2023 Mycelium #31 Its a yes from me

There are eulogies being written and reviewed, revised and downloaded for Sinead O’Connor and the ancient aching rage that was always there between the breaths will get digitised, recast, commodified in a way she would probably have never approved. She was always a protest singer to me. The night she declared she was singing Nothing Compares to You, for the last time, I was under the starlit night of a March Womadelaide sky, having some kind of trickling tear find its way down the back of my throat with such gratitude of being able to see her perform. Like so many of my favourite moments, you know you will never see them again and the ephemeral elemental power of the moment is sacred.  I felt like that too seeing Johnny Clegg. So much gratitude to these performers giving beyond themselves to come to our far away shores.  I also felt like that seeing Mavis Staples (but I have been lucky enough to see her a couple of times). All three protest singers … my roots in music from Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell.

Speaking truth to power was an essential quality of Sinead O’Connor’s cultural and artistic life and this is a feature of all protest music. Redgum, Goanna Band, Yothu Yindi, Midnight Oil, Archie Roach, Kev Carmody followed for me post the initiation of those North American singers.  When the kids were growing up the home had these records on high rotation and I am pretty sure some of the sounds seeped into their subconscious, given their musical choices.  Spores sown in fertile soil – surely this is how all things begin?

We are preparing for a national conversation which will revolve around one simple question to propose to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve of this alteration?  Voters then write Yes or No. I’m banking on the generation who grew up listening to Midnight Oil, that made Treaty a top ten hit in 1990 for Yothu Yindi will be writing yes. I am also banking on the PM announcing the date of the referendum at the Garma Festival next week and the following ten weeks or so being a sprint to the ballot box, where the privacy and intimacy and goodwill of Aussie voters will be writing the word YES in their millions. We are being given a unique moment to right another wrong and rise to the occasion as a nation. The word yes itself is derived from old English – so be it.  When I have a so be it fiat, I usually say Amen, a definite acclamation of completion and recognition.

Maybe you are not quite ready to say yes? Maybe you are hearing if you don’t know, vote no. If that’s you I say: If you don’t know, find out. As we head towards the referendum, I am learning more and finding out what works best to help people learn, understand and get to yes. So here are my three top recommendations:

• Read, buy, borrow a copy of Thomas Mayor and Kerry O’Brien The Voice Handbook
• Check out the resources at Passing the Message Stick
• Read and listen to the Uluru Statement from the Heart

If you want to join a Yes campaign – join GetUp, or Yes23.

Let’s move beyond the protest to the part where we all get to act in solidarity and create a new way of being a nation, with all that deep connective tissue that binds us together visibly and invisibly, to form the word yes writ large and collectively on ballot papers throughout the country. There is no better way of RSVP’ing to the invitation of the Uluru Statement that writing back with a yes.  

In the undergrowth where all those spores are lying dormant, the rains have now arrived and its time for mycelium to connect and bear a fruit called yes. You are in good company and we are ready to take another step in our Australian story with a clear voice, speaking truth to power, and bringing our best selves to the ballot box. Write Yes.

Aldinga Pathinyi College 26 July 2023

Mycelium 2023 #30 Poetry prompts

I listened to this extraordinary poem this week. Please click on the link before you read on …. it is just 2 minutes of listening.

David Whyte says poetry is words for which we have no defences, and I was completely disarmed when I heard this poem by Pakistani-American poet, Ayisha Siddiqa. She describes herself as a storyteller and human rights and land defender. She was a 2023 TIME Woman of the Year. She is 24 and can be found at the UN advising on climate. She understands that the personal is political, for her floods in Pakistan are not footnotes on the evening news, the fires raging are an equation linked to spend on fossil fuel marketing vs the spend on climate action mobilising, the beauty of the planet is matched by the devasting beauty of a line of words to drive legislation.

I am deeply moved by this young woman and what she has to say about the systems change work being intergenerational. I see this in my own surrouds, where young ones are educating older ones, where older ones are taking the risks for younger generations. It is the piggies in the middle I seem to struggle with.

