Early 1960’s

The photo to the right is of my brother Gerald and I in our teenage years in the bananas. In the 1960’s Dad bought an additional plantation off Mr. Brown nearby. This photograph was taken outside Browns Packing Shed facing Browns extensive Avocado Plantation. See the blog site: http://blackbeanrd.blogspot.com/Blackbean Rd. for a description of Brown’s house and property.

It was a simple life of hard physical work. During my teenage years I worked with my dad and my next younger brother Gerald, in the banana plantation and packing shed. We always had several house cows, a dozen or so chooks and a very large vegetable garden on brown volcanic soil. Did things grow! It was a very self sufficient lifestyle. Mum initially cut everyone’s hair with a pair of hand clippers which later changed to electric clippers …… short back and sides was the order of the day.

The country side was quite different to how it is now ……. It then consisted of open paddocks across our land and any neighbours land ….. the grass was kept short by cows grazing in the paddocks. There were occasional large trees standing in the open paddocks left over from the remnant rainforest which had been cleared in earlier years. Tree bands fringed the creeks which remained largely uncleared. It was an understood community principle that you could wander across any paddock or land of your neighbour. This principle began to gradually change in the early 1970’s and through to the 1980’s when people began to be more individualistic and protective of their land. The communal spirit began to disappear as a result.

In the 1960’s, my brothers I and walked the three kilometres or so, up along the gravel road to the main Wilsons Creek road to catch the school bus into Mullumbimby High School. This was through open paddocks which were a major problem in spring time due to the nesting magpies and pied butcherbirds.

The magpies had a nest down in a lower paddock below the road we walked along. They very protective of their nesting site and would attack us viciously. We used sticks being swung around our heads to repel them. Dad took a gun one year and shot them ….. they ceased to be a problem from then on. The butcherbirds were another problem altogether. We only had to appear on the horizon of the open paddocks and we would see a small black and white speck flying towards us then it would appear as a pied butcherbird flying towards us. It would ascend high over us then dive bomb us at a fast rate. We used sticks being swung around our heads to repel them plus some yelling at them to cause them to fly off.

We walked in bare feet along the gravel track, carrying our shoes and socks up to the bus stop. Otherwise our shoes would have been thoroughly wet through from the dew on the grass. On some winter mornings there was frost on the grass going up the bend from the creek crossing. Our feet were a bit frozen going up the driveway until they thawed out.

My prior job before this going to High School in the 1960’s, was daily turning the manual milk separator for the milk and resultant cream. The skim milk was then fed manually to a weaned calf. The cream we used on everything from bread to Weetbix in the morning. There was always a dozen jars of cream in the fridge. Mum even occasionally made our own butter from the cream.
Dad had made a grinder from a combined electric motor and a hand-turned grinder. This ingenious labour saving device reduced whole wheat into heavy ground porridge meal in very short time …. delicious with brown sugar, milk and thick cream! We would have worked of any excess fat in the work during the day or on weekends.

The daily work was punctuated weekly spending a day at church. I was brought as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian which meant keeping a weekly Sabbath like Old Testament Jews. This Sabbath was linked to a value for nature and the environment. In the Old Testament, the weekly Sabbath was a reminder of the Creation of the world in seven days in Genesis.

It was from this Sabbath teaching, I gained some wonderful perspectives. I now see these in a whole new light now since Harriet, my wife and I and many others left the Adventist Church in 1983. The ideas for the natural house we now live at Chambers Flat, grew out of my subsequent love for the environment.
In 1981, we built a unique natural house which people often come out to see. This is on our five acres of light open eucalypt bush at Chambers Flat, Brisbane. The house is largely of glass set into a post and lintel construction of 100-year old broadaxed timbers and sandstone walls. The total concept of indoor-outdoor flow, has a nice ambience to it and the design is unique and lends itself well to future development.

