I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll.
He said to me, ‘Take it, and eat it.’
Rev 10.9
Tag Archive: voice
ELAINE BROWN
There is no such thing as a part-time revolution.
We’re not here for black liberation but for all liberation.
We didn’t come here for a better life,
or religious freedom [like migrants to US],
we came kicking and screaming.
We provided the conditions for people to bring about the revolution –
gave them free education, a free breakfast, access to a free clinic…
they have the human right to food, to health care –
we gave them the experience of something worth fighting for.
Are we breaking the glass ceiling to be oppressors ourselves?!
No. We have a common enemy.
Can’t see ourselves in competition with anyone else.
What is our agenda as women?
To find solidarity with the others who are suppressed.
PAOLA BALLA
Learn how to situate yourself.
Do not let your feminism drive your racism.
Mind and heart, mine is a matriarchal tradition –
you experience yourself as a part of others.
Activism is radical self-care.
It is a form of activism to thrive, not just survive.
Art is not living but living can be art.
“The world will crumble one day.
It’s ok. We know how to be poor.
We know how to live without electricity…”
– Rosie Egan
NAYUKA GORRIE
(of WOW/speakers)
To see your reality reflected back you.
Very powerful.
How much of my gender came out of a book? A ship?
The convent that beat my grandmother?
We need to consider: how is gender colonised?
Your black body is never quite yours in this country.
Hyper-sexualised vs. not attractive at all. Strong vs. not strong at all.
Used for labour (work) vs. in labour (baby)
A shaved head means either a Britney melt down (dysfunctional)
vs. fundraising for cancer (held up as a role model) –
What other personal reclamations can I make of my own body?
Keep this flesh vessel tight [runs regularly].
Doing well is resistance.
Trigger warning: there’s a lot that’s demeaning and dehumanising in this – whatever your gender and sexual orientation
With words I try
to describe the shape
of silence
a sonar cry
of what is
into what isn’t
and learn
the shape of
myself.
Talitha Fraser
I arrived late and missed Miliwanga Wurrben but both wonderful and powerful to see the work of young artists presented at Scribe.
Hannah Donnelly read some segments of recent work – dystopian young adult fiction exploring the long term impacts of climate change in Australia. Asking the audience questions between readings like:
- what Country do you live on?
- what water system is on the Country where you live?
- what is your future? …your children’s future?
Prompting important self-reflection on the ways we are (or aren’t) aware of the impacts of climate change and the ways we’re complicit in not taking good care of Country.
HANNAH DONNELLY
Hannah Donnelly is a Wiradjuri writer who grew up on Gamilaroi Country. She is the creator of Sovereign Trax, an Indigenous music blog which aims to foreground the consumption of music that speaks to collective stories and identities. Hannah’s writing experiments with speculative fiction and Indigenous responses to climate change.
It’s hard to find words to describe what Jack Sheppard shared – all about words but using few he shared a story using his body and video footage of two friends who recently committed suicide, the piece capturing the evolution of his grief, healing and response to that. Their stories are written on his body and he carries them with him. This evoked the sense of a beginning in an ending and possibility in a situation that feels hopeless. Where he is, they are. The gift of his work was holding space for the piece to mean whatever it might seem or need to mean to each person watching it… below is my attempt to express some of what that was for me watching him.
JACK SHEPPARD
The Honouring is a presentation of a physical theatre work in development, paying homage to Indigenous life and culture in its hardships, beauty and spirituality. Using movement, dialogue, video installations and poetry, the work is influenced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander totems and landscape, with the story journeying to parts of Australia of deep significance to Jack Sheppard.
Pen to heart
writing is a full body experience
physical and not just head.
Disparate ideas and pieces of a life
you try to fit together
but they don’t come.
Voice.
Listen.
What are you trying to say?
What are you trying to read?
Winds blow,
walking in your own mess,
dance like no one is watching.
All about words but silent.
I lost my voice again today…
Cuddle up to the pieces
keeping you warm at night.
