inspiral blog

Finally – kinda – got around to this.

Since the topic was “Reverence for the Earth and the Spirituality of Nonviolence”, we decided (read: I decided) to meet at CERES this week, an environmental park just down the road from here. I blame myself because as it turned out, it was 10 degrees with a wind chill factor of around -10. By the time we walked home again I couldn’t feel my lips.

Nonetheless, it was great to be out of our house and just be in the great outdoors for a while.

Onto content: this week I basically spent a whole lot of time in preparation completely changing the content, and then barely got through any of it. Since we were at CERES I wanted to use the space there, plus I thought it would be silly not to acknowledge and take advantage of the massive wealth of indigenous wisdom on this topic, so we went with that instead of the actual book stuff.

So we started just hanging out in the cafe to get some feeling back in our extremities, and that took a while. We did have a significant conversation there around G20 stuff, leading to a memorable Anthony quote, “I think humans will fly one day”. And he wasn’t talking about in an aeroplane. Anyway, we were essentially talking about human progress and development and whether or not the possibilities are endless. It was useful.

After that we spent quite a while just catching up on the last few weeks – what we had experienced in the way of nonviolence, what we’d learnt, etc.

By the time we did that, we only had time for what was going to be the opening reflection: a children’s picture book I have called “Old Turtle”. If you don’t have this book, you need it. What’s that you say – you don’t have kids? Doesn’t matter. You still need it.

I’d write the text here except the whole thing is an experience of its own – you need it read to you, pictures and all. I first came across it in one of my theology classes, thanks to Frank Rees. It was a religious experience.

We then talked about it for a while, before going and spending a bit of time looking at and discussing one of the many information booths posted around CERES. This particular one focussed on resource use by majority world vs first world people. While provocative and polarising in its language, I think it contained some significant statistics that should make us stop and think and change our actions in relation to the earth and human poverty.

By that time we had to head back home, so the following is what we didn’t get to.

What struck me when researching this topic was the wealth of indigenous knowledge of the land. If we’re talking about reverence for the earth and a spirituality of nonviolence, you can’t go much further than the people who lived in this land for 40,000-60,000 years before Europeans arrived. I mean seriously; 40,000-60,000 years and no impact on the land; then we spend 200 here and already have stuffed it up, in many cases beyond repair.

Partly that has to do with an attitude to the land: one of domination (there’s that Walter Wink word again) rather than symbiosis. In fact, as I understand it, the aboriginal people didn’t so much see themselves as owning the land as being owned by it. That is, they realised that they were so dependant on the land, ie. that it could make or break them at will, that they demonstrated total dependance (reverence) on it, cultivating a deep sense of God’s presence and respect. In fact, it is said that place is absolutely central to the aboriginal people; they derive their sense of identity from where they are from. Hence the huge degree of disorientation many of them experience when uprooted from their place, or being relocated, or having it destroyed. It destroys their sense of who they are.

But that relationship to the land, developed over much longer than we have had here, has much to teach us, and this is what I wanted to focus on. As Europeans we come in and impose our will on the landscape: rarely, if ever, having a positive impact on it precisely because we don’t have the knowledge and respect it requires. So I wanted to start with this quote about “dadirri” from Miriam Rose-Ungunmerr, a tribal elder from the Wurundjeri people (who occupied this land before European settlement):

I believe it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called dadirri. It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. It is something like what you call ‘contemplation’.

When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the river bank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need of words. A big part of dadirri is listening. Through the years, we have listened to our stories. They are told and sung, over and over, as the seasons go by.

In our Aboriginal way, we learn to listen from our earliest days. We could not live good and uselful lives unless we listened. This was the normal way for us to learn—not by asking questions. We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. Our people have passed on this way of listening for over 40,000 years.

My people are not threatened by silence. They are completely at home in it. They have lived for thousands of years with Nature’s quietness. My people today recognise and experience in this quietness the great Life-Giving Spirit, the Father of us all.

