A Goshawk.
Anglican priest Linda Chapman lives on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, which was devastated in the mega-fires which swept through the area in the Black Summer of 2019-2020. She reflects on this in the light of a recent encounter with a type of hawk – a Goshawk – and what it can teach us about the necessity of contemplative consciousness, if we are to heed the warnings of the latest IPCC Synthesis report into climate change.
I write from a place of grief. Here, near where I live, we see a landscape of burn scars: tracts of charred sticks, which were once living trees, and burnt soil, which will not regenerate for a very long time. These scars are also burnt into my psyche and even body.
I move through periods of lament. If you at times feel this similar grief and lament, the cry of the earth, do not let anyone tell you it is some kind of private neurosis or pathology. We must let the great psalm of lament live through us; it will come and go. And we will still feel the joy and gratitude of life. But unless we face this suffering we will not be truly present, as we must be at this time.
Goshawk and cat
I let the cat out for his morning run and was attending to something in the garden when I heard a scratching sound on the shed roof. I turned and looked up to see a white goshawk just a couple of metres away. I stayed looking for a few seconds then quietly moved away towards the door of the house before turning to look again at the bird who was still there.
It was then that I noticed the cat, sitting on the ground under the cover of the shed roof just below where the hawk was. I called the cat and as he came out from under the cover of the roof the hawk swooped with his talons open right in front of me. I saw the talons open and close as the cat ran under the house.
What struck me was the attention of the hawk. I was struck by his presence: silent, with the dignity of any wild creature who has not “developed a field of great complexity around itself”, to use Benedictine monk Laurence Freeman’s words.
Reflecting afterwards I thought that the presence of the wild, in this case the hawk, is pure. Pure in that there is a sense of the absence of the noise, the inner chatter – and that field of great complexity in and around us. Pure, in that the attention of the wild creature is of necessity so focused, still and not captured by the many desires and distractions by which we are captured.
In some respects a wild creature may become our teacher. Just to be in close proximity to the hawk was gift. The sheer, silent ‘Isness’ of the bird stays with me as a re-minder of an other, unadulterated consciousness.
Or at least, it suggests we might develop a more humble awareness of the way in which our lives are interconnected with all creatures.
For Indigenous people throughout the world the presence of other animals and of trees, rocks, rivers and so on is part of the whole field of awareness, of life. Not just a backdrop to human life. Or a useful resource. The awareness of seamless relationship with all life runs deep in original consciousness and is essential for life to continue.
The Goshawk’s presence was stunning. It had all the alert stillness, strange otherness, and simplicity of a creature free of the egoic entanglement of the human being.
The sense of the bird’s wild dignity struck me powerfully: the dignity and silence of a wild creature who is not burdened by that complex of disordered and grasping desires that humans develop, and which have such profound and dire consequences for wild creatures and the whole earth.
Some people catch wild birds to possess them, to trade and hunt. These captive birds perhaps reflect that humans are captured so often by a culture that has lost deep connections with other-than-human life. We have lost our original connection with the primordial silence from which we come, but which we still sense in the wild.
Meditation may be a pathway to restoring that connection. It’s possible for us to recognise our original human vocation – our contemplative consciousness of life as a whole and our place in it.
Shortly after our cat’s close encounter with the goshawk, I watched him as he sat in the sun coming through the window, licking his paws after a feed of prawns. He wasn’t disturbed. He wasn’t telling himself a story about his near-miss, railing against the hawk, plotting revenge, all the sorts of things that a human mind might do. He’s a cat after all.
My mind however went back to a time when he, and so many animals and people, were disturbed by a disaster in the form of fire. Three years after the mega-fire of the Black Summer here in Australia, and with La Nina moving away and taking her rain that caused such significant flooding, we begin to see fires again, and are reminded of the need to prepare.
All over the globe more and more people will face the kind of disasters that heating of the climate is bringing. Cyclones, floods, fires, the weather is now really something to watch. And to prepare for.
Here we know how to prepare our homes in the event of fire, but how many of us consider how to prepare our minds? And what role might an enduring practice of meditation have in the preparation of our minds?
Because when we speak about the responses needed to global warming we speak first of the need for mitigation – essentially bringing down our carbon emissions caused by our use of fossil fuels. The latest report by the IPCC says this is the earth’s last chance to avoid climate disaster. The world will likely exceed 1.5 degrees of warming within a decade and is on track for a catastrophic 3.2 degrees by the end of the century unless there are immediate and deep cuts in fossil fuel use. We must cease digging ancient sunlight out of the earth and instead harness the sun’s power directly.
So, mitigation is the first priority. But we will see more global heating related weather and fire events, however, and this calls for adaptation which involves preparedness.
An Australian psychologist is researching what is being called “disaster brain”. Danielle Every, from Central Queensland University, has interviewed people who have lived through various big fires in order to understand how to better prepare our minds for these sorts of events.*
She found that even though many people had done the basic preparation they found themselves panicking when the fire came.
"They've thought about what they're going to do, but of course on the day thinking about it isn't going to be enough. You can't know just how minds can flip out in this space", she says.
“Under extreme stress many people reported they changed their plan at the last minute: they left it too late to go; forgot to take essential items or left their animals behind; did random tasks that wasted time; or completely collapsed and went to sleep.”
