Turtles

Turtles.  I need somebody to help me figure out what's going on with the turtles.

The first ones showed up at the beginning of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute course I was fortunate enough to take this past week and a half called Peace by Design:  Architecture as Peacebuilding Practice.  The course was taught by Barbara Toews and Deanna Van Buren.  Barb is a restorative justice practitioner and Deanna is an architect.  They have been moving in the direction of each other's specialty over the past number of years, and for several have been collaborating, leading design workshops focused on restorative justice issues, most notably with incarcerated folk.  If the connections here are not immediately intuitive to you, you may feel free to join the club; most people have reacted to hearing about the focus of the class with puzzlement.  But when I begin to talk about the Berlin wall, the village green, or separate entrances for different kinds of folks, usually something clicks...designs, whether intentional or unintentional, have profound effects on our moral universe, and vice versa.

Anyway we were asked to make collages on the first day with collections of images cut from magazines that signify peace, or a place of peace, to us.  I rifled through the bins of clippings and selected a hodgepodge of images that reminded me of our home, which is surely my most soulful place of peace.  Some folks chose literal images, others symbolic.  Some were more rigid, others more fluid.  If people needed a particular type of image, they were encouraged to ask the group to help them find such.  At one point Deanna asked that we keep our eyes out for turtle pictures for her.  Why turtles?, we wondered.  Because she likes turtles, it turns out.  Ah.  Then we'll look for turtles.  A few were located and included in her collage.  Quirky, definite, and unexplained:  That kind of thing sticks with me, lingering in the shadows, waiting for meaning.

Second sighting, then, was when, on the second morning, I was gathering some peace-signifying objects to bring in as per pre-class assignment (I had forgotten them the first day).  One was a hollowed-out, crystalline-structured stone (similar to a geode) I had found while weeding the day before, one was a piece of arrowhead parent material (found next door) imported, as I understand, from the Potomac region by pre-colombian indigenous folks, and the last was a vertebrae of a local deer a neighbor had given us to butcher a few years back (I was attracted to the form and had saved it out of the stockpot).  While retrieving them from the windowsill where I keep all my special doodads, I saw the dried box turtle shell that was found not far from the arrowhead parent material rock, and which I have been unable to part with for many years.  On a whim I stuck it in my bag.

Over the coming days, as I dug into the reading, threw myself into the studio practice and soaked in fascinating lectures and discussions--scales falling from my eyes the while--I began to sketch some forms into my dot grid journal that pertained to the final project.  The assignment was to generate meaningful input by way of design concepts into the very real process, perhaps soon to be initiated, of designing a probable new building on Eastern Mennonite University's campus meant to house the cluster of Center for Justice and Peacebuilding programs, as well as very likely several other programs.  Almost right away I realized that the rounded, earth-hugging, protective space I was already sidling up to in my mind looked a whole lot like that turtle shell.

The class was masterfully taught, with, for me, just the right balance of hands-on, tactile experiences of creating and stretching mental development.  The group was diverse in age, ethnicity, and place of origin.  Also much of the work was in groups, and the profs were skillful at adapting things on the fly when opportunities for greater learning arose or when someone expressed a desire.  The greatest surprise for me was the extent to which I came to realize that the design process, when done with integrity and with the public interest ever in mind, is as much an exercise of collaborative community building as it is coming up with design concepts that favor peaceable processes and outcomes.  Substantial bulks of time were spent gathering information about the people and programs for whom and which the potential structure is intended; we even delved into local Mennonite history and contemporary Mennonite politics and philosophy, all in the interest of gaining a clearer view of the context within which the structure would be built and would function, and the values it should serve.  This is, not surprisingly, quite a tall order for a seven-day course, given especially that most of us were new to this kind of work and some of us spoke English somewhat more comfortably than others.

Now, the class was set to end Friday afternoon soon after making our final presentations to a few of the key stakeholders in the design process:  a representative from the architect's firm, the executive director of CJP and the university's provost.  Given the number of class hours remaining I found myself wondering, as I walked around the yard tucking in the animals on Thursday evening, if my design partner and I were really going to be able to a) make a final draft sketch of our design concept, b) make a model of the same, and c) prepare to present it to the panel by 2:00.  I was taking the course for personal training purposes only...there was no grade to worry about.  Still I like to do things well, as much as anything because I was experiencing the course as deeply meaningful and wanted to honor that meaning with my diligence.  Also I didn't especially want to look a fool.  Absorbed with these considerations, I nearly missed...

the turtle

training its glassy eye on my distracted movements.  I watched it where it lay among the plant parts, living and dead, which covered the ground and which make up the lion's share of its world.  We both breathed the humid air.  Then I dashed off for the camera.  I wanted to record for memory its form, and its connection with the ground.

The next morning, the last day of class, I walked in prepared to make the case for blowing my conceptual wad:  I sort of wanted to try to reach for the relatively complete building concept that had gelled in my mind the day before.  No, it didn't exactly fit with where my design team (down by one since the third member had had to move on to his next workshop in another city) had been going, but nor did it exclude the ideas we'd been working on.  It would be a stretch, but...what if we COULD?!

I put the notion to Barb and Deanna, who gently helped me immediately to see that that was not reasonable.  The relative awesomeness of my idea was more or less irrelevant (they did not say it this way).  Nor was it going to serve the class process well to make that kind of reach.  I was grateful for their wisdom in helping me curb my inspiration.  Chuck Close has famously said,"Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work."  The great lesson of this class has been a little more familiarity with what it means for the process to be the product (sort of, anyway--it's not that the final product is unimportant).  I am trying to learn to trust the process, to hold my ideas and even my yearnings loosely.  To pay more attention, instead, to the flow of people and of life and the elements all around me all the way along.  To know the world as an infinite field of possibility, and myself as a firefly out in that field, blinking my hopes into the dark and watching for an answer, fishing for a connection.  I'm trying to remember that none of us can hold on to light.  I must be getting at least a smidgen better at it, because it was not hard at all to set my super-good idea back on the shelf without worry about what would become of it in the end, and let the buoyancy return.