Then I wanted to spend half an hour or so experiencing ‘dadirri’ by the Merri Creek, one of the most significant sources of life for the Wurundjeri people of this area. Cultivating an awareness of the land (something I think we seriously lack, preferring to impose our own agendas on it) and our place in it.

She goes on to say about patience and waiting; something you’d learn after 40,000 years, but which we have no idea about:

And now I would like to talk about the other part of dadirri which is the quiet stillness and waiting.

Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and to wait. We do not try to hurry things up. We let them follow their natural course—like the seasons. We watch the moon in each of its phases. We wait for the rain to fill our rivers and water the thirsty earth.

We watch the bush foods and wait for them to ripen before we gather them. We wait for our young people as they grow, stage by stage, through their initiation ceremonies. When a relation dies, we wait a long time with the sorrow. We own our grief and allow it to heal slowly.

We wait for the right time for our ceremonies and our meetings. The right people must be present. Everything must be done in the proper way. Careful preparations must be made. We don’t mind waiting, because we want things to be done with care. Sometimes many hours will be spent on painting the body before an important ceremony.

We don’t like to hurry. There is nothing more important than what we are attending to. There is nothing more urgent that we must hurry away for.

We wait on God, too. His time is the right time. We wait for him to make his Word clear to us. We don’t worry. We know that in time and in the spirit of dadirri (that deep listening and quiet stillness) his way will be clear.

We are River people. We cannot hurry the river. We have to move with its current and understand its ways.

Today I am beginning to hear the Gospel at the very level of my identity. I am beginning to feel the great need we have of Jesus—to protect and strengthen our identity; and to make us whole and new again.

Again, this is something we as Europeans have been terrible at: simply being patient and understanding the land before we impose ourselves on it. Over the previous 40,000 years, the Wurundjeri people understood this land as having six seasons, not the four that England experiences, and which we imposed on the land here without thinking that things might work differently. The six seasons are depicted in the following chart. You’d think that the wisdom of 40,000 years of experience of this particular part of the world would be given more significance than an imposed European view; but not so, unfortunately.

And so for me, reverence for the earth and a spirituality of nonviolence towards it starts here: with dadirri, a contemplative awareness of our place and context, even in the midst of a freezing spring afternoon. Only then, after listening to the earth and the collected wisdom of those who have lived here will we experience the deep spiritual connection they have to God through the land. That can’t be hurried. We must be patient, and disciplined.

And then I was going to finish with a second reading of Old Turtle.

So this is why I’ve been fairly busy lately: getting this off the ground and starting preparations. I’m pretty pumped about it really, it’s definitely my passion, and a great direction for inspiral to start heading.

So I’m hanging somewhere in the overlap between MakePovertyHistory and Stop G20 at the moment, which is a weird kind of dynamic, but a tension that seems to be holding at present. It’ll be great to be able to focus on some specifically Christian activist responses – check your white bands at the door.

We watched the 1982 Richard Attenborough film about Gandhi on Sunday. It’s long – over three hours – and stars Ben Kingsley in an amazing performance in the title role. It is said that Ben Kingsley looked so much like Gandhi, many natives thought him to be Gandhi’s ghost.

They use lots of his great sayings in the film, but here are a couple of my favourites:

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.

This is a great reminder not to despair, because who doesn’t despair at the world sometimes? Yet this is the Christian message too – love wins!

The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are.

This reminds me of Christ’s upside down power structure – that it is not the so-called powerful who rule, or at least that they cannot do so without our consent. Power over is not power at all, and the fact that Gandhi affirms this subversive truth even in the face of apparent defeat is remarkable.

Edward R. Murrow (the subject of the recent film Good Night and Good Luck) gave this tribute at his funeral, one that puts his life into very interesting perspective:

The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived – a private man without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not a commander of great armies nor ruler of vast lands. He could boast no scientific achievements or artistic gift. Yet men, governments and dignitaries from all over the world have joined hands today to pay homage to this little brown man in the loincloth who led his country to freedom.

