A New Unity
What a treat to spend a weekend with dear friends and colleagues in Mparntwe/Alice Springs and to speak and share music at the Uniting Church camp! It was wonderful to be grounded once again in old friendships and to walk and dwell for a moment on Arrernte country. Being surrounded by the ranges and the songs of birds was to fill our lungs and souls with the breath of life.
Grateful, doesn’t begin to express it. Thanks to all for sharing once again by the fire, clambering up rocks together, singing along, and filling the silence with laughter and the sound of deep, abiding human connection.
It’s my hope that more connections can be formed between those of us who live in the cities and those who live in the heart of this nation. I hope for more of us to walk on country - the land - and to hear the voices of First Peoples. In those voices, stories and songs, there is an invitation to listen to life itself: the speech of caterpillar, the honey-ant, the wedge-tailed eagle, the speech of trees and yams, of water and rock. I have come to believe we need to hear a fresh word of spirit: a call to renewal, or more likely, new connections and possibilities for our human family. Our creaking world demands it.
For me, to journey with First Peoples is not simply to seek social justice or ‘reconciliation’ - though it must passionately include that - it is actually to be a learner and seeker of wisdom that quietly waits to be heard.
A wisdom that in my opinion is not obscured by the issues periodically paraded on our media about places like Alice Springs. And a wisdom that is not discredited by a failure of anyone to live up to its rich vision and demands - who or which people have ever done that?!
It is an invitation to a new and deeper unity, as my friend and Arrernte elder, John Cavanagh, put it to me yesterday. “Bring more people!”, John said. “I want them to learn about songlines, about healing, I want us to find a new unity, let’s look forward, not back.” Wow, there’s an invitation, friends! Miriam and I hope that we can be small but an ongoing part of facilitating these connections and opportunities for those who wish to take such a journey, and - as we hope we did this weekend - continue to be a support and encouragement to those of us who live in the outback; those good souls hoping for healing and new paths: paths of unity, paths of respect, and love.
These are paths that gently widen our sense of who are our neighbours. We become neighbours to peoples, places, Perrenti lizards, birds, trees, yes, the totality of the life of desert, the plains, the mountains, the coast and the oceans. For John, it is all ‘country’, all sacred; with all things living from and desiring unity.
Now this is not to engage in some idle utopia, some cheap words of oneness. To seek unity takes sacrifice and courage from people of all sides. And, for John, even beyond the human realm.
As John helps us see, our life is bound up together. John says you can even hear creatures cry. And no, not a cry of tears or fear. For John and his people, to eat is to deeply respect what is consumed. And that respect is reciprocated on a level of spiritual connection. John says the Perrenti, the giant lizard of the outback, cries. But not in fear of being eaten, as I might have imagined, but cries out to be chosen. “Let me be the one!”, it cries: the one to provide for my countryman and woman, my human neighbour, my kin. This is a vision of life providing for life, not life taking what it can - as much as we want, whenever we want - which is how I think I live, if I am honest. In John’s view and wisdom, the earth is providing for us; knowing it is one with us. Can we learn something of the same? What would it take to learn to hear a cry of oneness, of mutuality and deep connection with other life? And to learn to sacrifice in order to honour and maintain that life and unity.
To walk with John is to seek this unity, to broach distance and difficult history, to learn more of the truth of the deepest unity of all: the unity of life and matter, humanity and fellow creatures, humanity and fellow forest, and the unity of people and Spirit. And yes, the possible unity of human hearts across cultures, and, as we know too well in this country, an often great divide.
In coming months we will be providing opportunities to explore a little of this path from our end and learning in Sydney, and, in times ahead, on Arrernte country with John and family.
It’s my invitation to you to start preparing your heart for a pilgrimage to the Heart, whether physical or spiritual.
And in July we will have a reciprocal visit from the Rev Emily Hayes of the Alice Springs Uniting Church to Burwood-Croydon, in Sydney. I’m looking forward to that, and to many of you hearing a fresh word and new voice.
More to come.
Kele Mwerre
(Really good!)