See the website on the house at:
http://kenandharrietshouse.blogspot.com/

I also gained some other wonderful inner values which have endured throughout my life:

1.To be resourceful, innovative, self sufficient, and independent

2. To work hard in every thing

3. To be honest, caring and respectful of others and elders with good manners.

4. To be tidy and organised in everything.

5. Family: My parents gave me the best they knew how. This included a very strong sense of extended communal family …. both personally within the family then the very strong relational family and then the extended communal family within the church community …… a commitment to others and a strong desire to see people in need always included in that family.

At times it was bit unpredictable as Dad sometimes was emotionally explosive when things didn’t fit his expectations. In that era you didn’t just get up and leave your spouse if things became difficult. You stuck it out and sorted the problems out in time.

As I write these memories, I wish for these sometimes to be like a flow of a stream of thoughts as reflections on life. Sometimes a memory is maybe attached to an understanding of life in a universal sense and sometimes it will be even poetically …. Rather than being a set of precise rational proposals. Life is often like this ….. it is an experience you go through which has no definite beginning and ending …. It simply flows into the next experience.

I invite you travel down some unexplored paths that you may never have travelled down before to a time which will never be repeated. For me, it is a unique time that was very foundational from a personality and character point of view. It is very much my account and my three brothers would have very different memories and would have had different focuses as per the description below …… we all came out with a difference in outlook on life even though we came from the same family:

Ken: I am more a lateral, creative yet practical thinker …..... into natural things and the environment and was always roaming along the creek after new creek discoveries, trees, mosses and ferns etc. ….. this finally led me to doing a science degree at the University of QLD in the early 1970’s …. Then I ran my own business in landscape design and construction for twenty years from 1975 to 1995.

In 1995 I had a bad fall off a boogi-board in the surf at Peregian beach which resulted in a very severe brain injury with a big bleed on the brain. I lost my ability to talk, walk and had a very scrambled brain. I was in hospital for six months. In rehabilitation I had learn to walk, talk and getting my very scrambled brain back again.

As I am on a life time insurance Income Protection policy, I do not have to work again and I now do some different things (I cannot drive eleven years on). I went from being an outer gardener in physical gardens for wealthy clients to being a inner life gardener to hundreds of people around the world connected by the Internet., two websites and periodic e-mail broadcasts. Read my story ‘The Rose Water Story’ on my first website http://braininjurysurvivornetwork.blogspot.com/2007/04/introduction.html

Gerald: a practical / technical person .……. more conservative than myself …… was always the one experimenting with electricity from torch batteries when he was a teenager …… initially with scissors connecting two torch batteries to light up a small globe …… he was always the one to help Dad repair the broken axle in the short wheel based Land Rover. After doing an apprenticeship in radio repairs in Mullumbimby in the late 1960’s he then married Helene in 1973 ….then went to Adelaide.

Then he eventually went to Sydney to do courses in computer technical repair work for Canon and other companies .... he is good at working in the corporate world. He is currently managing the service delivery of a contract for maintenance of Voice Systems (PABX’s/phone systems). His company he works for is Telstra Business Systems (Damovo) which has a contract with Telstra & Defence Australia. Helene his wife is busy at Kimberly Clark a personal assistant to the manager. The good part is that they both enjoy their jobs and it is certainly very rewarding.


Rick: a creative thinker .... more intellectual than I was at studies etc. …. Went to Sydney to become a Doctor ….. finally lives at a place at Culburra near Nowra ……. In the early 1990’s became a Christian Pastor of a new church under the umbrella of the Apostolic Church ….. part-time doctor and part – time pastor …..….. married Diane in 1976


Colin: a practical / technical person …..... a bit like Gerald but far more adventurous in eventually running his own business in an individual sense at Umina north of Sydney ….. it is a business to supply individually designed machines to fill bottles in factories ….. married Leanne in 1984. In 2004, he is starting with Leanne another company to supply jams to the marketplace.

See his company website at: http://www.colpack.com.au/From the website:

‘Collier Packaging Pty Ltd is an Australian company established in 1984 and operates from a state of the art manufacturing facility located at West Gosford, Australia.

