Meeting the moment 2021 #51

This is the last blog post for 2021. In true Dickensian style, it is a year that has seen the best of times and the worst of times. I so appreciate the best of moments and the opportunity to meet the worst of with witnesses and a scaffold of care sometimes completely invisible to me, and often elusive, due to my own amnesia. For many another COVID Christmas seals the deal on naming 2021 as a tough year. Most of my immediate family I connected with via zoom, although I did get to see some of them, we applied socially distanced behaviour and I got another negative PCR result. With some members of the family in a vulnerable health zone, I am a regular to the testing station, as hospital visits and new borns are on the horizon.

The best of moments hold a set of characteristics of warmth, good humour, often at a table, nearly always in the company of women, and where my arrival to the scene is incidental and I am in receipt of the harvest of much that has gone before to enable to even be in the moment. The worst of’s have nearly always been punctuated by pain, retrospective memories or some kind of unpredictable natural phenomena that no one was expecting. They have often been solitary and hidden from the gaze of others and had to find their way out through the intense work of metaphorical massage or exorcising like thought management. Moments that have taken me to heights have been able to be mined for their wealth when I have been impoverished or felt bereft. I seem to have an insatiable appetite for the rich tapestry of goodness to draw on. This wealth, is an abundance of goodness to luxuriously bathe in, as I continue to learn how to receive.

I have been working on my practice, of the discipline of receiving, and testing out little exercises to develop my receiving muscle. This season of gift giving and being thankful for all we have received, provides an opening to develop the practice. Receive has an etymology from Latin, which means to take back, back to the original place. So I have been thinking when I receive something it is a reflection of what is seen, caught in the act of being visible, being called forth and grasped with recognition, being offered to me as a reflection in the mirror. This goes beyond everyday gratitude and is perhaps a pathway to a deeper understanding and experience of being witnessed.

I am deeply grateful to all those who have witnessed me this year. This humble act of solidarity, without judgement and with the generosity of a layer of protection, has helped me over and over again this year. To those who have been in this role for me this past year, my sincere thanks. I know there are many moments you would be able to testify to me sensing my way through, falling towards an insight, burying an anxiety, driving a change, being astonished, feeling enchanted.

In court there a few different types of witnesses, the expert witness, the eye witness, the character witness and the fact witness. I notice that all four types of witnesses have showed up for me this year, and I have also sought them out depending on what I need to be seen or heard. I so appreciate the eye witnesses who have been with me for many decades and where we have such a common language and frame I need only hint at a few words and be seen, heard and understood with no further explanation. I rely on the fact witnesses to keep me leaning in and being realistic, helping me discern the truth, reality and to detect the fake news. The character witnesses reassure me of what they know, have seen and recognise what I have done and remind me of what I am capable of. The expert witness is the one who can offer up a new piece of research, understanding or replace old data with new while not taking away what is there but making sure what is available is more current and solid.

As I leave 2021, knowing the pilgrim path of placing one foot in front of the other, I bow with deep appreciation, to those who have been witnesses to me. I am overwhelmed with the acts of kindness that enable me to practice how to receive.

Thank you to those of you have travelled with me and read this blog across the year. Next year will be the 10th year of writing a weekly blog and I am looking to receive your witness with the same kindness. I would love you to share my posts with others if you find content resonates with you. In 2022 my theme is going to be invisible and visible.

“Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible.”

— Rumi

Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash

Sparks will fly #51 #Advent

A new decade is about to arrive, the birth pangs are real with groans, pants, waiting to take a deeper breath to do a deeper push and expel from the safety of the birth canal, whatever this is I have been carrying for what seems to be longer than any other pregnancy I have held. Unlike real pregnancy no one stops to rub my tummy, ask for a due date, if I have picked a name or how is my nesting going …. But there have been midwives and other medicine men and women, with a range of expertise and there have been angels and saints invoked. Like the first nativity, people are coming from far away places to see what is arriving. Others are looking to the stars for some explanations and others working out what to bring to the stable. The poetry of moving to my new home on this last week of Advent in this last week of the decade is so heartening and a cosmic coincidence that supports me in ways I could have only imagined a year ago. Last night I had a little person sleeping in my bed, he slept with ease and confidence, and the gift burst my heart. My own nativity. His cuddly toys, a range of real and imaginary creatures bearing witness, as authentic as any cow or sheep in a field.

