of the Year in 1999, Le Tan, complained that her education at school and university had given her the skills and knowledge for skilled employment and success, but had failed to give her a vision of life that was big enough to invest herself in, which was now what youth most needed.
Has what has been unfolding within the ‘new space’ at Elm Grove got some of the essential ingredients for building such a great vision for life and purpose that the likes of Le Tan and her youthful cohorts are apparently looking for?