Mending the Cracks

Monte da Paz translated also as the mount of peace is the hub where the creation and support team of the large instruments meet and co-create. A workshop built especially for the making of the instruments supports the forging of small and large instruments. Monte da Paz is a regeneration project of many hectares with a water landscape in support of rehydrating the dry lands of the south of Portugal. It is collaborating with many other projects in the region to restore the desertified landscape of the Alentejo and halt further desertification by rehydrating the land with an intricately designed water landscape of swales/ ditches and lakes that fill during the rainy season, hold water in the soil and allow it to be absorbed into the land during the dry hot season.

Here is a video of the water retention landscape and the incredible effects over 13 years of renaturing management . . .

This particular project took on an extra challenge of using a pipe that had originally been delivered for the Tamera bell, but was found to have cracks all throughout the pipe, so it wasn’t used for the Tamera bell project. Just as a way had been found to send the cracked pipe back to Holland where it originated the company called to offer a special price if we wanted to keep the pipe. Consulting with Ton in the Netherlands, he thought we could take it on as our next challenge and he would come and assist. Elke had envisioned only a shorter bell of around 1.40m length – just under half of the pipe. When she had the pipe cut, it came back in three pieces rather than two. As the two longer pieces seemed to sound in harmony together, it seemed that a pair of bells wanted to be born.

So the Monte Da Paz bells started out as two cracked pipes that invited a very different process of engagement. The team worked deeply on attending to the cracks in the field, in the group, in the circle and in the pipe to truly create coherence on all levels. At first we attempted to solder the cracks before hammering the pipe, but halfway through the first pipe, the pipe rejected the solder and we needed to stop and listen more deeply.

During the forging the cracks opened to deep gouges – inviting us to proceed with special focus, attention and care. We as a team and as a circle were being forged by the bells coming into being – having to attend to our own cracks, to where we needed to correct our alignment,

As a circle willing to work in co-creation and full presence with what arose throughout the process we tended the cracks at many levels as they showed themselves – physically through specialist soldering and tending as we worked with the metal, and through the wider field where we, as humans were able to sense the cracks and fractures in ourselves and our own living communities and wider world.

The bells turned out to be in beautiful harmony with themselves and each other – seemingly completely unaffected by the cracks creating a soundfield that truly facilitates the healing of the web of life.