Thank You and 2014

Dear Hildegard,

Thank you for your companionship in 2013.

Yesterday I put out an invitation to friends on Facebook to see if I there were a group of people from a range of ages and backgrounds who would volunteer to read by letters to you over this past year.  Their mission is to choose 10 -12 posts that they find inspiring, helpful, worthy of being read by others and to let me know why they have made those choices.  I was delighted at the range of people who accepted the invitation.  People from Australia, Canada, Indonesia, from a wide range of faith traditions and personal journeys – all pilgrims in their own way.

Once I have their feedback I am going to make a final choice of posts and re-work them a little and see if there is a publisher out there interested! Why not?  It will be a kind of epistolary.

It has been a wonderful journey with you in 2013.  I am deeply grateful for your friendship, inspiration and challenges I have encountered in writing to you each week.  Your songs have often floated past as I have written to you, your images have evoked memories and led me to new thoughts.  Thank you.

As 2013 draws to a close I want to maintain the discipline of a weekly reflection and begin with a new woman to write to.

I have been ‘shortlisting” who I will write to in 2014 and on that list are some amazing women:

Biddy Early who I met in County Clare in Ireland this year – an early 19th Century woman who was also known for her healing powers like you Hildegard, and who was not afraid of relationships and love – she had three husbands in her life.

Juana Ines de la Cruz a 17th Century Mexican, a nun like you Hildegard. I was introduced to this year by one of my children – a musician, poet and scholar.

Mirabai a 16th Century Hindu mystic whose spirituality became famous around all the lands just as you too Hildegard was famous in your region.

I have been finding it hard to make a decision, each would give me wonderful companionship, challenge my thinking and take me to a new place in my reflective pilgrimage.  I have seen the land of Biddy Early, as I had seen your homeland Hildegard, and so that element has helped me make a final decision. In 2014 my letters will be to Biddy.  And a thank you to Jane O’Brien for introducing me to Biddy this year while I was walking the streets of Ennis.

I hope you will follow Biddy and I in 2014.

Lingering

Sitting in front of a beautiful painting, or adoring a sunset or holding a new born babe as they fall asleep in your arms – all wonderful moments that urge you to linger.  Not wanting to leave is a fundamental ingredient to lingering, a savouring of the moment. Procrastination or putting off the inevitable to take the next step in a journey or a decision may show reluctance to face the inevitable, but maybe lingering is more like being a sponge to squeeze everything out of the moment that is possible.

In a conversation this past week, a friend told me her mother was lingering, in no hurry to leave this life and her palliative carers. Palliative care is all about relieving but not curing and so lingering is similar; knowing that there is an inevitable next step after relishing and drinking in the moment that you don’t want to leave.

I have been noticing when I linger and when I leave prematurely, and the differences between the two. Leaving early and staying later maybe two sides of the one coin – finding the right balance is a Goldilocks ‘just right’ experience. When we linger it is often others who notice we aren’t leaving, and a mid-wife appears to birth a next step or guide us on our way out of a comfort zone we may not want to leave (or ushers us gently). I  have often held the view that midwives and palliative care nurses have a lot in common but my own preference is to be more like a midwife coaching new ideas into life, than a palliative care nurse who might be smoothing the pillow to make death easier.  (Certainly in my relationship with the church Hildegard, I have made it clear that I am in the midwifery business, actively and consciously paying attention to foster new models and new life and not to hold a dying institution’s hand as it decays.)

As the calendar year comes to an end, I am savouring all the gifts received during the year and the invitations I received.  I have been faithful to writing to you and poetry. I have had many wonderful opportunities to extend my reach on line (curating a couple of #rocur accounts, initiating and advancing social media for community based organisations in particular), presenting a TEDx talk, having a little essay published on my favourite website, building new friendships and watching those I love take big leaps in their personal and professional lives, spending hours holding hands on a red couch with my one true love, watching the honey eaters on the grevilleas in the garden as well a precious trip to Italy and Ireland … and the list goes on … I am blessed and grateful for the gifts of 2013 and I will linger in it a little longer before 2014 begins.

There are many ‘just right’ moments I could linger on this year and here is one that brought a little of heaven to earth when love was in the air!

Transit of Venus

Forecasted by astronomers and prophets
(those faithful custodians of the future).
Arranged by the UniVerse,
Guided by planets and stars,
The promise of arrival is fulfilled.