I found myself amidst a group of conspiracy theorists and no campaigners this week. Their claims of political parties being puppets of international bodies, of corruption and collusion of forces of darkness, racism thinly camoflauged with incoherence, rage and fear mongering with no substance is well rehearsed and practiced. All around the world, the phenomenon of sovereign citizens exist and now they are here in my part of the world too. They are blocking up courts, they are disrupting local councils, they aren’t paying for licenses, parking fines or even registering their dogs. They justify their behaviour with such interesting arguements such as they don’t need to pay for a drivers licence because they are travelling and it’s a free country and people can travel where ever they like. They like to confuse and follow a line of enquiry that defies logic, so using logic is a waste of time.

Here is an example of a slice of a conversation I had this week:

Man: No Aboriginal people are voting yes

Me: That’s interesting, how long have you been interested in this issue?

Man: What do you mean? I don’t understand what you are asking me? Or where you are going with that question?

Me: I would like to get to know you better; so was wondering how long have you been interested in the referendum question?

Man: I don’t understand what you are asking me. What’s going on?

Me: I am curious, Have you been interested in referendums for a while? Have you ever voted in a referendum?

Man: In 1967 Aborigines where given the vote in a referendum

Me: yes that’s right. I don’t think you voted in that referendum because you would need to be well into your 80s and you aren’t that old.

Man: I am nearly 70.

Me: So you couldn’t have voted in the 1967 referendum then. Perhaps you voted in the 1999 Referendum about the Republic?

Man: Yes I did. I am proudly from a Scottish background, so you can probably guess that I am a republican. I voted yes.

Me: That’s great so you know what voting yes is all about . Will you vote yes this time?

Man: Move away from me you are in my space and you have no right to be here. (it was a public park).

Me: You could move away from me just as easily, how about we both take a step back?

At that point his level of agitation was escalating, so I said thank you for the conversation and moved away. The whole time he was towering over me, pointing at me (even when I asked him not to do that, he said he was pointing past me). I was using the situation for practice as so often I am dealing with the keyboard warrior version of these folks and don’t get to look them in the eye. I want to look these people in the eye. I won’t change their thinking, but I would like to disrupt it a little, even if just for a moment.

Back to the opening poem, and I find myself haunted by a translation from the Aramaic, of what the Judeo-Christian tradition, calls the Lord’s Prayer. This translation has been following me since the encounter in the park and the listening to the poem by Siddiqa.

I have spent sometime musing on why my brain was bringing these two pieces of poetry together and my conversation with the man. The frontier of fear of the Sovereign Citizen meeting my frontier of courage, maybe? Perhaps, the intrinsic embedded potency of the intimacy of the human condition in love with the cosmos? I was drawn into the challenge to invite discomfort in both myself and the man I was speaking with, tempting the limits of my capabilities in sharing this threshold. I enjoyed the practice of testing myself at this imaginal edge.

I have reproduced the aramaic translation below of the Lord’s Prayer. It calls us to be light, and to use show the way forward into beauty, renewal and radical transformative relationships. This instruction feels close to a mycelium of connective tissue flowing as regenerative power. My old understandings of the prayer I learnt and recited thousands of times, was deeply interrupted with this translation, allowing me to form new insights.

I am left wondering what kind of poetry might disarm a sovereign citizen? What beauty in words or image would cause a clash in their mind and unlock some light? They must live in a lot of fear and dark places with anxiety and worry. I am going to take the light every time, the colour every tme, the beauty every time. I am going to give it my best, to practice forming words and sentences to disarm and interrupt fixated patterns of thinking that underscore the potential for dangerous and discruptive behaviour. New mycelium building futures.

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, you create all that moves in light.

Focus your light within us — make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.

Unite our “I can” to yours, so that we walk as kings and queens with every creature.

Create in me a divine cooperation — from many selves, one voice, one action.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

Forgive our hidden past, the secret shames, as we consistently forgive what others hide.

Deceived neither by the outer nor the inner — free us to walk your path with joy.

From you is born all ruling will, the power and life to do, the song that beautifies all from age to age it renews. Amen.

