Monthly Archives: September 2014

Spring

27 Saturday Sep 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Spring’s instruction is to amass your energy and burst through old wood lying in rest, and shoot new growth.

A coming to fullness and into blossom is an act of hope, an act of promise that will bear fruit as the season turns. This season of renewal is a challenge, what has been bubbling along in the dark, now ready to leak out and reach towards the nourishing rays of light. This is a time of year when I reflect on what has been lying in waiting.

Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, maybe you emerged Biddy from winter into spring a different creature? This week I have been asked to read job applications, be a referee, support initiatives by at least two people every day! It is an honour to be a witness (and I have written a lot about witness previously).

The job seekers aspire to visibility as they put themselves into the sunlight of the marketplace. What lies in wait for them begins to be revealed in making the application. Embedded into this process is vulnerability, self- examination, the scrutiny of others and a test to travel deeper into yourself. A pilgrimage to consider the interplay between your paid labour and life’s work. David Whyte defines work as “an opportunity for discovering and shaping; the place where the self meets the world” (Crossing the Unknown Sea).

A new job anticipates a seasonal change.

And an extract from Elysium by Emily Dickson who knew a lot about arriving and beginnings reminds us that the journey from darkness to light begins with an ambiguity of who might open the door may well be preceded by steps coming towards us!

What fortitude the Soul contains,

That it can so endure

The accent of a coming Foot,

The opening of a Door!

Green shoots offer potential and respond to the invitation of the warmer weather with a “burst forth”. The vineyards cycle through the seasons around me as a constant reminder the renewal is always just around the corner.   The mornings are my spring-time, when the crisp air wakes me up after the rest of night and calls me to a new day, a new beginning. The mornings are my favourite time to read and write, to unfold into the new day. The applicants greet their new day and even if they are not successful, they are in spring for having taken steps to journey from their winter to the next season of their life.

Spring at Skillogalee

Spring morning at Skillogalee

Waiting in Certainty

19 Friday Sep 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Hope springs eternal apparently.  While reading Albino Luciani’s  (aka Pope John Paul I) letters to famous and fictional figures, he referred to Dante’s definition of hope as waiting in certainty.  I wondered how you might have defined hope? Perhaps your little blue bottle was a vessel of hope, a container of predictions and prophecies of better times ahead.

Maybe each hope is like a trinket on a charm bracelet, a trace to re-member a connection or a moment?

I am drawn to the idea of hope this week in part because of Lara‘s dream of collecting 1000 stories of hope. In the certainty that there is abundance of stories of hope to be told and are lying in waiting to be shared with the world is an act of hope all of it’s own in the week Australian’s head off to war on the other side of the world, yet again.  In grief, I went looking for a blue bottle of my own to compensate – but it was the little blue bird of twitter that filled up my hope bank with messages of peace and alternative futures to war.

Pain and paralysis come before hope. When anticipation sets in and longing takes hold, hope begins to find a home.

Hope is born when we can see something that is not yet there and when we can see what is there with new eyes – it is the old butterfly in the caterpillar tale – and that great parable Hope for the Flowers.

So while we head into war and I am at the pain and paralysis stage, I know hope will follow and that there are more than 1000 stories to be shared.

Disobedience

13 Saturday Sep 2014

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Dear Biddy,

One of your famous qualities was disobedience, a refusal to pay homage to money or men, institutional order. Growing up with Irish and Scottish blood in my veins and an oral history of a Greek man jumping ship it seems reasonable that a healthy disregard for authority is part of my DNA. This quality has not skipped a generation and has played out in courts and conversations in more than one jurisdiction.

Refusal to obey authority is central to one’s own health and dignity it may also be vital to birth a new generation of justice and peace.   Howard Zinn remarked that historically the most terrible things have occurred in history because of obedience not disobedience, and while there is a need for order to support civility, so there is the need for civil disobedience.   To speak up when the dangerous and bullying behaviour of authorities bring a civilisation to the edge of its own humanity.

In the luxury of a long lunch at an Italian café, I was in a conversation that was drawing a direct line from the decisions and rhetoric of elected leaders of today to a German government equally elected from a party formed a hundred years ago. I invoked the mantra of the RSL “Eternal Vigilance” as their constant attention to who they see is the enemy of democracy has a lot to offer those of us who stop paying attention or slip into the comfort of a cappuccino.

In doing some deeper research into that mantra I have discovered the phrased morphed from Irish lawyer and politician John Philpot Curran‘s original:

 The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.

(and fascinatingly, Marx recommended Engels read Curran’s speeches to get instruction from a people’s advocate.)

To obey means to turn to hear … and so disobedience may in fact be to listen to an inner authority and turn to hear what the still small voice calls you to and sometimes that voice is very loud and can get you into trouble. Bricks through bedroom windows, graffiti and abuse in public, vilification in the media, some of the sounds and messages passed on as well as songs of justice and peace, laughter and love. It is a very small price to pay in my part of the world for someone with my colour, education and economic status.

To name these times, to show and tell, to explain and help discover what is at the heart of what it means to civil is an everyday discipline: a constant practice that needs exercising.

I pay my deepest respects to all those who stand up, speak out, play and silently act in solidarity and hold vigils. I call on those ancestors of mine to breathe their courage into me so I might do the same and practice eternal vigilance.

howard zinn

Lighting Up

06 Saturday Sep 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese visited my town this week and my heart sung! She unfolded stories from her life as a child in the kitchen, as a mother coaxing a child out of bed, as a negotiator around the Good Friday Peace Agreement table and as a loved and loving wife to a lifelong partner and an icing on the cake tale telling the Vatican it is bonkers. Music to my ears in message and lilt. It was one of those nights when I fell in love with my city. The Adelaide Town Hall was tightly stacked and plenty of people left to hear the podcast and live stream as there was literally not a spare seat.

Mary’s tales were of partnerships, friendships, conversations and the power of tea and buns. Nothing can be built without respect and no respect can be offered without the simple truth of recognising we are all walking the same journey and have a yearning for justice and peace … even though we might separate on how that might be achieved.

Terrorism once invisible and hidden in the shadows is now publicly displayed on every media platform available. The brutality and horror is front and centre. The sophistication of technologically charged drones that are managed by gamers recruited from online game parks are matched against the disenchanted and disenfranchised youth seeking adventure and martyrdom for their cause. What is hidden behind screens and balaclavas are not much different to each other. Mary McAleese insisted her suitors in the peace process come in the front door for all the world to see, no back rooms, no balaclavas.

When there is no light, all it takes is for a candle to be lit and sitting in the Adelaide Town Hall this week I thought of all the candles that would have been lit in prayer and with hope to bring about the peace process in Northern Ireland. I thought of all the candles I have lit to give me a boost and to remind me that it is in the light that I can see more clearly. I thought of all the candles that might be needed to bring about the peace in our world in all the places where darkness is making its home.

Coming into the light, and beckoning others to do the same, so that together you can all clearly see more of what can be done together will bring clarity and peace.

I’m a little over leaning in and think that lighting up is the way to go.

Nelson Mandela Lecture 2014 UniSA, Adelaide Town Hall

Nelson Mandela Lecture 2014 UniSA, Adelaide Town Hall