12th February 1921 – 23rd July 2024
When I joined GreenSpirit in the late 1990s one of the names I soon became aware of was that of Grace Blindell. Grace was one of the driving forces in those early days of our movement and I remember well my initial impression of her from our first meeting. Highly energetic, enthusiastic, very intelligent, kind – but clearly someone who stood no nonsense! These initial impressions never changed, except in so far as I could gradually place them within the context of a long, richly varied and well lived life.
Grace had an unconventional childhood. Her father, probably the major influence on her life, was born in 1880 and was a much travelled man – having lived, worked and fought in New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, the USA and Palestine by the time Grace was born in 1921. It was he who imparted to Grace the love of travel, adventure and ‘doing things differently’. Her mother died when Grace was two and a half and her father later said that he had a choice between a good education for Grace and her brother – or a home. He could not afford both – these were different times. Education won out and at age 8 Grace went to a boarding school. Grace recounted later how her father wrote every week and visited regularly; she seems to have maintained a deep affection for her father throughout her life.
Grace trained as a nurse during the Second World War and later worked for the Red Cross in Malaya (now Malaysia), subsequently travelled widely as a nanny to the children of diplomats and spent six years in Nigeria and two in Gaza, which strongly influenced her political activism. Grace began as an Anglican, and then joined the Quakers. Later in life she described herself as a ‘Creation Centered Universalist’. She became involved in Creation Spirituality in the 1980s and for a while studied at the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality in California.
Grace cared deeply about the Earth and wrote a superb pamphlet on Creation Spirituality (published by GreenSpirit in 2001). An adaptation of this was included in two chapters of ‘GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness’ (published by Earth Books in 2010) edited by Marian van Eyk McCain. I recently reread these chapters and they remain powerful, insightful and extremely relevant.
Many of us will have fond memories of Grace, and those of us who have attended Annual Gatherings will remember her Saturday night performances with her glove puppet, a bear, who had much to say about the human species, which was always to the point and very funny.
Among her many talents, Grace was a wonderful poet and I can think of no better way to conclude than with her final contribution to the GreenSpirit magazine in Spring 2021, her centenary year.
I Shall Lay Down My Compass
I shall stop reading my compass,
Twisting it this way and that,
Watching the metallic blue needle
Make the decisions. Instead,
I shall lay a finger on my pulse,
Sniff the wind, pick flowers,
Feel the balance and recoil of affinities –
Consult oracles.
Very deep the seed with a voice
Like the sound of a waterfall
Cries to be born.
The clear light trapped in the stone
With long low cadences
Vibrates the silver chord in my hand.
I shall lay down my compass,
I shall follow a new path.
Who said I needed to go North?
Grace’s funeral can be accessed on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n908kB6rU08
You can read an article written about Grace’s life here.
Chris Holmes