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Category: the recollective
We engaged in a couple of different ways at this years Sacred Edge Festival: volunteering, offering a workshop and putting an artwork in the exhibition.
WORKSHOP: Stories As Medicine
Who directs the narrative of our story? Who writes the ending? Who decides what is meaningful to take away from it? Colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy are just a few systems that direct the cultural narrative. We are exploring ways our own actions, choices and voice can inform and determine for ourselves how our next chapter unfolds. How may we understand stories as medicine – others’ and our own?
This practical session invites you to explore the use of silence, creativity, storytelling and curiosity to develop tools for creative resiliency that can support healing and recovery for ourselves and others in responding to personal and collective trauma experiences. These skills can be used for self-directed contemplative practices, and facilitating intergenerational community worship gatherings.
ARTWORK: Wominjeka | Haere mai | Welcome
This piece references elements of powhiri to offer cultural reciprocity to the many Welcomes to Country I have been privileged to receive. It seeks to hold both the question: Am I welcome here? And to explore the answer.
Harakeke, representing intergenerational wisdom and shelter, is woven into a tāpeka. A garment worn by an elder or leader denoting seniority and the authority to speak. The karanga call and the waiata sung are symbolised here by feathers. The curly seed pods of the Gold Dust Wattle, green and gold, speaks to the invitation to follow the law of Bundjil in this place. Boonwurrung Elder Aunty Faye Muir says by“bringing in leaves/dye/plants you can show what it was like before settlement [and] names of those who passed are there but “ghosted”.”
Connection with deep memory stories shows respect to others and our elders.
This two-day conference drew together thinkers from within and beyond the church to consider the place of a public theology and Christianity in the aftermath of trauma and abuse.
From Royal Commissions into institutional handling of sexual abuse and disability care, to the role of the church in colonial policies and practices, this conference make space for difficult and crucial conversations between academics, poets, ministers, survivors. Hosted by Janice McRandal of the cooperative, Brisbane, 3-4 November 2023. Loud Fences might be a page of interest, if you want to know about grassroots responses here.
To be able to hold space amidst this significant conversation was profound. We closed out with this sung poem…
begin
begin
begin anywhere
set out
step out
that is where you start
one day you do it
different than yesterday
ever so slightly
and it changes the world
Talitha Fraser
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