PS – this is my 500th blog

Canberra St, Aberfoyle Park 22 July 2023

2023 Mycelium #29 Night walk

We went for a walk in the dark through the scrub, and still in hearing distance of suburban dogs barking, kitchen lights softened post dinner and the odd car finding its way along the perimeter laneways and into drives.  The steps were taken gently and slowly on the sandy pathway and there was plenty of footprint evidence of walkers who had preceded us during daylight hours. There were prints of paws, bikes as well.  Very annoying as bikes and dogs are not meant to be in the park at all. It is a conservation park and a protected area of remnant scrub, the last of its kind and I am keen to introduce another generation to the scrub, which is why we were exploring with torches and talking in low tones. There is a beauty in the night that invites imagination and just enough anxiety to test courage and curiosity.  You can be a little bit braver too if you are holding someone’s hand, and have a path to follow, signs are equally appreciated.  This is how I spent an hour with my eight-year-old grandson on Friday night – an invitation to mystery in the familiar.

There are plenty of times I feel like I am stumbling in the dark even though the landscape is familiar to me, I look around for a hand to hold, and signs as well – all very welcome additions and well if someone is holding a torch – bonus! I am also encouraged when I see paths made by the people who have taken them before me.  Then there are those moments when something comes bounding across your path that you just didn’t hear or see coming. Friday night it was a grey kangaroo – and in the life of a mayor it can be a set of interesting ideas or humans that come jumping in without any notice at all stopping you still in your path and like the kangaroo the best method is to quietly stand still and just wait til it passes. There is no need to do anything, except to keep walking on the path you are on and not to be distracted to follow the bouncing and the boing boing  and thump thump.

Shining a torch to see a tiny spider throw its web onto a branch is really a treat. Like so many in our community, this little creature was busy making its home, quietly and carefully in its perfect habitat. No dramatic pause for effect, instead a rhythmic weave with purpose and precision.  More instruction after dark, to be clear about purpose and use the gifts embedded in your body, a strong thread to connect you, your home, your place and your future food source.  Showing up just where you need to be.

A series of ant holes and ants busying themselves were like a sheet of notes in a piece of music, staccato of a vibrating bow of a violin, each ant buzzing and creating the tiniest of circles and together pushing up the grains of sand to make their little hills. I did wonder how they might pull the sand down around them when the echidnas come later in the night. But for the time being they were busy at their threshold of over and under making their piles and providing confidence to us that we were on the right path. We weren’t their predators; we were witnesses to their industry.

And of course, we got to see some mushrooms – some big and some small. A few translucent, a few coloured ochres and some that were open and others just popping up. In one spot there was a trail of them between fallen logs and under torch light, looked like miniature lamp posts for the moths and other flying bugs who seemed to be skipping between them.  Flight always fascinates. 

Taking a walk in the dark means being a bit more tentative as to where you put your foot down and more than anything that was the lesson for me on this bush walk. A crackle of a broken branch against the edge of my boot might leave a trail for the next person, as to where to walk, but I need to do it in a way that I am not hurting myself along the way. A torch helps and having a little hand to hold is advice I am going to take metaphorically with me too. Just as mycelium appear above ground as a reflection of what is happening underground – even in the dark you can feel your way through taking cues from the surroundings and shadows.

2023 Mycellium #28 Getting to Yes

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the Barossa Valley, I was on Peramangk and Ngadjuri country over a couple of days. The rains have made the valley more lush and green. The vines bereft of fruit and foliage, looked like skeletons across the hills and dales and were in stark contrast to the ancient gums, reaching skywards, full of flowers and leaves, holding firm on waterways. The juxtaposition of German sensibilities and straight lines of the vineyards. with gangly, outstretched welcoming boughs of the red gums tells the story of this land and all the peoples who have come, gone and remain.

I found my way to the Barossa Farmers Market and accidentally caught a NAIDOC Week ceremony. About thirty people across the generations gathered, between storm clouds and wild winds, to stand around a fire to hear a story, be smoked, and anointed with ochre. Just before I joined this little gathering, I had bought a coffee and chatted to barista who was wearing heart shaped earrings painted with the Aboriginal Flag. She acknowledged me wearing my Yes t-shirt and told me her grandmother was buying one for her. Our generational gap closed in our common agenda to right a wrong in the upcoming referendum. It is these moments that fill me with joy and hope. A small town in the middle of regional South Australia making their own gestures to a future and a past.

