Environmental Nudes Aug. 4, 2006
The story of Saint Maria…
On the web there has been this ‘nude story’ without explanation under the guise ‘Environmental Nudes’. Here is that story behind the pictures. A sort of fairy-story really, with some audience imagination much needed…
Maria grew up in the south of Portugal. In part of the Algarve. A beautiful unspoilt area. She lived with her family and her animals on a house on the edge of a small town. She weaved in and out of greenery, shrubs, trees, being so small. She could see the sea and she could feel the heavens all around. A beautiful place to grow up. She lived there with her parents and her grandparents, and various animals – but particularly a parrot, which landed on her shoulder and talked to her even when she could not see it. And she had no reason to be unhappy there. She was most unhappy.
But, as things happen, she began to sense a world out there. A calling. Rather than to the big city, as might have been her calling, it was to ‘God’. The God she read about and admired. So strong became the calling and the urge to see God, she decided when she was big enough, to join the monastery as she called it. The nunnery or the convent came the correction. It was clear it was right for her. So off she went. To a special place way up north past all of Portugal and into North-west Spain, near Santiago.
And life continued in a way as it had left off. She was happy and surrounded by a new family whom she admired. And there again was nature and greenery. And there again was the heavens all around her. And there was love.
Life went on in this way, in her new monastic garden for years and years and yet more years.
One day, whilst fulfilling her chores – clearing up after the public visitors, she picked up a newspaper… a headline caught her eye… it was about the raging fires that had consumed her part of the Algarve, back in Portugal. She read that this year was the worst yet – that the fires were happening every summer – indeed not now just in the summers but from March onwards. Her eyes widened in disbelief. How could she not know about this? What was causing them? She read that southern Portugal and Spain was getting warmer every year and that the Sahara was effectively crossing the sea and continuing into Europe. Including the Algarve. This troubled her. She read on ; fires were engulfing whole farms and planes and helicopters were being used to bucket in water from the sea to dampen down fire after fire. She thought of all that she had left behind in the Algarve and felt a great sadness. She read that people and animals were being driven from their homes and out of the Algarve. That wildlife and vegetation were disappearing. She read about ‘global warming’. She felt a responsibility about the place where she came from.
Although it had been many many years, and she calculated 25 summers and winters since she had left, she felt she must go back and help in whatever way. She simply had to be there. And so she asked the head sister if she could go away for several weeks to visit ‘home’. No came the reply. Again she asked and again it was No. The following day she asked again and the response was firmer still. NO. She did not know this but secretly the sister in charge had a similar situation in her own life 25 years before and she was not allowed to leave. In her case it involved her native Romania. But Maria did not know any of this. She just sat there in the garden of the convent puzzled and trying to work out why she was not allowed to leave, not even for a day or a week or a month.
One day soon she decided she would go anyway, and out of the convent she slipped. She walked and walked and walked. After many days she had walked down through Spain and into Portugal and after a few days more she noticed more of the country she had seen in her youth. She was getting nearer home. The trail was hot and dusty. Nearing home she saw the sea and the cliffs and down below the beach and the bay where she used to swim. Hot and dusty and a little grubby from her journey, she climbed down the steep bank to the beach and, leaving her habit on some rocks, went for a refreshing swim in the clear waters. During her swim she saw visions from her past and it was as if she had never really left that life behind. On returning to her clothes… they were gone. Presumably swept away by the tide. Having no clothes now, and few branches or leaves with which to dress herself, she wondered what to do. Figuring herself not far from home, she decided that she would simply walk home as she was. Without her clothes. And as she started walking it felt better and better, like when she was a child, in these parts.
Before not too long the road turned and led to the garden of where she had grown up. Here was spare by the ravages of fire. By the ravages of an unnatural warming. But for how long? At least she was home.