I have always loved Advent. I love the idea of preparation, of waiting, the expectant nature that the best is yet to come …. And what we already have is pretty good! It is time that invites us to keep moving to return to our family home, to be accounted for, a time that brings creation, politics, travel and cosmology into one glorious piece of complexity made simple with the birth of a child. It’s the story to remind me of what it means to be vulnerable to lead, to means to have heralds announce your arrival, to have the wise outside of our culture to value what me might not yet understand, to have the stars align. It is a time for me when I reflect on what is being born in me, what is waiting to be celebrated and what might be emerging.

I end this decade so completely differently to how I started it. I am definitely older and wiser. I have experienced the absolute worst of times in this decade. I have been recognised and celebrated in surprising and compassionate ways. I have walked, jumped and ran. There have been numerous sprints which have served as bridges from one state to another.

I have learnt so much this year – it is has been about integration and using my past to inform my future. There is no tomorrow that today has not prepared me for in some way. There is no part of me that can’t be deployed, recycled or reinvented to meet the challenges ahead. I have everything I need and I just need to remember that truth.

Those faithful witnesses to my life are precious to me and have been as important as any king or shepherd. They are the ones who have detected the sparks when I didn’t know they could fly. I bow down as deeply as I can, with a full heart of gratitude, wonder and awe at the birthing process and remaining open and curious to what this next decade will hold.

Photo by Caleb Stokes on Unsplash

National Apology

Dear Hildegard,

It’s been quite a week for leaders on the political landscape – stepping up to the mark, not stepping up to the mark, resignations, sackings and apologising. In the midst of all the upheaval in Canberra, the hearts of mothers who forcibly had their children removed and given up for adoption had a moment in their long quest for recognition acknowledged and witnessed by the nation. I am such a believer in this idea of witness. Witness is solidarity’s sister. It is not vicarious. We could all see, first hand, the effect of forced adoption anguish and the residue of tears of lifetime etched in the crevices of faces, and in doing so we were not the same again.

Loss and grief is a journey that sometimes seems to have no final destination. To carry this around for a life time must be exhausting and relentless and I hope for many of these women and now adult children, they can at least take a rest from that journey for a while. I keep hearing Chuck Girard’s song Lay Your Burden Down in relation to these experiences and trusting that all involved can lay their burden down and rest a while. Where laying down isn’t an act of surrender but an act of rest of handing it over to another authority or sharing the burden so you don’t have to carry it all on your own.

I can find laying burdens down an enormous challenge – wanting to chew over and revisit decisions or relive experiences – instead of shaking off the dust from my sandals and moving on. What is it that enables us to be free and liberated some times and at not others? Is it guilt, ego, pain, the lack of a witness? When you meet witness you discover the power of observation and deep reflection, you notice the details and the nuances, you hear all the modulations of the tones, you see the spectrum of colours. You have taken the time to be still to stare and to soak in and soak up and come to know (word witness root meaning is wit – to know and when you trace that back it is linked to vis – to vision and to see). The sea of witnesses to the apology about forced adoptions gave me a glimpse of a vision of a world where saying sorry brought healing, hearing those words brings reconciliation and forgiveness and being witness to the events of a world where it is possible for institutional power to hear the truth of the words spoken allowing the veil of shame to fall away. As the Quakers would say “speak your truth to power” I wonder if when I can’t lay my burden down it is because I have not spoken my truth?

I hear your voice Hidlegard in your song of light as it is only in the light that the witness can see and in doing so brings more light to the task of witnessing.

A National apology is something I am proud my country can do. As a citizen I give thanks for the work done on my behalf by the Senate to bring this apology to birth and a lighter journey for those who might be able to rest now and lay their burdens down. As a woman, a mother and a daughter I give witness to this event and all the other women, mothers and daughters whose lives are defined by the experience of forced adoption. As a spiritual sojourner, I step into the light so I might see more clearly and know more deeply what it is to forgive, be forgiven and to speak my truth to power.