Collect the pieces up,
we must nurture the ghosts
that lie down with us,
check and care for them.
Shedding clothes,
layers of skin,
who we are.
Naked, unfolding a
piece of paper with the
whole story.
Reflection of self
wraps around you
like a cocoon.
Lie with the dead,
those we can’t save.
I want to sleep but I can’t.
Awake, I’m still awake.
Talitha Fraser
p.86-87
“I spent the mornings writing letters in answer to advertisements in the paper; in the afternoons I went for walks round the creek. I was experiencing a sense of freedom and elation that my failure to find work could not subdue. The renewing of my association with the clean world became almost an identification with tree and bird and sun. The sharpness of my pleasure in rediscovery was sometimes so intense I could have shouted and flung my arms wide or lain with my face against the earth listening to music only the enchanted hear.
Quartz gravel, dry gum-leaves, bleached twigs and pieces of bark were rich with meaning. The floor of the bush was a narrative poem, the bush an evocation.
Shadow and sunlight, reaching limbs of trees, the rustle of grass, shapes and colours and odours, demanded a complete absorption to uncover the heart of their beauty. I felt I had been imprisoned for a lifetime in a dungeon and now, freed, the revelation of a communicating beauty lying confined in all that I was seeing brought with it a frustrating awareness of my inability to release it so that it would surround men and women for ever. There was an anguish in this unattainable desire, and tear, and a sense of deprivation.
I wanted to proclaim my message, if not in books then by talking.
Sometimes I had attempted, when stirred by the sight of a spider orchid, maybe, or the flight of a bird, to take adults on a fanciful journey of the spirit, in search of a truth beyond what the eye was seeing. It demanded of them an emotional response suggestive of children and this they could rarely give. They associated it with immaturity.
Shielded by books and facts and their belief in accepted authorities, they were incapable of becoming participants in wonder, only kindly and critical observers of those experiencing it. The years of development they had left behind were sprinkled with stars – the sharp lights of remembered experiences. The same experiences in later years never created a light.
What was once a magical experience becomes commonplace with repetition and there comes a time in the lives of most people when the eyes and ears fail to register an unadulterated wonder and excitement, but are used as instruments to revive memories that flicker like a match for a moment and die away. It had all happened before; it would happen again. But I knew that each moment contained something unknown, something never experienced before, an enchantment only it could provide.”
We are running a fortnightly bible study following our community dinner looking at the exegesis (interpretation) of the bible passages that underpin each of our community values. You can read the list of Values here so you know what’s coming up next.
These values can be relevant whatever context you live and work in just make the Word you own.
Value 6: Being honest about who we are
We value the humility and forgiveness required to live transparent lives in community. We want to submit to each other in accountability and honesty, allowing Christ to use our weaknesses and failings.
Biblical basis: 2 Cor 12:9-10, 2 Cor 3:18
Let’s read the value together. What stands out?
All of those words – humility, forgiveness, transparency, submission, accountability, honesty elicit an emotional reaction – they’re strong words, they’re challenging words.
Not only are we often not rewarded for being honest , we can be penalised for speaking up.
It often requires vulnerability in the first place ‘weaknesses and failings’ are on display so then you’re open to a “hit”.
Once you start hating people it keeps going. Sometimes you have to forgive people and walk away.
2 Cor 12: 9-10
…there is no reason to think I’d end up with egg on my face if I did talk big about my own experiences. It would be the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but don’t get me started! I’d rather let my actions do the talking for me. Let me be judged simply by the value of what I teach and what I do. Any spectacular revelations I may have experienced in the past should not inflate your opinion of me.
……..And believe me, God has seen to it that they haven’t given me an over inflated opinion of myself. To balance them out and keep my feet firmly on the ground, I have been given a special gift — a real thorn in the flesh, a condition that torments me and causes great anguish in my body. Satan used it to try to derail me, but it is probably what has kept me on track. Of course I couldn’t see that at first. Three times I put everything else aside and gave all my time and energy to seeking the Lord for healing and deliverance. But the Lord said to me, “My generous love is enough for you. Your weakness clears the deck and opens you to my strength.”
