Meeting the moment 2021 #22

I have a bruised and bloodied ring finger on my right hand, after an accidental jamming in a car door. It is not a pretty sight, and the throbbing was relieved early by numbing ice.  Trauma in the body is a great reminder of the way trauma can turn up in the mind too.  A sudden impact can often lead to swelling of feelings and blood rushing to the head followed by numbness. Feeling self-pity is often not far behind. I am taking this injury as instruction and a reminder that accidents happen, and we all need someone with an ice pack once and a while to ameliorate pain and discomfort.

This week is Reconciliation Week and I have to say it is not something I have ever been able to get my head around completely. I do not know what Aboriginal people need to reconcile with non-Aboriginal people – I have always seen this as a week when whitefellas can use the prompt to make some amends, pay the rent or at the least do some learning about our past.  I have been on the road and in Central Australia, mainly in well known landscapes with only the barest of attention to First Nations. There were other signs though, the number of young ones in training and in jobs, more dual signage in language of places and flora, artists and art celebrated in public places and premium menus with bush tucker. When I come again, I hope all the leaders will be locals and the custodians of the stories, food and landscape will be so common that the temptation for the exotic over ordinary will have disappeared.  The outback is not like the cities and just like my injury the accidental encounter might jar and disturb but, in a few days, will be healed and not much would have changed. You need to stay longer to get the real impact and not just a temporary disruption, so I pack up my city thoughts and quick-to-judge views with my belongings.

The overall feeling, I have is of gratitude to Anangu for sharing the centre with us all. It is a radical generosity that is quite overwhelming.  Sharing the land and the sky is an incredible gift.  They have watched and endured generations of whitefellas climbing up Uluru and when I overheard people complaining about the cost of going into the park, I was genuinely shocked. I wanted to say – such a small amount of rent to pay – but my words would not come out. I have more work to do in my reconciliation practice.

Treating this time as a pilgrimage and meeting people along the way where they find themselves and find me has been a challenge. I am out of the practice, possibly a consequence of these COVID times. To live as a pilgrim celebrating life and taking practical steps towards transforming injustices and violence, has not been so easy for me recently. My failure to call out complaints about park fees just one of this penitent’s claims, and my swollen finger is hearing my confession, as I clip on this keyboard.  The absolution arising is: vulnerability is a consequence of risking yourself, and sometimes that is painful.

Photo by Ondrej Machart on Unsplash

Meeting the moment 2021 #21

The skies have been extraordinary this past week. I am in the desert and during the day, the blue sky is only interrupted by puffed cirrocumulus clouds that remind me of schools of fish, which is rather ironic as these clouds are entirely bereft of precipitation. At night constellations are easy to see and navigation of any desert ship would be easy. In the in-between times the opalesque skies meet the horizon at dusk and at dawn the east glows on arrival with every shade of gold.

This is a precious, wise land, so ancient you can see the past all around you, snippets of the jurassic period in cycads in the chasm on the way to shafts of light; fossils on the floor of a seabed now at ground level travelling in parallel with highways; a newcomer, a three-hundred-year-old cork tree in a gallery courtyard a reminder of how settlers count time.  Time is not the same here and one of my fellow travelling companions commented on the shift in her experience of time since being in the desert – everything has slowed down, and the last stop seems an age away. I am remembering land rights leader Vincent Lingiari , a Gurindji man who led the walk off at Wave Hill and spent eight years getting the result when in 1975 the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically and legally passed a small parcel of the station land back to Gurindji. One of Lingiari’s gifts to the world was his saying immortalised in Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s song From Little Things, we know how to wait. When you are in this country you get a deeper understanding of that phrase.  This land is a great teacher of waiting and holding true to essence. The rocks apparently immovable, have formed over millions of years and carry plenty of life, with gum trees springing from what looks like the most improbable of places. The relationship between waiting and timelessness is collaborative – waiting a precondition to understand and appreciate what takes time.

I won’t get to Gurindji land this trip so I go to listen once again to that song and I chose a relatively new version of the song by Electric Fields and when you hear some of the song in language which leaves me in tears every time. I have been listening and singing this song since it first was released in 1993 but nothing prepared me for the Electric Fields version. The female voices, words in language, the baton truly passed on to a new generation, in every way new style and the new meaning for this anthem. Power and privilege and standing in law, cultural law, law of the universe, law of the sand and for a settler like me, I can only glimpse what land rights mean. We are waiting as a nation to be initiated into the meaning of time by the oldest living culture on our planet. This is unfinished business. Treaties are coming as they must – no peace without justice – always was always will be Aboriginal land.

I am reflecting on how my soul has gone ahead to prepare a place for me to wait and the rest of myself is catching up and my own treaty-making with the past, justice, reconciliation and repatriation is unfolding as surely as the movement of the caterpillar. Being in womens caterpillar dreaming country is not lost on me. Meeting the moment in this place seems to be bringing a compassionate patience to appreciate the healing properties of time and time’s ability to stand still and hold you still while knots can be massaged out of existance. From little things big things grow and in the growing, transformation comes next.