The company has developed an extensive range of liquid filling and capping machinery and now supplies the cosmetic, automotive, chemical, food and pharmaceutical industries.
Filling and capping machines are assembled from an extensive range of stock components. High quality engineering and design means we can supply a machine to suit a wide range of products with minimal delivery time.
Collier Packaging Pty Ltd objective is to provide technical superior products at competitive prices and provide efficient service and technical support to all their clients.’ ’

The one gift in life we all possess is an ability of having relationships with people in different ways ……... to creatively flow this ability into whatever context is at hand ….. whether business, the corporate world, doctoring the outer person or doctoring the inner person …. I think that is a fruit of growing up in our family .... very social overall with church activities etc. I still have wonderful memories of all the Pathfinder Camps and hikes we went on. See the blog site: http://pathfinderclubexperiences.blogspot.com/


_______________________________________________________
The Reason For This Story:

My growing up at Wilsons Creek represented something that was very special … a view on life that is applicable to everyone I meet now. Then it was like a seedbed for the whole of my future life (not that I knew it at the time). This quality of this specialness of life was either learned in a conscious way or learned by participation with others. I call this quality ‘The Sustainable Life’ …. This life has the ability to be continually renewed and maintained everyday on an individual inner basis. I find myself doing something now and then have realised I learned it in my growing up at Wilsons Creek.

There are three important components in maintaining a Sustainable Life. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sit on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life of life come (as in a severe brain injury which the author experienced in December 1995), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod of your life will fall over in what you could call an Unsustainable Life. As I have a Christian Spirituality, the rock of life is God and His surety of life. Such a spirituality is central to my restoration in the last ten years. It is a very wholistic view on the whole of life of Inner, Middle and Outer Persons.

We are also like a vacuum cleaner ….. nothing really happens in our life until we are plugged into the vertical Universal Power Source which is God. However, if you never plug it in, nothing happens.

Spirituality is implicit (inwardly self evident and undefined). It refers to how an individual lives meaningfully with the ultimate questions of life, his or her response to the deepest truths of the universe as he or she apprehends these. It answers such queries as:

Ø Who are we as a people?
Ø What is the meaning of life?
Ø What values should I live by?

It is not a rational experience of the mind ….. of just a belief in something but is a dynamic quality of life which interacts with everything you do. It is very practical in the way it affects your work, family and social network and the whole of life.

Instead of being a rational experience of the mind, it is instead a living, ongoing relationship with God through His Spirit and set ultimately in His revealed written Word in the Bible. It is Spirituality vs. Religion. See the next section ‘Christian Worldview as a Source of Life’ for more detailed view on this spirituality. Read the section below: ‘Christian Worldview as a Source of Life’.

On the other hand, Religion is the antithesis of spirituality. It is explicit (outwardly evident and defined) and is marked by four things: a cult, creed, code (ethics) and community (which is more inward looking). It ends up being very law-centred …. Focussing on precise ways of living life ….. it ends up with very defined set of expectations and precise programs.

I was reflecting on this further of how life is like a forest. A forest is made up of certain trees of the same kind eg. A rainforest has trees with broad leaves and often large trunks. Small seedling trees are growing on the forest floor in a waiting stage. They cannot grow because the growth of the large trees above doesn’t permit enough light from the sun above to allow growth of then new tree.

However, if a big trees dies or falls over, the new space is quickly taken up by the growth of a new tree growing from the forest floor.

In a forest there are physical trees which can be seen in obvious ways. However, what is unseen is the hidden effects and connections between the trees in the ‘spaces in between the trees’. This was the source of the statement above ‘Finding these hidden qualities is something that really spoke to me from the beginning. Everything had a ‘to be explored’ quality to it ….. ‘The Hiddeness Of Life … In the Mulch and Earth of Life’ ….. Life therefore was an exciting journey of discovery for me’.