I talked to a Mayor on Friday who for the first time had raised the Aboriginal flag on his council building for NAIDOC Week. He comes from a small riverside location, in a place that had been the largest post war soldier settlement in our State. Again, I am buoyed by another regional site taking a step towards recognising the past and the future. This is ane encouraing sign of this generation of voters getting ready to consent to having the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, factored into the decision-making of our nation.

As I travelled home through the towns to my coastal community, I listened to the last of the essays of Stan Grant’s Australia Day. Between the landscape and his voice, my thoughts kept wandering back to the vines and the gums. The power of the trees hundreds of years old with their roots deep, traversing mud, rock, roads, and rain. The way the limbs grow and reflect the wind, weathering storms, how their trunks bulge with stored water for times of drought, and the hollows home to all kinds of species. I love red gums. Stan’s voice and his stories are like these red gums, holding the spaces, moving with the seasons, and standing firm in hope, often creating an arch shaped canopy.  I felt I was being reminded of the words of Martin Luther King Jr “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And just as I had that thought Stan Grant quoted MLK! I love the serendipity and synchronicity that happens when you are in alignment with a greater consciousness.

This is the work of the invisible, popping up through the leaf litter of the bush, making the bigger thoughts visible and big enough to grasp hold off, to carry you onwards. The never-ending story of the undergrowth where the mycelium connects us all, where that part of ourselves is deeply connected to a bigger story, one which we might not fully be aware of, but it is none the less influencing our actions and feelings. Our collective national subconscious is calling us forward to make history and it is showing up in towns and conversations across coffee all around the country. We are finding our way to yes.

Barossa Famers Market, Angaston, 8 July 2023, NAIDOC Week

2023 Mycelium #27 Natural medicine

The tiny burnt orange umbrella’s poking up through the soil in the Adelaide hills at this time of year, as the days gradually start to get a little longer, greet me as I find a place for my walking sticks to settle into muddy patches. I am held, as I eek my way down the trail back to my car.  The air is crisp, I am in very good company, and I am grateful for the space made in the day, to be surrounded by Grey Box to get a glimpse of this place pre settlement. The rainbow lorikeets, magpies, wattlebirds, noisy miners are in abundance and I think I saw an Eastern rosella and heard a faint far away laugh from a kookaburra. I know making time for these walks is more essential for my mental health, as my physical health. The therapeutic value of nature may not yet be appearing on balance sheets, but I expect that is only a matter of time. Prescriptions of time in nature are already being made and filled, and not just by those who self-diagnose!

Like Mary Oliver, when I am among the trees, I am reminded of their advice that she so eloquently channelled:

“It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

So I go easy, filled with light and to shine on, as a crazy diamond as instructed by Pink Floyd, I remember that diamonds too are found deep in the underground carbon stores having first experienced heat and pressure. The mushrooms push the layers of topsoil out of the way to expose themselves to the elements, the soft tissue strong enough to move weights more than a dozen times heavier than they are. They go easy and simply and get to be visible, and show their colours. Such an instructive set of metaphors for me this week as my “soft skills” often pilloried can move and shift layers of stone and silt.

Setting off for more walks, and getting my diary set to help me with my discipline and accountability feels like an achievement and is very satisfying when dates set are fulfilled and completed. All of this planning is a subset of something bigger though, a walk later in the year, in Japan. A pilgrimage to connect with nature, and another culture, is bound to open some new horizons and find some shine and light waiting for me there is filling me with anticipation.  To be travelling again in unfamiliar spaces, I trust, will refresh and expose new vulnerabilities and possibilities.  The pilgrim in me keen to meet the signs on the way, already in the landscape, already filled with light, already shining, and in their simplicity calling me to go easy.

Don’t forget to look down at what is pushing up, next time you are among the trees.