Dear Biddy

Harvest and gratitude walk hand in hand for me this week.

I entered a room and found old friends and deep roots that I thought were dormant now arrayed with green shoots: each one watered by the kisses and hugs that followed. Being reminded of your tribe, by finding so many in the room where you share a common heritage and have perhaps in some way contributed to each other’s futures, has been a blessing from the week.

,The day ends with a singing Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now and the full circle concludes with tears of gratitude that I could experience a harvest on this most amazing of days.Reverberations came from the past and the future in the single moment of the reconnections occurring in the echo chamber. It started on the footpath with a chance encounter of a former colleague with whom I had shared many a laugh, longing and frustration! We worked together in the most challenging of places and like soldiers who can only talk to other soldiers who shared the same trench. We connect at a deep and immediate level as if time has stood still. And then my footsteps take me to the echo chamber itself. A building once at the heart of the financial business of a city long gone where Australia’s most famous cricketer made his living and is now home to the exchange of ideas. My role in this transition, while small, was significant such is the invisibility of a political apparatchik. And then the doors open and the eyes and hearts connect with hugs and more hugs, stories flowing one after another out of every single tea cup and every darting glance around the room. I am moved by so many moments and receive blessings – an introduction to a new face is preceded with a glowing reference; a quick directive is made to embed the future in the next conversation; a death notice from the person I sit alongside of, a high five from a twitter novice I have known for three decades … it goes on and on … a veritable cascade of connections. I am bursting at the seams of the generosity and kindness of memory and echo.

Whatever next steps are taken, I know I take them easily as they land on solid (and sacred) ground and the paths we make we will be making together.

The day ends with a teenager singing Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now and the full circle concludes with tears of gratitude that I could experience a harvest on this most amazing of days.