Yeperenye – Emily’s Gap – East MacDonnell Ranges.
Site of ancient caterpillar dreaming rock art (no photos by request of Arrernte.

2021 Meeting the Moment #20

First you notice the quickening, reminding me of those early movements of a baby in-utero when you are not sure if you have butterflies in your stomach and then are convinced you do have something growing inside of you, that is not you and of you. I consider this one of the superpowers of women who have borne children to know, really know, you are part of some great cosmic, biological story where you have a part to play, and are not a full creator of anything.  Everything, everything is co-created.  From across the generations, deep time DNA is inside of you and in the landscape right in from of you, all around you. In the sky. On the earth. In the water. Inside the flames. Every chemical reaction possible visible in our elements, our global commons.  Mothers who have carried a child get a sneak preview of this understanding, but it is not exclusively for them, it is totally accessible once you align your breath, gaze to the heavens and in the simple instruction of Br David Steindl-Rast: Look up.

I was fortunate to take a walk one day with Br David in Kangaroo Island we had two companions, his aide and my husband, we wandered together to look for hidden species in the bushes and waters. His thrill at new sounds and David Attenborough appreciation for all of creation was an invitation to see through his eyes my familiar landscape.  To come to any situation like a child full of wonder and awe accompanied by the soundtrack of Twinkle, twinkle, little star fills the heart and sets your compass to belonging.

I am embarking on some time with the red earth and the ever-expansive blue sky, heading north into desert onto country where colonisation appears as corrugated iron, broken bodies of derelict vehicles, plastic bottles festering in recycled concrete bins. A migration of seniors in silver bulleted vans equipped with two-way radios exchange tips of the road, weather conditions and the quality of service at various fuel stops. Eaves dropping, ablution block standards seem to be a consistent theme. 

The pulse of a generator on a station not meant for human habitation is helping a family eek out a living between a rocket launch site and a uranium mine.  That sentence tells its own story of colonisation – bringing animals that belong to another hemisphere and soon as the planet becomes more plant based – belong to another time; a tiny island on the other side of the world launching things into space to weaponize air space, and a hole in the ground that is the source of the world’s largest uranium deposit and fourth largest copper deposit.

There are so many moments to meet, and I opt for telling a story about the stars, dark emu, Jakamurra and the seven sisters as my decolonisation practice for the day.  I turn to the map of the nations with hues not lines drawn on them by male explorer on a road named after a Scotsman as if he was the first person to have traversed the land from south to north.  Finding ways to appreciate not appropriate is part of this decolonising experience and I am always up for invitations to learn how to do this!  I love the invitations from the landscape, and as I travelled on the bottom of an inland sea that has disappeared millions of years ago the reminder of my own disappearance had a strange kind of comfort of the transformation that happens in one lifetime and many moons.

Just outside of Port Augusta

2021 Meeting the Moment #19

The opportunity turned up as a general invitation and while I prevaricated and swivelled in my chair for perhaps ten seconds longer than my intuition told me and my rational self tried to take control, I did eventually stand up and make my way, with quick steps to the stage.

I took the time to find the note and hummed my way into the first line, finding the tenor and the timing enabling the words to find their way into my mouth.  Just a few lines and some moves to build the inclusive experience for all in my typical signature way, and it was easeful.  Within a few moments spells were broken that had been cast long ago.  How ironic for the moment to be a musical one and how powerful for it to be an improvised one. The basic building block of improv is yes, and.  And this moment was met with yes, and.  

The Spell Caster in this story, finding ways to block and disable opportunities was left without a leg to stand on as I took to the stage.  The old carefully crafted incantations of self-protection designed to effect fear and instil caution were swept away by the mantra “I am enough”. It was very safe to come to the microphone, the musicians and one holding the space had my back, had the audiences as well and in the complementarity of both, was able to find a path to keep the container to hold us all solid and secure.  Deep gratitude to his skills and experience!

The voice in my head as I left the stage was of one my children saying Mum you are living your best life. Over the past few years, I have not known what living any kind of life might be like, let alone a best one. I have flayed around trying to find the right tune, right tone, a harmony, and the odd blues note – yet somehow in these few short minutes on stage I managed to get to the entire next level and make sense of some of the time now past.  Taking my time with the humming into the space such a useful metaphor to take the measure and feel and hear what the music was asking of me, the call to my response.  Then finding the notes and making up my own lyrics, to express what I had learnt, seen through the day, with the backing of a band, not a solo artist or even a solo musical instrument, but multiple players and multiple instruments, a profound reminder I am not alone and there are harmonies and chords to be found in the notes and the spaces between the notes is where the music finds its shape and form.  Then my invitation to the audience to abandon their position and sway with hands in the air, a reflection of asking people to come follow me, knowing they have the capacity and capability to do that and do not need any more sophisticated instruction, just a simple demonstration and then everyone can participate. And finally, the recognition that all have a place, a contribution to the song and leaving the stage, the music goes on and the next person can step up. Just like the geese in formation, another can take their turn in the lead and helping to reduce the wind resistance and taking it in turns conserves energy for the whole flock.