She arrives.

Arrayed in crystals and petals,
Radiant.
Casting a shadow long and slender
Onto the gasping assembly.
Her beauty takes their breath away.
She moves us
Through all the elements;
Air,
Fire,
Water.

The leaves shake in counterpoint timing.
Warbling magpies gather in communion.
All of creation consents.

The salted beads slide down our faces.
The candle, encased by ancestral love
Flickers;
Lovingly reminding us,
Angels too witness this celestial sight.

She glides into place.
The jigsaw now complete.

A new day dawns.
And Venus transits into her next orbit.

(c) Moira Deslandes, November 2013

Clare’s Wedding Day

Lens

Dear Hildegard,

All those glorious paintings you did that we get to enjoy and contemplate reveal a woman who could see with more than her eyes; a woman who could see with her heart, her soul and intellect as well.  This has me reflecting on the lenses we use to see and interpret the world around us. The lens of imagination and possibility has often attracted me and at the beginning of this year I imagined that I would write to you each week and try and tune in to the way you saw the world – it was an invitation and I am grateful for it. Thank you.

In this year of writing to you,  I have sought to orientate myself to see, and be in the world, in a way that I might connect with you.  As the year comes to a close I am grateful for this conversation and for the lens your life and gifts offered to me.

Seeing the world through the eyes of a poet, a mystic, a composer, a musician, a gardener, an advocate, a woman, a prophet, a community leader  … has encouraged me to draw sap from deep within myself to rise through my thoughts and actions and be embraced by a higher self, a bigger God and to listen to the Uni-Verse.

A lens can transmit and refract light and so a poetic or mystical lens applied in my daily life equips me to see more clearly, or have light shed on a subject or object and discover meaning that wasn’t there without that lens.  Light brightens and makes visible something that perhaps was hidden and using a different lens revelations certainly appear!

My glasses are multi-focals, tinted to adjust to light and are only removed to sleep. They are a part of me and I feel incomplete without them.  My glasses have corrective lenses. They correct the errors my eyes make so that I can see what is really there without distortion and they bring clarity.  This experience is equally true of any other type of lens I apply.  The lens of the poet has enabled me to see beauty all around me more easily than ever before, and has me tuning into the sounds and rhythms all around me – from birdsong to traffic.

Sometimes it is overwhelming to be surrounded by all this poetry and music.

I recall coming to an awareness and appreciation of rap music after being in the Museum of Modern Art in New York a couple of years ago. There was an exhibition about the foundations of rap music, the percussive beat, full frontal issues and rhyming narratives had eluded my understanding. However that day having walked the streets of New York and listened to sounds of the street it dawned on me that rap was the folk music of the inner city – using the sounds of traffic lights, taxis, subway calls, the “rattle of the prattle” between friends, customers and pilgrims alike and it made sense to me completely.  The exhibition gave me a new lens. I felt less overwhelmed by rap and it opened me up to a new way to eavesdrop on a generation and a culture.

The lens that has made all the difference to me this year has been gratefulness.  I have written to you previously about being a gratitude practitioner. This year I was introduced to the idea of putting on ‘gratitude glasses’ and purchased a number of oversized plastic glasses with coloured lenses and used them to share the idea of gratitude glasses with a number of groups I was working with and my peers. This has been fun and opened up many conversations about what it means to be grateful and how to name and claim the gratitude in our lives.

There is so much I have to be grateful for – not the least living where I do with the ones I love and who love me back – for being educated and employed, housed and healthy.  I yearn for a planet of inhabitants who are able to embrace gratefulness and for those of us who have plenty to share with those who have less – this is a constant call and invitation to deepen my gratitude for the abundance, a veritable cornucopia that I have been gifted and hold in trust.  Having a “Hildegard” lens to reflect and refract the light so that I can see more clearly and deeply appreciate what I am being invited into and what I inherit has been a blessing this year.

Imagine, Central Park, NY

Heralds

The forecaster predicted rain and so it came to pass that the memorial service for Mandela drenched dignitaries and Soweto citizens alike. I watched from the comfort of my red couch. Boos for Zuma and a speech from Obama that will go down in history as one of the great speeches of the 21^st Century.  Hildegard I listened to the words and songs and dabbed at my eyes along the way and prayed his death will herald a future of reconciliation and restorative justice in other parts of the world – Cuba, Palestine, Tibet came to mind. The US and Cuban leaders shook hands, Mandela’s words about Palestine filled twitter and the Dalai Lama was refused an entry visa to South Africa to appease China – so there is plenty for Mandela’s spirit to herald.