The ‘spaces in between the trees’ of life is where values in life and our attitudes to life and other people come from. They cannot be seen but they come out in demonstrable ways to effect everything we do. Life is an 'Inside-Out Approach' to life rather than 'Outside-Inside Approach' to life. Life changes from ‘Inside to the Outside’ and not from 'Outside to-Inside’.

In this story, the insights for a Sustainable Life were discerned in every personal experience. They were never discrete entities but flowed together in different combinations. I have had in the following insights:

Structure: Life had a lot of order to everything …. Work was there which helped defined order …. Things were done whether you felt like it or not …… there was a daily and weekly rhythm to it all.

Social Network: Every facet of life had a social network application ….. lessons of life were learned personally or in groups and had relevance for sharing with others …. Either in them experiencing the group experience or being taught in conscious way…… life was about giving to others which came back to you many fold over.

Spirituality: I learned a very real lesson in that God was not contained in a church building or church system …… God was the infinite - personal God of the Cosmos …. The Creator of everything. All creation showed something of this Creator in its beauty, integration and interdependence …. Because Wilsons Creek was a very natural place, everything had an undiscovered spiritual quality to it. Finding these hidden qualities is something that really spoke to me from the beginning. Everything had a ‘to be explored’ quality to it ….. ‘The Hiddeness Of Life … In the Mulch and Earth of Life’ ….. Life therefore was an exciting journey of discovery for me. This is the source of this biography as a whole.


_______________________________________________________
Christian Worldview as a Source of Life ….

I attribute my ongoing recovery from a severe brain injury in December 1995 primarily to my Christian Spirituality which had its seedbed in my Wilsons Creek days. This has brought healing, restoration and transformation of life purpose. A Christian spirituality comes as a consequence of having a Christian Worldview. It isn’t another Spirituality in the Postmodern Culture of many spiritualities which are seen to be all equal.

It is a unique Spirituality which integrates the whole of life ... of the Inner, Middle and Outer Persons {Spirit, Soul (= mind, will and emotions), and Body}. It means being a disciple of the Person of Jesus Christ, not a follower of a Church as a corporation. A Christian spirituality could also be termed a `Spirituality from Jesus Christ’.

A Christian Worldview sees that there are two worlds which are totally interconnected. The first is a visible physical world that you and I are part of. The second is an invisible, but very real, spiritual world where God is …. as God is Spirit. It is just as real as the first one …… you work in it with real results.

God is the infinite-personal God …. infinite- because God is outside the Cosmos and personal because God can be known in personal relationships by His Spirit. God is always the One coming to us to seek a relationship with us and not the other way round of us searching for God. It is not where we are seeking a higher spirituality reality through a particular spiritual path.

That is the major difference with other spiritualities. God comes to us and reveals Himself to us initially in His written Word, then in the person of Jesus Christ who was God and then by His Holy Spirit who Jesus gave as his personal representative after His Resurrection 2000 years ago.

A major consequence of a Christian Spirituality is that you have two dimensions of life you enter into. The first one is initially ‘a vertical one’ ….. a relationship with God as Heavenly Father made possible through Jesus Christ as the Son of God. In this relationship you are given a new identity through the living, dying and rising of the person of Jesus Christ.

The second dimension comes as a fruit of the first. It is a horizontal dimension of purpose. It is a God-given personal purpose for being in this world ….. why are you here? You have what is termed ‘a calling in life’ which may or may not involve your working in an occupation but goes way beyond your occupation. To help to accomplish that purpose you are given special abilities. Life is like a glass of water. If I sit the glass on a shelf for a while, especially in the sun, it will go green with algae and is no good for me or anyone. If I give the glass of water away to a thirsty person, straight away, I can then refill the glass for another person. God’s spiritual life to us is like that …. There is an endless supply that is very thirst quenching water of life.

‘You are there for other people’ as Albert Einstein said long ago, ‘ …. not for what you can get from them but what you can impart into their lives for good in an inner sense’. We are here for one another …… I have a component of life that you need and you have a component of life that I need. We are interdependent with each other and not independent. Life is like a community ….. we are here for the common good of others.

