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Letters to Biddy

~ a weekly reflection as a letter to Biddy Early, 19th Century Irish healer from Ennis, County Clare

Letters to Biddy

Tag Archives: gratitude

Both Sides Now

19 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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Biddy Early, both sides now, gratitude, harvest, Joni Mitchell

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.

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Repent

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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eggs, Farmers Market, generosity, Godspell, gratitude, Joel Salatin, nest, repent, repentance, Willinga

Turning away from your values can happen in tiny, almost invisible ways – you consume a 5gram chocolate Easter egg that you later discover was produced by slave labour. It can happen in big and obvious ways – driving your car to a fast food outlet where minimum wages are paid and where farmers have lost their homes and land to the ‘big boys’ because they couldn’t produce for the economies of scale and when you consume you are adding to your own health woes as well as making money for a shareholder that doesn’t live within 10,000kms.

Listening to Joel Salatin this morning at the Willunga Farmers Market was a treat, a call to repent in the best of evangelical traditions. A call to turn back, to wake up and for the our mother earth to be celebrated as the one place we can all call home regardless of our species or our place in the food chain.

Repentance is under done in my life. I do sincerely regret and have remorse for many of my sins (but not quite yet ready to be sorry for all of them). I make occasional acts of turning back and set my sights on the natural default position of the Universe – it is indeed a default position of health, well being, happiness and positivity. Yet the being in the dark and staying asleep seduces me often and I fail to be wise and make choices that reflect my values. Being mindful and consistently so, is a discipline that takes a lifetime before mastery (if indeed mastery is possible). There are choices that seek to bring us closer to alignment …. or lead us away, from that lining up of all the planets, of our vision for ourselves, our communities, families and our planet.

Produce, Willunga Famer

Produce, Willunga Famers Market

My country has a government spiralling to the lowest denominator in what it means to be humane and trades in the currency of fear. The rhetoric from Canberra is that we all have to contribute and pitch in to help out on what is being touted as a budget emergency. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and one of the lowest taxed. There is no budget emergency, what we have is an empathy emergency. Salatin reminded the gathered faithful, that we don’t need a legislator or a tax or a regulation of any kind to make choices for health and well being. Supporting local producers, committing to the shortest possible pathway from farm to table is a good way to start. I came home to take the still warm eggs from our two girls nest and thanked them for their gift. Generosity is offered around every corner and we have a nest to nurture and cherish that will replenish our hearts, hearths and health.

Rhonda and Julia

Rhonda and Julia

Its time for me to repent that is true, and it is time to repent Australia. Turn back to our default position as a nation of generous, compassionate communities that as our national anthem says :

Renowned of all the lands;
For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.

I have always loved the words of this hymn that Stephen Schwartz vamped up brilliantly in Godspell. Time to give it another whirl, and forswear our foolish ways; time to repent and with gratitude celebrate the joys that will come as a consequence!

Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways. Old now is earth, and none may count her days. Yet thou, her child, whose head is crowned with flame,Still wilt not hear thine inner God proclaim, Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.

Earth might be fair, and all men glad and wise. Age after age their tragic empires rise, Built while they dream, and in that dreaming weep: Would man but wake from out his haunted sleep, Earth might be fair and all men glad and wise.

Earth shall be fair, and all her people one: Nor till that hour shall God’s whole will be done. Now, even now, once more from earth to sky,Peals forth in joy man’s old undaunted cry—Earth shall be fair, and all her folk be one!

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