Reflecting on being a herald in this season of Advent, when there are so many heralds in the nativity story is capturing my imagination.  Those who brought the message of hope, the one who carried the child, the shepherds, the innkeeper, the astrologers, the animals too – all heralds to the news of child like no other come to greet us to in turn announce and proclaim a message of peace and justice.

The herald announces something is about to happen. The stars twinkle and turn each evening making their way through the night sky, like a town crier, each flicker a message, inviting me to join in the great cosmic event about to unfold when the day breaks.  Br David Steindl-Rast reminds us that each new day is a good day, an irreplaceable gift, one that arrives freshly delivered each and every morning.  I wake to the sounds of the birds who sing a chorus of welcome in my garden and urge me to join in the song.  As their song makes its way to my ear I wake up to the new day. A battalion of carollers arrive every morning to announce to me that the new day has arrived.

Not all heralds bring good news. My email in box delivered some news I didn’t want to read this week. News that I knew would come one day from a dear friend of an illness that has taken its next step in her body.  But in bringing that news to me I responded and was able to share an embrace in real time face to face. We were in the trenches together once and the spirit of the ANZACS somehow got us through. Her spirit is holding her too now as she lives in these precious moments of each new day.

When I look over my year I see heralds everywhere! Musicians, story-tellers, poets, dogs, children, flowers, trees – all of creation – animate and inanimate – announcing and denouncing – laying out a path before me and inviting me to go deeper.  There is no doubt that David Whyte’s work has been one a very significant herald trumpeting a way to look at the world through the lens of a poet.  This has heralded for me a new way of seeing the world. He writes:

The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines.

Hildegard the Herald – you too have opened up a way for me to share thoughts and stories this yearl and as the year comes to a close I am grateful that a path was made by writing each week. A path that has lead me to new friends, new ideas, new challenges.  A path that has encouraged me to reflect and review my life in a way I had not done before.  A path that is now clearer for me to do more writing, more reflecting, more poetry … and who knows where that path is leading me … the door is open and I will keep walking through it each and every day because I aspire to be like Mandela and each day listen to W.E. Henley who wrote Invictus, herald the message: I am the captain of my soul.

NT Sunrise

Amandla! Mandela

Dear Hildegard, I want to share some memories with you about South Africa and Mandela. Hearing the news today of his death has reminded me of so many things ….

I remember coming into Cape Town and being so sea sick that I couldn’t get off the ship. I was 11.  I could see Table Mountain and I knew it was Africa and in another ten days or so we would be home in Australia.

I remember the day the Springboks played in Adelaide – it was my first year in High School and the match had to be abandoned.  Those protesters heralded the beginning of the sporting boycott of South Africa. Proud I lived in a city that began that act of solidarity.

I remember going to dinners, marches, putting up posters, organising prayer services, talking to friends, selling raffle tickets, singing songs of freedom, learning all the words of God Bless Africa to support the end of apartheid.

I remember meeting Leah Tutu in Adelaide and asking her how does she keep going when her husband was constantly facing death threats and always so close to trouble and tragedy. She told me – I dance, we dance.

I remember staying up all night to see Mandela released from prison and having the ABC satellite loose transmission just a few moments before it happened because Mandela’s release was delayed.

I remember taking the family to the city for a peace march to celebrate Mandela’s release. I did not want our children to miss the moment. I wanted to be a part of history.

I remember crying and dancing the day Mandela became President and hearing him say Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (Marianne Williamson).  I remember this being printed off in my office and carrying it around with me for years as a constant reminder to be courageous and in the light.

I remember being in Perth Airport and seeing a very tired and, I thought, inebriated, Kerry O’Brien heading off to South Africa to interview Mandela. I was on my way to Mozambique and would be passing through Johannesburg.

I remember being in Johannesburg and going to Alexandra and being shocked by the poverty on one side of the road and the wealth on the other. I remember the energy of the student and church activists who kept me company that day.

I remember searching for the new South African flag in the market in J’burg so I could bring it home to keep reminding me how a new nation was finally re-born and a flag no longer outlawed.