If we are here for one another, we find another life problem we need to grapple with, ‘Do You live a Whole Life or do you have a Hole in your Life’? Life without God is incomplete, whether we discern it or not. We can be very accomplished on the outside but deep down inside there something missing. We have lost the centre of our life. We have a big black Hole in the Soul individually and corporately as a culture. We can try and fill this with more materialistic achievements or things. However, there will still remain an inner emptiness and vacuum which only a spiritual dimension can fill.

This ‘Hole in the Soul’ idea was illustrated to me recently by a friend of mine who shares this idea. He was on a plane journey going overseas and he got into a very open and friendly discussion about life with his fellow passenger. This man told him how he had risen to the highest level in his company and how he had retired with more money than he could spend in life time. Yet there was still something missing. There was an inner lack of meaning and fulfillment in the midst of all that he had accomplished. This came down to a discussion on what was really missing - a spiritual dimension.

A Christian Spirituality isn’t about a vague, unknowable and far off spirituality which we reach out for. There are certainly rational dimensions to this spirituality but these come as consequences of getting to know God. You can real answers to prayer for anything, even physical healing. God is really there for you.

One of the followers of the Messiah Jesus wrote: ‘ ........ when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth ‘ (John’s Gospel Chapt. 4 vss 23, 24)

He was writing about truth concerning God and the whole of life. It isn’t just true for John but for all readers. It was a ‘True Truth’ communicated by God who sees the whole Cosmos as the large picture plus you and me as part of the detailed small picture. Seeing God is the Creator of all things, God knows the final truth. This truth was communicated by prophets and seers over many years and finally in person in Jesus of Nazareth who was God Himself in human form. These truths were collated in the Bible which consists of sixty six books written by people who didn’t often know each other over 1500 years, yet whose writing manifests an amazing unity.

In the beginning humanity had a relationship with this infinite - personal God of the Cosmos. We were made in God’s Image. This relationship became broken on our side, not God’s side. It was an irreconcilable breakdown with major universal consequences for God and us. Jesus Christ came 2000 years ago as the God-Man. Here was not another prophet of God just to tell us about how we can reach God, but of God reaching out to us.

Jesus the Messiah came as God in human form to connect us to a God who sought to ensure personal relationships with people. He restored that relationship again through His death on a Roman Cross. Jesus Christ was bodily resurrected and gave His Holy Spirit to us as His continuing personal representative to commence a lifelong recycling process through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. We voluntarily enter into this life long relationship. Recycling is from ‘The Inside – Out’ and not the ‘The Outside – In’.

_______________________________________________________
Personal Overview:

I left home in 1968 to attend the Adventist Tertiary College ’Avondale’ at Cooranbong below Newcastle
I then came up to Brisbane in 1970 to commence a Science Degree at the University of Queensland till 1974
I then married Harriet Kent from Melbourne in December 1975
Began a Landscape Design and Construction in Brisbane which ran for twenty years from 1975 -1995
Eventually moved onto a vacant five acre bush block at Chambers Flat where we lived a big 27 foot caravan from 1977 to 1981
Began a partnership with a Harvey Loetzsch with Harvey as the construction partner. I was the Design partner …. A very successful partnership from 1979 to 1983
Ran my own landscape company ‘New Earth Systems P/L’ from 1983 to 1995
1995 had a bad fall off a boogi-board in the surf at Peregian beach … had a very severe brain injury …... big bleed on the brain …. Lost my ability to talk, walk and had a very scrambled brain …. In hospital for six months …. In rehabilitation learning to walk, talk and getting my very scrambled brain back again
· 1995-2007: As I am on a life time insurance Income Protection policy, I do not have to work again and I am now doing new things with people (I still cannot drive ten years on) …. building community with many people ….. have had a spiritual transformation of life and I gone from designing big designer gardens for wealthy people to now working on the inner gardens of many peoples lives through individual encounters, writing a lot about inner gardens of life and e-mailing around the world. See my website at: http://www.newearthcommunity.org/

_________________________________________________________