As we in Sydney are locked down, and trying to find positive ways of dealing with our inability to travel or move very far, I thought I would put some thoughts down about how we can connect and deepen our relationship with wherever you are.
I’d like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land, the oldest continuing culture in the world, whose way of being is based in caring for Country that we are part of and not separate to. I humbly say thank you - for your wisdom, fortitude and patience.
I’d like you all to close your eyes and think about a place that makes you feel really great. Any place that you love - near or far. Think about and sense:
What is surrounding you
The sounds you area hearing
The smells you are smelling
The state and movement of the air around you
The feeling of the ground you are on, the chair you are in or other
Who you are with
I feel reasonably confident that nature and community are playing a big part of this vision.
So why don’t we make sure our whole world is like this, rather than just little oases that we need to escape to to revive ourselves and our souls? Why do we seem to need to beg for permission for making great places, while we unquestioningly work with policies and rules that result in much less than this? 2020 has shown us that we can change quickly and achieve things we never thought possible. Let’s build on these skills as we consider the future.
As Leandra Martiniello discusses in her wonderful article “The Importance of Remembering our Connection to Country”:
“I invite you to look with new eyes at the landscape that surrounds you. See it not as static but as dynamic, always changing and being reshaped by many relationships...
This is the Creation energy that gives us breath, and through this experience, we are awakened to our place in relationship with the land that shapes us. At the same time, we shape it with every step that connects to its surface.
Acknowledging our connection to Country can be painful because we realise that the trauma we commit to Country we also commit to ourselves, this can invoke a sense of helplessness. However this sensation is also nurturing, and it provides a sense of belonging to place in our Great Mother.
This coming home to our place initiates a sense of responsibility to care for and protect that which we are a part of. Perhaps this shift in perspective is the thing that is needed to address the social, community, environmental and health issues that are impacting us all on this earth.”
To develop this deeper understanding of the relationships we exist within, I think we can take some advice from another indigenous elder.
Dr Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann AM, the 2021 Senior Australian of the Year, talks about dadirri – “inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness”. Dadirri, she says, “is perhaps the greatest gift [Aboriginal Australians] can give to our fellow Australians... dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call ‘contemplation’”.
How might this ancient wisdom be incorporated into our current places and lives? How can we create the regenerative future we need from the current system which does not always support such approaches?
Joel Glazenburg from Regenesis notes:
“Life is by nature creative. She never goes back but only forward. Repair or restoration may work for antique chairs but not ecosystems, eggs or countries. They will never be what they once were, any more than you will ever be a teenager or Humpty Dumpty will be put together again.
Living systems, whether organisms or organizations, ecosystems or economic systems, resolve their problems not by “fixing” them but by outgrowing them.”
Perhaps the future is about creative mending and adaptation... Not forsaking what is and trying to start “afresh” every time (which often continues the ruin), but understanding what we have and how we can realise its potential, improving and evolving as we go into the future. Perhaps we need to Tend, Mend, Renew and Regenerate… see more about this in my next blog.
Our creative skills could not be better harnessed to help us truly connect with where we are :-)