I remember driving Donald Woods to an event at Annesley College and the hall was packed to the rafters and he mainly wanted to talk to me about Australian cricket. The irony of the ordinary passions amidst the politics of sheer survival caused me to chuckle!

I remember feeling proud of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons, with former PM Malcolm Fraser making real and important contributions to bring about peace and to stand with the people of South Africa. I always felt this was one of the finest acts of the Commonwealth. It also rehabilitated Fraser for me as I had lost all respect for him back in 1975!

I remember being inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and seeing Tutu cry night after night in hearing the evidence. I was so inspired by this magnificent restorative justice experience.

I remember singing all the songs on Freedom is Coming over and over again until everyone in the house knew every word.

I remember getting a beautiful copy from the dearest of friends of Long Walk to Freedom – a coffee table version – chosen so all the photos could be seen and shared easily with the children.

I remember being in Glasgow and a South African delegation thanking me as an Australian for standing shoulder to shoulder with black South Africa to help end apartheid. I felt a fraud for the little I had done and humbled to receive their thanks – two of them had been imprisoned for their politics.  I remember seeing in the Glasgow Town Hall a thank you note from Mandela to the people of Scotland that same trip and it bore the date of my birthday.

I remember going to Mandela’s house 8115 Vilakazi Street, Orlando, Soweto the womb in which many of his earliest thoughts and plans were made.  The only street in the world where two Nobel Prize winners have lived.

I remember going to the Hektor Pietersen Museum and being so inspired by the youthfulness of protest and the courage of school students.

I remember being in the Apartheid Museum and learning for the first time that I had seen more footage on my television on what had been going on in South Africa, than many of the South Africans themselves because of the censorship.  I remember the tablecloth on which the ideas and constitutional changes were etched.

I remember being on the Parliament House balustrade in Pretoria and buying stamps that commemorated Mandela’s Presidency and a few year’s later being in Cape Town and walking through the doors of the National Parliament and seeing the fruits of democracy on the walls and in the conversations.

I remember walking the labyrinth in Cape Town behind Tutu’s St Georges Cathedral and marking each step for the long walk South Africa had behind it as well as the one in front of it.

I remember listening to the former political prisoner at Robben Island tell the story of what it was like to be there and the University they created to support and keep learning together. Mandela taught his fellow prisoners.

I remember the District 6 Museum and being delighted with the storyteller and the generosity of the tales of hope and resilience as well as nonviolent resistance in the harshest and dehumanising of circumstances.

I remember sitting next to one of the great elders of the trade union movement at dinner and being so honoured to be in his company while presenting at a conference on democracy for Gaetung Province. How amazing it was to have this opportunity and he thanked me for all Australia had done to help end.

I remember in 2012 being sad to say goodbye once again to South Africa and wondering when I might be back. I am very grateful that one of my now adult children had a taste by coming with me on that trip. He was 5 at the rally when Mandela had been released.

I remember listening to Johnny Clegg at WOMADelaide and enjoying every single minute of his talk and his band. It was my WOMADelaide highlight that year.

I remember all the South Africans I have met in South Africa and around the world. I remember their kindness and patience with me. Their love of their country and that they will be mourning for Mandiba in their own ways and for their own reasons.

These and many more memories of my little thread of connection to the story of Mandela and his beautiful country have been flooding back.  I wept when I heard the news. I gave thanks for his life. I pray for the future of South Africa. I have always felt that while there was breath in his body, it was an insurance for the whole country to protect and to guide.  I pray that his spirit will inspire a new generation of activists who will understand that there can never be peace without justice.

I am ashamed that I came to learn more about racism from South Africa first before I came to know it closer to home in my own country and community. But I am grateful I was able to apply some of those lessons. The lesson of solidarity is what I learnt most from being a tiny part of the anti-apartheid movement.

It was the words of Bonhoeffer that added to my understanding of solidarity:

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists, and I was neither so I did not speak out.  Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

And so this day I am in solidarity with all those who mourn Mandela’s death and celebrate his life.  I will do a dance to the Soweto Gospel choir, sing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, ‎ unhaul the flag, look over my photos and books, send messages to friends in South Africa and say a prayer for his family and his country, and raise my hand with a fist – Amandla!

Sunset in Pilansberg