Samuel Palmer, Sunset (ca. 1861). Yale Center for British Art. Public Domain.
Stranger Things hints at dimensions that are closer than our own breathing. The mood is dark, sinister and compelling. The world as we thought we knew it is transforming. Thin places once hinted at glorious light. Now they also open hazards, concurrently concealing and revealing the dread of the yawning abyss.
Yet another dimension, more ancient, more new, more true, invites discovery, often hiding in plain sight. It is the stance of attentiveness that receives it. Cultivating capacity for awareness fleetingly opens its portals. Our feet tread infinity. Our hearts burst with an incomprehensible passion. Our eyes are all but blinded by a light that is beyond all light.
Once, long ago, ancient astronomers traced a new star. It led to a place where this dimension burst into open and persistent perception. It continues to hide in plain sight!
Vision of glory A gum tree shining with light Evokes tears of joy
This piece was created in response to an invitation from dVerse to write a haibun on Epiphany. A haibun is a brief composition made up of several paragraphs of prose, ending with a haiku—three lines of poetry in the 5-7-5 pattern that reflect the current season.
In the days after the Bondi massacre, Australia found itself suspended between shock and solidarity. The beach, usually a symbol of ease, openness, and shared life, became a place marked by absence. Towels lay where people had fled. Flowers appeared where lives had been taken. Silence settled where laughter had been only hours before.
René Girard helps us see that moments like this are not only events of violence but events of imitation. Human beings, he says, are deeply mimetic: we catch one another’s desires, fears, and emotions. In crisis, this shared vulnerability can bind us together or turn us against one another.
Shared Fear, Shared Humanity
In Bondi’s aftermath, the first mimetic wave was fear, a fear that spread not because people were weak, but because they were connected. The community breathed together, grieved together, and tried to make sense of what had happened. Girard would say that this shared emotional resonance is the beginning of both danger and possibility.
The Temptation to Blame
Girard warns that when a community is shaken, it instinctively searches for someone to blame, a scapegoat who can carry the weight of collective anxiety. We are seeing hints of this in the public discourse: political figures positioning themselves as protectors, debates about extremism and identity, and the subtle pressure to locate the cause of the violence in a particular group or community.
The Bondi response also revealed something deeper: a refusal by many to let fear harden into hostility. Stories of courage, including those from people of diverse backgrounds, helped disrupt the mimetic pull toward scapegoating. The larger community is resisting the easy narrative that violence demands an enemy.
Rituals That Heal Instead of Harm
Girard believed that communities heal through rituals that restore unity without sacrificing someone. In Bondi, these rituals emerged almost immediately:
candlelit vigils
paddle‑outs forming circles of solidarity
moments of silence on the sand
symbols of remembrance carried gently by strangers
the many who joined the Hanukkah tradition of progressive candle-lighting
These were not acts of forgetting but acts of re‑membering — stitching the community back together through shared presence rather than shared blame.
Choosing the Non‑Violent Path
Girard often said that modern societies stand at a crossroads after violence. One path repeats the ancient pattern: fear, rivalry, scapegoating, and renewed division. The other path is harder: it requires truth, compassion, and the courage to resist mimetic hostility.
In Bondi’s aftermath, we saw a community leaning toward the second path when people chose to honour the victims, uplift the helpers, and hold space for grief without turning it into fuel for exclusion. They chose to imitate the courage of those who ran toward danger, not the violence of those who caused it.
A Community Becoming Itself Again
Girard reminds us that crises reveal who we are becoming. Bondi’s response – tender, courageous, imperfect, but deeply human – promises a community that refuses to let violence define its story. Instead, it leans to imitating the best of itself.
And perhaps that is the deepest Girardian insight here: we are always imitating someone; so let us choose to imitate those who heal.
Upon the lands where shadows long have lain, A dawn breaks forth, Isaiah’s word fulfilled; In Gaza’s grief, in Ukraine’s frozen pain, The promise shines where hearts are bruised yet stilled.
The USA, with restless striving worn, And Somalia, where hunger cries aloud, All nations wait for mercy’s tender morn, A shoot from Jesse rising through the cloud.
The wolf shall dwell beside the lamb in peace, The child shall play where once the serpent coiled; From war’s fierce hand, the strife shall find release, And earth be healed where hope was long despoiled.
So Advent sings: the world in travail groans, Yet Light has come to claim all lands as His own.
Prayer
God of Light and Peace, In Gaza, Ukraine, Somalia, the USA, and across the earth, let your dawn arise. Shine into our darkness, heal our divisions, and guide us into the way of peace. Through Christ, the Prince of Peace, we pray. Amen.