Instead of malevolence there is benevolence – bene volent – well wishing – surely a great way to break a spell!  There were only well wishes being bestowed in the moment at the microphone this week. The realm of generosity, joy and gratitude appeared in the magic of the moment, by invoking the instruction of the poet David Whyte of being half a shade braver. I also took the advice of researcher Brene Brown to let hurtful stuff drop to the floor, and step over it and keep going. “You can’t take criticism and feedback from people who are not being brave with their lives.”  

A spell was broken this week, more stuff dropped on the threshing floor to step over. The stage was that place where the chaff was tossed to the wind and the wheat made ready for the bread of salvation to be baked. A different kind of communion, as fully transformational as any other consumed previously.

Photo by Ali Yılmaz on Unsplash

2021 Meeting the Moment #18

I have been learning about the Celtic season of May Day, in Irish known as Bealtaine. The feast of the bright fire to herald summer. It is considered I understand as the threshold of the opposites. The yin and yang, masculine and feminine, good, and evil. One of the pairs of opposites I have written about over the years has been the moving on and holding still – and I have come to a conclusion that they are not opposites and I wonder if in these non-binary times, we might be being invited into a beyond opposites era? In the ritual with this festival you move between two fires or perhaps more modestly these days two candles. The humble flame inviting the extraordinary out from you. In every moment we meet, the extraordinary maybe hidden, and we might miss it if we do not take to the time to catch our breath or be curious.

There is a moment always to be met – catching the wave so you can surf to the shore, coming in with precision when the conductor calls upon you, standing firm when a bully is having their way.  And how elegant it seems when these moments are met; there is ease and an oozing of confidence that builds trust with those caught in the same moment. Even those watching on can tell that the safety net is not needed, such is the dignity and evidence of practice visible by the actions that hold the moment firmly in place. These can be sacred, respectful moments.

There are so many opportunities in every day to notice what is emerging, what is being held firmly in place, what builds trust. Vulnerability is the courage you must show up fully to those opportunities, to be willing to risk, to enter the potential for danger, to be in a space inside yourself that holds at least a sliver of anxiety. Inside that space alongside anxiety, ego has also made a home. Detaching can help you cross that threshold and propel you to a new world. The liminal space of the inner and outer worlds meeting as we catch the moment of crossing and play midwife to our own edge.

I love to walk circular bushwalks leaving the car and being able to come back to it having hiked up and down a hill or two and finding my way back. I am comforted by a non-linear approach to destination, as I am never the same person at the end as I was when I first set off. I will have crossed a threshold or two though along the way and the journey not the destination is the pilgrim process. I often find I am out of breath, need water, invoking a Hail Mary to get up a hill, clinging to my walking sticks in case I fall. The opposites of up and down often make me laugh, I think to myself when I am going up well if I were going the other way I would be going down. There are times where I am ambitiously cautious about my edges and take a path more challenging than my level of fitness or capability. There are times too when I choose an easier path so I won’t get tested and my vulnerability stays intact.

These private spaces on my own on a hill, are instructional for spaces where courage is called for in more public domains. The inner and outer, public, and private, can feel very oppositional, although I know them more to be two sides of the one coin. When I am living whole heartedly and with awareness of the liminal it seems more likely vulnerability will turn up. Going to the edges is  where radical transformation invitations are offered. Having the courage to meet those moments when the opportunities arise, and catching those moments, is a practice.

I took this photo of a fire in Santiago de Compostela at the end of walking just over 200kms on the camino. This was an inner and outer experience and am I am still on the pilgrimage. It is the blue flame of queimada – a Galician concoction of brandy, coffee, cinnamon and lemon peel. The drink is prepared as this incantation is said:

Owls, barn owls, toads and witches.
Demons, goblins and devils,
spirits of the misty vales.
Crows, salamanders and witches,
charms of the folk healer(ess).
Rotten pierced canes,
home of worms and vermin.
Wisps of the Holy Company,
evil eye, black witchcraft,
scent of the dead, thunder and lightning.
Howl of the dog, omen of death,
maws of the satyr and foot of the rabbit.
Sinful tongue of the bad woman
married to an old man.
Satan and Beelzebub's Inferno,
fire of the burning corpses,
mutilated bodies of the indecent ones,
farts of the asses of doom,
bellow of the enraged sea.
Useless belly of the unmarried woman,
speech of the cats in heat,
dirty turf of the wicked born goat.
With this bellows I will pump
the flames of this fire
which looks like that from Hell,
and witches will flee,
straddling their brooms,
going to bathe in the beach
of the thick sands.
Hear! Hear the roars
of those that cannot
stop burning in the firewater,
becoming so purified.
And when this beverage
goes down our throats,
we will get free of the evil
of our soul and of any charm.
Forces of air, earth, sea and fire,
to you I make this call:
if it's true that you have more power
than people,
here and now, make the spirits
of the friends who are outside,
take part with us in this Queimada.

Flame of Queimada Santiago de Compostela, Spain