Power and influence are often accompanied by the things Gandhi didn’t have: wealth, property, official titles, armies, lands, scientific achievements or artistic gifts. So what did he have that made him so influential? Integrity, for one. He lived sacrificially what he believed. And I think too he actually connected with people – all people, not just the ‘movers and shakers’. “Be careful of that man,” one policeman was told by his commanding officer, “Anyone who gets close to him is won over to his side.” There’s one scene where he talks to the Indian National Congress on his return from South Africa. If we are going to unite India, he says, we need to recognise that India is not this room; India is the 200,000 villages out there working in the hot sun, living in poverty. I think politicians forget that: Gandhi didn’t, and not only did he not forget that, he made it his life’s work to actually connect with those people in real ways. He would go and live with them, alongside them, for months or years at a time; no whistlestop tours.

There is also a particularly moving scene near the end, in the midst of the Muslim/Hindu fighting, when a man by the name of Nahari comes to him:

Nahari: I’m going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi: Why?
Nahari: Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!
Gandhi: I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father and killed and raise him as your own…Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.

Ultimately it was this kind of sacrificial, unselfish love for others that Gandhi saw as redemption. This is a film that is well worth watching, both from the personal aspects of this story of a remarkable man, and for the principles which he embodied that we can learn from, structurally and personally.

Anthony is our passionate devotee of Gandhi, so we turned to him to take this week’s session on Gandhi and the nonviolence of soul-force. We didn’t end up getting through much of the course content, but Anthony’s passion and grounding of some of the concepts seemed to make up for it.

Anthony showed the Dharasama Salt works incident from the movie Gandhi, where wave after wave of Indian people demonstrated the ultimate nonviolent resistance in their refusal both to relent and to retaliate as they were struck down by British troops. He then asked us to reflect on how we felt about it as we watched – what happened inside us.

We talked for a long time about the role of truth in nonviolence in both small and a large group: tackling issues like honesty and personal disclosure, as well as holding onto truth as central to not allowing oppression. Anthony gave a summary of Gandhi’s life as well, his formational experiences and significant events that shaped him and his nonviolence.

In the time we had left we talked about Gandhi’s 5 fingers of self-rule (each finger represented a step to real freedom, and the wrist represented nonviolent action). The question was asked, “What are the fingers on our hands?” both as individuals and as a group. It was difficult to think of concrete examples in the same way as Gandhi since his goal was perhaps more concrete than ours, but we did talk about things like inclusiveness, justice, honesty, etc.

We then tried the hassle line concept with a slight difference – we would have Anthony in the hotseat and give him acted out scenarios for him to react nonviolently in as practice. Anthony constantly challenges me to keep this stuff grounded in real life situations, as experiments with truth as Gandhi put it.

So overall a good session that went largely in a direction I wasn’t expecting it to, but nonetheless a useful one. What we missed in the quest for grounding of Gandhi’s method in our everyday lives I think was the structural aspects of his nonviolence: nonviolence as a strategy for social change. Literally, nonviolence as a weapon or a tool. I think we’ll need that in the coming weeks.

Finally, we’re due this next week to have Session 6 of FVTW which is all about ‘Reverence for the Earth and the Spirituality of Nonviolence’, a topic which seems particularly poignant given the death of Steve Irwin yesterday. The world lost a passionate and effective environmentalist, and we are all the poorer for it. I therefore include this quote as a tribute to him and all he accomplished (and will continue to accomplish) for the reverence for the earth and the spirituality of nonviolence: a man who perhaps embodied nonviolence towards the earth better than anyone alive today, but who also had a deep sense of spirituality in why he was doing it.

“I’m a conservationist through and through, Andrew. That’s, er…that’s why I was put on this planet, um, for the benefit of wildlife and wilderness areas. That’s what I’m into. That’s what makes me pumped, mate. That’s what myself and Terry and our families have been all about…I’m a wildlife warrior through and through.”
– Steve Irwin on Enough Rope, 6th October 2003.

We’ll miss you mate.