I pick up the leaf
and I say to the leaf
be my compass.
I can see you,
hold and touch you,
you leaf are real.
Will you show me?
Will you tell me how?
Please share the secret
of your being.
Talitha Fraser
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You have to start
knowing you might not finish
You have to start
knowing you might not get very far
You have to start
knowing it might not make any difference
You have to start
You have to start
Talitha Fraser
…death cannot be eroded. It is a part of life, and it actually imparts meaning to life because it involves a basic contradiction that is essential for an understanding of human existence. Why should Christ have died on the Cross if death were simply an absurdity? Christ’s death rests on the presupposition that every death is tragic. And his death imparts to every death a dimension of hope and victory. Christ on the cross hallowed the agony of love. The gift which Christ offers to those who love is the cross, and it is this gift which purifies love.
To love life as it really is means to accept it in its total reality, which includes death; to accept not only the idea of death but also those acts which anticipate death, in the offering and giving of ourselves.
…In a sense, every sacrifice of our personal interest and our pleasure for the sake of another person or simply for the act of ‘love’ is a kind of death. But at the same time it is an act of life and an affirmation of the truth of life.
Preface, p.16 – Thomas Merton, from Love by Ernesto Cardenal
by Talitha Fraser with Kaumatua Gregg Morris
[this piece first appeared on Radical Discipleship‘s website 17/02/2017]
Allow me to invite you to join in for a game of kilikiti, to sing and dance with us, to walkabout… sit here at the campfire and I will tell you story…
Coranderrk was one of several Aboriginal missions set up in Victoria . Wurundjeri leaders William Barak and Simon Wonga advocated for Aboriginal people to live in their own place, their own way. Many times to petition the Victorian Government Barak and Wonga would gather a delegation together, speak to motivate and inspire them, then they would walk together the 60 miles (12 hours) to deliver the message: “Please leave us alone, give us our land back, don’t take it away again”. Leaders of one people to another, approaching as equal and in person.
The Mau was a passive resistance movement seeking Samoan Independence. When hundreds of members were arrested, hundreds more turned themselves in until all were released because there were more than the system could contain. People stopped paying taxes and gave the money to the Mau. All local Councils and committees stopped meeting, children stopped turning up to Government run schools which were forced to close, instead of working in the plantations to harvest bananas and coconuts the women would play kilikiti all day.
Communities at Ratana, Hiruhārama, and Parihaka in New Zealand saw a farm converted to a township as taking people was more urgent than the harvest; a poet-led commune of Maori and Pakeha living together; an invading army greeted on the marae with songs, food, and children holding white feathers of peace running counter to the cultural tradition of utu.
All of these expressions of non-violent resistance share elements in common:
- they were born out of an intention to create safe space – refuge for the dispossessed. Any political activism or engagement brought about was a by-product, not an intention, of what these places existed to protect.
- they were led by or held in close relationship with indigenous peoples of the land.
- there was, be it tendril or tap root, a connection to and influence of Christian belief.
Having people elected over you who are imposing laws and structures that are not aligned with what we know about how to live in harmony with each other and with the land is not a new idea. Romans 12:20 says: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” How may we engage a world that is broken, challenging what comes our way – to change it or be unchanged by it – preserving our peace and not be overcome?
As High Chief and leader of the Mau, Tupua Tamasese Leolofi III, lay dying his last words were, “My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in peace. If I die, peace must be maintained at any price.” The message of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, leaders of Parihaka: “Just as night is the bringer of day, so too is death and struggle the bringer of life.”
We need to tend to the sovereignty of our own belief in what is right, to the inspiration of ideals bigger and beyond ourselves, to seek the Spirit and be led thereby to feel and act. Who do you look to, to define who you are? Come, sit here at the campfire and tell me a story…
He picked up some food from the table they were sitting at and said: You know what? Everybody eats. He raised a glass of what they were drinking and said: You know what? Everybody drinks. We all have these bodies. These human bodies. Different but elementally the same. Same blood and water runs in your veins that runs in mine. Eat this food and drink this drink just like everyone always has and always will. These lives are for living and loving.
Some people might think that’s a ritual about remembering God but it’s not. It’s about remembering the Human One. Let’s remember everyone is human – the other and yourself. You are uniquely and specially yourself and just like everyone else at the same time. There’s a space and grace about that if you marinate in it for a while.
Human consciousness projects itself. It is dynamic and daimonic. Its excess – like the imagination of a child – cannot be content with immediate appearance and actuality but transfigures these and moves in new geographies. As a listener becomes aware of higher and deeper octaves, so more generally man-in-the-world takes possession of ever richer and more subtle registers of existence and maps them as best he can.
No one is going to stop human nature from its impulse to shape the mystery that lies about us. Thank the powers that be that we can dream in this sense, that we can send out feelers in the unknown and fly coloured kites into the azure or the storm. It is as natural to fabulate as to breathe, and as necessary… the human heart would suffocate if it were restricted to logic.
p.74-75 Theopoetics, Amos Niven Wilder
Rest.
Lie back.
Dwell in your own skin.
Made by Me and belonging to Me.
Nothing and no one can take that away.
What I make, I see, and say that it is good.
Nothing knows its purpose but I know its Purpose.
Nothing knows its place but I know its Place.
Nothing knows itself but I know its Self.
You are as you were made to be –
no more or less than that.
No less Mine for that.
Rest.
Lie back.
Dwell in your own skin.
Talitha Fraser
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