“Let’s take it for a whirl,” he said, |that rusty old ute behind the shed. Its tyres were flat, its paint was all flaked – but still, it roared when gently waked. We named it Puff, with dragon flair, and drove it laughing everywhere.
(c) Dennis Ryle November 2025
dVerse challenge – compose a quadrille – a poem of precisely 44 words – and use the word “whirl”.
Today’s dVerse invitation is to compose a dizain on any theme. The dizain is a 10-line French poetic form, traditionally composed of a single stanza. It follows a strict rhyme scheme of ABABBCCDCD and typically uses 10 syllables per line. Popularized by French poets in the 15th and 16th centuries, it has also been adapted by English writers.
I look at my desktop – all is tidy Yet analysis shows it is crowded Not surprising, as today is Friday Week’s activities displayed unshrouded Though concealed in a stack that seems clouded A book by Carter on themes ethereal A cash access submission that is serial Car registration that will soon come due Something I wrote while ministerial The list goes on and on; my how it grew!
Today’s dVerse provides a list of well-known lines from horror movies, inviting poets to be creative and build alternative stories in a form of our own choosing.
I’ve selected “Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep” – Nancy Thompson, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep ‘lest ways of mammon upon you creep Stocks and profits would have their way so easy and enticing to lead astray
Why not slumber and close your eyes? There’s wealth aplenty and in disguise Waiting for those with proper thrall To nod off and forget their higher call
Forget the woke and remain a slave Sleep is your haven from being brave Pursuing the treasure within your dreams That turns to nightmares full of screams
Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep The woke see deeply what’s here to reap Alert to humanity’s deeper soul The common good that makes us whole.
Today someone accused me of being a poet. A haibun is a Japanese literary form that blends prose with haiku, creating a meditative and evocative narrative. So here goes.
Hallowe’en in an Australian suburb is mostly a commercial venture. The faux pumpkins, skeletons and witches have stood sentry with the store greeters for several weeks now. With some incongruence, Santas, reindeer, snow creatures and Christmas trees are now appearing among them. This Friday, our bowl of wrapped sweets will be ready. Our lane is off the beaten track, but “be prepared” has always been our motto. This weekend, our minds will turn to the communion of saints, which All Hallows Eve heralds. As ever, a deep subterranean stream runs beneath the froth and bubble of ringing tills and beeping point of sale terminals.
Cloud of witnesses Surrounds crazed activities Holding all in peace.
Today the Ryle clan gathered on Kaurna Country at Mt Lofty overlooking Piccadilly Valley to scatter the ashes of our beloved matriarch, my mother. It would have been her 101st birthday. Not all could make it, but all were in some way present.
Ode for Marjorie Isobel Ryle
At Mt Lofty, overlooking Piccadilly Valley Here, where the wind sings through stringybark and gum, And the valley opens its arms in quiet reverence,| We gather to release what remains – Not to forget, but to remember more deeply.
From Birkenhead’s sunlit shores she came, Where seagulls cried and blue skies bore witness To a girl of grit and grace, Who laboured with laughter in Adelaide’s heart, And loved the boy next door with a devotion that endured.
She raised three children – Dennis, Janet, Alan – In a home where wisdom perched like a talon, And love rang like a bell through every room.
She led with light in the Girls Brigade, A beacon for the young, And in her church, she stood firm – A pillar of faith, a wellspring of patience.
Now, her ashes return to the earth, Scattered like seeds upon this sacred ridge, Where mist meets memory, And the valley below cradles her legacy.
Let the wind carry her story. Let the hills echo her laughter. Let the soil receive her strength. For she is not gone – She is woven into the breath of this place, Into the roots of every tree, Into the hearts of those who carry her name.
So we release her, not in sorrow alone, But in gratitude – For a century well-lived, For a lineage of love and grace, For the girl from Birkenhead Who became a matriarch of kindness.
Rest now, Marjorie, In the valley’s hush and the mountain’s embrace. Your life was a blessing. Your memory, a song. Your spirit, forever part of this land.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
We went because the call came – a need, a name, a dose to deliver. No invoice, no ledger, just the quiet urgency of breath.
The growth economy would chart it: kilometers driven, time logged, value exchanged. It would ask: Was it efficient? Was it scalable?
But then – quite unrelated, unasked, unearned – a cob of fruit sourdough, still warm, cradled in hands that had no part in the medicine run. No algorithm predicted this. No KPI measured the yeast of kindness rising in a neighbour’s oven.
This is the share economy: where gifts ferment in silence, where abundance is not hoarded but handed over, where the crust cracks open to reveal a sweetness no market can price.
We delivered medicine. We received bread. And somewhere between the two, a covenant was baked – not of profit, but of presence.
Wondering Pilgrim 