When your brain is put under stress there is a window where it is alert and able to function, but beyond this it can become either hyper-aroused, causing you to panic, or hypo-aroused causing you to shut down.
"When you're faced with a threat, the primitive, reflexive part of your brain (the brainstem) and the emotional part of your brain (the limbic system) are designed to react immediately," Dr Every explains.
The higher part of your brain (the pre-frontal cortex) regulates your brain's response to the threat. "It keeps you in that zone where you can still think quite clearly. But when we've got a threat that is really overwhelming, we can actually lose this connection with our pre-frontal cortex."
This sends you into fight, flight or freeze mode.
I recalled a couple of instances of this from our own experience. My husband Anthony had stayed behind at our home with my brother who was visiting – despite my suggestion to him that it was not a good time for a holiday on the south coast. Like some other holiday-makers he was one of those who had little idea of the risks confronting us.
When Anthony called out to warn that the fire was approaching from both the west and the north, my brother panicked, jumped into his car and took off – one of the worst things you can do. He didn’t get far, as when he turned the corner he saw the fire hitting the vegetation on the sand dunes of the beach. His brain went into flight mode.
How to cope under extreme stress
Dr Every's research shows that people who are better prepared for disasters are mindful, and are able to stay focused; and use active coping strategies to control their anxiety.
Dr Every suggests using a strategy known as anticipate, identify and manage, or AIM. "Actually knowing you're probably going to flip out is really, really helpful," she says.
Being able to identify that you are feeling stressed is a cue to use techniques to calm yourself. "These are simple things like ... deep breathing, having a small object close by that is grounding, or being with someone who is themselves calmer than you are so you've got emotional feedback loops between each other."
"Being able to keep your cool, stay connected in the midst of overwhelming bodily impulses to flip out is so valuable for people and we can teach anybody," Dr Every says.
Contemplative consciousness
At the impromptu evacuation space we had set up in our hall and church it became very clear to me that a practice of meditation has real world consequences in critical times.
When the phone rang early in the morning telling us to leave, the fire had burnt quickly through the night towards us, I did not realise that I would be heading into town to hold a safe space for so many people and pets. Before I put our cat into his basket and into the car to leave, my phone started ringing with people asking if they could come to the hall. I got there, opened up and began to prepare the space – firstly by making pots of tea – we had gas then so this was possible.
People arrived as you might imagine in a stressed state. Tea always helps! By the second day I had put up a list; a kind of timetable of activities and roster for helping with meals. The list included meditation. There were two of us there who are regular meditators.
On this particular day a woman burst through the door of the hall telling us about the plans she and others had hatched should the fire come into town. She was in a slightly frenzied state. She looked towards the whiteboard, and noticing, on the list of activities, meditation, asked if she could join us.
After the gong sounded to conclude the time, she said thank you. And then she left in a slightly better frame of mind. Months later she told me how significant that time had been for her. So, too, does a friend who came to stay in the church because of the sense of ordered calm.
These remain significant images: the juxtaposition of the chaos – the orange smoke, the sound of water bombers and helicopters, the general anxiety, the uncertainty of not knowing if one’s home was safe - and this little space that welcomed people, and which held and settled them.
It reminds me of the wombats who apparently let other creatures into their burrows underground to shelter from the fire. Meanwhile, our cat had found his own burrow in a cupboard in the parish office where he remained, for the most part, until we could take him home.
The reality of the world we human beings have constructed, out of the great complex of desires we have propagated, is that this construction is ultimately our destruction. “The wicked problem”, as the climate crisis is sometimes described, is wicked because it’s cause is so much part of just about everything we do, the way we live in the world as we have constructed it. The weather becomes in some sense a reflection of our consciousness – overheated and intemperate.
Yet what we also see arising at this time is the growth of contemplative consciousness through communities such as the World Community for Christian Meditation, and others. And this matters. It has real life application. Contemplative presence makes a difference in this world in times of disaster, and times of peace.
The next time I saw the Goshawk he was sitting high in a tree as butcher birds swooped him. He remained as still as the first time I encountered him. Until that is when he swooped on the cat. Yet even in this action there was dynamic stillness. On this second encounter I saw that the little birds seemed not to affect him at all. He remained seemingly unperturbed.
One could see this hawk as an image of the mind that is aware of swooping thoughts yet remains centred and still. I guess however that if really needed, the hawk would have moved, taken action to ward off possible harm to itself with that particular economy of movement so characteristic of wild creatures. Contemplative consciousness knows when and how to act.
The Rev’d Linda Chapman OAM is Rector of the parish of Moruya on the far south coast of New South Wales, Australia. Linda founded ‘Open Sanctuary’ at Tilba Tilba: a contemplative ecumenical community committed to living out practical sustainable life principles and the practice of silence. Linda nurtures the Christian contemplative way and is an oblate of the World Community for Christian Meditation. An occasional retreat leader and spiritual director, as well as advocate for action on climate and conservation, Linda sees the urgent need to be contemplative in action for the common good. See: https://www.opensanctuarytilba.org/
Linda’s article is a slightly edited version of a talk given at Benedict’s Well in March 2023. Benedict’s Well is an outreach of the Benedictine Oblates of the WCCM. The weekly event (Mondays) consists of a period of meditation followed by an inspirational talk. See:
Benedict's Well - Oblates (wccm.org)
*See: How to prepare yourself — and your brain — to face bushfires - ABC News