Relieved, then, of the little tyranny of inspiration I had been toying with, I got to work.  By the time of the presentation, we had reasonably representative floor plans and a section sketch, a collection of interpretive images, and a plan for who should present what.  No time for a model.  Our plan included a rough concept of a circular gathering space with a domed roof (more igloo than turtle, I suppose) with a dedicated space for interfaith exchange (the particular passion of the by-then-absentee group member) connected by a large, curtained doorway, and a separate building, connected by an outdoor walkway, dedicated to the STAR program for trauma healing (the particular passion of the other member, my co-presenter).  These are two examples of the kind of program the actual structure will need to accommodate.  The interacting values, constraints, relationships, and forces included in the design are beyond relevance for this writing.  What matters is: a) this building will not, could not be built in this way and everyone knew that, and b) having the concept up on a board to interact with is an excellent way to explore the issues and get folks thinking.

I discovered that it is, in a way I consider good, a fairly bracing experience to have to convey and answer for a creative process, especially to practically-minded folks who are dearly aware of the constraints they face and the priorities they represent as they consider a new building project.  What an excellent, excellent crash course in group process (further up the food chain than I'm used to relating to, but still) for architecture.  Deanna pointed out in the final circle after the presentation was over that stirring up discussion and generating reactions of various kinds is a good sign that you've touched something important.  The worst reaction, she advised, was silence.  The reaction and discussion that our project stimulated was brief but lively, questions and comments ranged from theoretical ("Where in this concept do you see indications that this is specifically a university building?"--on the spot I had to admit it wasn't much in evidence as presented) to eminently practical discussions wherein the architectural firm's rep. affably refused to answer how much a circular structure would add to the cost of construction:  an excellent result!

For me this was a vulnerable mix of pleasure and awkwardness.  The more I think about it, the more I like it, and the more I want to try it again.  While it brings it home to me that collaboration is not all peaches and pancakes, I find it a highly stimulating challenge.  If, as I suspect, it is in the milieu of elicitive process in iterative combination with creative process and evaluative process in real time with real consequences for real people that the really important work takes place, then I think I might want in.  I've always been an aesthetically oriented person, but "pure" art has never, in my adult life, held my attention for long.  I need palpable relevance.

I was sad to say goodbye to my new friends, some of whom seemed like, given time, they could become quite good friends.  Similarly, I was a little sad to leave the environment I had found so stimulating, though truthfully I was more glad to be able to return my full attention (o.k., nearly full...still some lingering inner work and pondering:  Where do I go from here with all of this?) to our family and home:  my place of peace.

Friday evening was lovely.  We've had some great rain this week, and the plants are bursting at the cells.  All four of us wandered around picking this and that and pulling at the odd weed, doing the puttering that is the stuff of my lifelong dreams.  Clouds began gathering, so I rushed around collecting eggs and shutting in chickens, trying to beat the lightning storm.  Soon after I came in, the sky opened and dropped its load.  We watched through the windows with awe, and when the storm passed we ventured back out to splash around.  Saturday and today also contained choice experiences in generally convivial family and homestead pleasure.  Chicks were hatching, peas needed picking and shelling and stringing and blanching and SAMPLING.  This kind of happiness is only boring from the outside.

This evening we were performing the latest round of tinkering in the gardens when Janelle called out to me from the potato patch (where she had been stalking beetles), "I found a turtle!"  I trotted down to have a look.

There, sure enough, was the same box turtle I'd spotted the other day, distinctive for the grayed patch of exposed bone on its carapace.  It was digging a hole with its hind feet.  Could it be?  Was this, of all things, a turtle making a nest?  This time we asked the girls not to touch or disturb the turtle at all, but to watch from a respectful distance.  I scooted off for the camera again, and snuck in a few shots, trying to maintain awareness of Mama Turtle's anxiety level.  If there is anything the world needs, it's more box turtles, I say.  Far be it from me to put that prospect in jeopardy.  When we'd gotten our fill of seeing her, paused as she was in her ancient ritual, and had judged that it was time to leave well enough alone, I pushed three sticks into the soil such that the center of the triangle they formed marked the turtle's nest, and went about my evening.  If, in the morning, she has finished her work and I can see clearly where she has laid the eggs, I'll cover the spot with an overturned steel milk crate and flag it to prevent human traffic destroying the nest.

So.  Turtles.  Please, somebody.  Help me out here.  I am a sentimental person and I enjoy found symbols and meaning-making.  But so far I got nuthin'.  Which is fine, of course.  Dave Jacke, from whom I was privileged to learn permaculture design once upon a time, was at that time fond of emphasizing that it is not advisable to rush away from the place of confusion, or not knowing.  He claimed that was very fertile ground.  For my part I shall leave you now (favoring instead the company of my pillow at this wee hour of morning) with the below poem, first brought to my awareness through its position above the toilet on a friend's bathroom wall.  I intend to move off into sleep thinking about Mama turtle in the potato patch, the cool night air sliding over her, tucking her precious eggs into the dark soil and then crawling away with nary a backward glance and no notion of what will become of them.

Waiting For Signs "I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream and an angel in black tights came to me and said, you can start any time now, and then I said is this a sign? and the angel started laughing and I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me." Found in StoryPeople book - Mostly True