A visit this afternoon to spend a moment with Steve Nolan, at Kempsey.
His headstone reads,
“Earth’s crammed with heaven
and every common bush afire with God
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh (1857), Bk. VII, l. 812-826)
and then,
“One with All”.
Yes Steve, …… Yes!
On the first anniversary, twelve months since Steve’s death (24th September, 2010), we gathered, a dozen or so of us, at the truck ramp passed the chicken shed to honour this extraordinary, ordinary man-mystic of love and power, by placing in the earth he loved, a fig tree seedling (ficus macrophylla) that comes from the Carroll farm, Majors Creek, Macleay Valley. In the days before his death Steve would contemplate a flower, transfixed upon its eternity and its revelation of heaven here and now. He reminded us of how immediate is the “More”, the Divine, the Sacred; not something to wait for after death, but here within reach. But only he or she who sees, takes off their shoes.