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Wondering Pilgrim

~ the ramblings of a perambulent and often distracted sojourner

Wondering Pilgrim

Tag Archives: aborigines

Craft for a Dry Lake by Kim Mahood

04 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in autobiography, Personal, pilgrimage

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Tags

aborigines, autobiography, books, pilgrimage, postaday2011, reconciliation

Part of my summer reading is an autobiography that weaves the theme of attachment to land by settler and Aborigine alike. The death of the author’s father prompts a personal pilgrimage to the remote station lands of her childhood. Her connection to the land is marked by ambiguity – it is a wrestling with identity that does not find satisfaction without including Aboriginal perspectives and connection. Through writing and painting, Kim Mahood shapes her journey.

This excites me for it gels with the continuing “listening journeys” some of my church are currently engaged in, particularly as we seek to discern how our own identity is affected by connection to the land we now share and the nuances of mapping and naming the land which now has the layer of European settlement imposed upon it.

An excellent review of Mahood’s work is here:

Eco-humanities Corner :Kim Mahood’s Evolving Geographies by Saskia Beudel.

-31.911079 115.772731

Sorry is the first step

13 Wednesday Feb 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in mission, Personal, Spirituality

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

aborigines, mission, peace, Spirituality

Today has been momentous. An obstacle has been removed from the road ahead. Now we can move on to some hard yakka.

Sorry Day Eve

12 Tuesday Feb 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Personal, Spirituality

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

aborigines, politics, Spirituality

Tomorrow is a historic day for Australia. At long last, after much political soul searching and hand wringing, Federal Parliament, through its new Prime Minister, will say the word “sorry” to this land’s first peoples.

In this context “sorry” is a power word. It has strong potential for unblocking the process for healing and self-realisation, not only for aborigines, but all Australians. The lancing of the wounds of the sordid past of which the “stolen generations” is only one marker, is painful but necessary, and a formal apology carries the properties of both an antibody and a balm.

Some fear the power of the word, anxious of the blight of inherited blame and what it may cost in terms of material compensation. For such the word loses its power, for it simply ceases to exist. The national mood, the zeitgeist, however, is that the “sorry” word is at least ten years overdue and that it should have followed soon after the Bringing them Home report was tabled in Parliament in 1997.

In the meantime, Isaiah 55: 10-13 speaks powerfully into our context:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,

and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,

for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Is the word “sorry” divinely inspired in this national instance? My theology says it is.

State of emergency ?!?

27 Wednesday Jun 2007

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in mission

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aborigines, mission, politics

At long last, there is some acknowledgment from our elected leaders that remote aboriginal communities are in urgent need of support and help.

National debate rages over the form this is taking. At its worst it looks like a sledgehammer approach to communities that are already fragile and vulnerable. At its best it enacts a measure that is admittedly interventionist in preparation for longer term measures to assist sustainability, health, safety and security. Subtexts of political opportunism, hypocrisy in the wake of deafness to previous pleas and the shadows of paternalism abound.

So, in the light of my previous post’s reflection on Lee Camp’s offerings om “mere discipleship,” what role does Christ’s church have to play in all this. History gives us a mixed bag of inappropriate interventionism in aboriginal affairs and admirable service in the name of the Suffering Servant.

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