……..So then, if it means that Christ’s strength will be all the more active in me, I will gladly wear my weaknesses like a badge of honour. Indeed, given the opportunity to talk about them, you can’t shut me up! So nowadays, whatever comes my way — failure, bad-mouthing, tough times, harassment, tragedy —I take it all in my stride and just allow Christ to come to the fore. You see, it is when I am at my weakest that I find the greatest strength.
2 Cor 3.10-4.3
The people back then were as thick-headed as the people of our own day — they could hear the words of God’s law read out, but it never seemed to penetrate their hearts and minds. It’s as though the scarf has stayed in place ever since to prevent anyone from catching sight of the glory revealed by the words. Only Christ can uncover what is hidden. It’s the same for anyone who reads the scriptures without opening themselves to the Lord for insight: it is as though the wool has been pulled over their eyes and nothing gets through but the bare words. It all changes when we turn to the Lord, though, because the Lord is a real eye-opener. The Lord and the Spirit are one and the same, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the freedom to see clearly. The wool is pulled away from our eyes and we come face to face with the glory of God. This experience is truly transfiguring! We are set ablaze by the Spirit — lit up like the Lord — so that more and more we become like mirrors reflecting the glory of God.
……..We have nothing to hide then, and no reason to lose our nerve, for God has been incredibly generous in trusting us with a share of this work. We have sworn off any methods that we’d be ashamed to have brought to light. We don’t hide behind masks; we don’t do anything shifty or manipulative; and we don’t twist God’s word to promote our own agendas. Instead, we simply lay all our cards on the table and let our integrity speak for itself. By stating it plainly and living it openly in the sight of God, we give everyone the opportunity to make up their own minds about the truth.
©2002 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
Read the bible. What words/ideas stand out? What can we learn from the bible about living the Value: Being honest about who we are?
“We have nothing to hide then, and no reason to lose our nerve. for Go has been incredibly generous in trusting us with a share of this work…” in our current situation this feels like an important reminder – encouraging, challenging and comforting.
“To balance them out and keep my feet firmly on the ground, I have been given a special gift – a real thorn in the flesh…” radical idea to reach for, being grateful for the thing that gives you pain and seeing it as a gift. Thanks… thanks SO much for this pain.
“…failure, bad-mouthing, tough times, harassment, tragedy – I take it all in my stride and just allow Christ to come to the fore” Paul was a bit smug wasn’t he?
Sometimes to try to please people we can try to be something we aren’t but we have to be true to ourselves.
The reference in the passage to the scarf/wool being over our eyes and nothing being able to get through felt like a good excuse to pull out the veil I made – “…wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the freedom to see clearly. The wool is pulled away from our eyes and we come face to face with the glory of God… we are set ablaze… lit up… we become like mirrors reflecting the glory of God.
These layers of the veil represent some of what I need to peel back (expectations, tradition, learned/taught behaviour, fear…) to be living as I was made to be.
What stops us from being able to be transparent?
Activity: The People’s Mike
Drawing on the idea of being one body – what holds you back is what holds me back. The People’s Mike is an exercise in naming and holding together. As people call out words (anyone can have a go), the rest of the people in the crowd repeat the word in chorus affirming the speakers truth (perhaps our own) and confessing our own culpability because what harms you harms me – what is holding us back from being honest about who we are? What are we afraid of? One person calls it out and then we all repeat it together in chorus.
Similarly, what leads one of us to wholeness might lead us all, what makes it easier to be transparent? What helps us to feel ok about being honest about who we are? One person calls it out and then we all repeat it together in chorus affirming the speakers truth (perhaps our own) and calling ourselves into the community we seek to create.
Closing prayer
Dear God, we’re waiting
Let us wait with hope
We’re waiting for things to seem clearer
Let us wait with peace
We’re waiting for the world to feel safer
Let us wait with joy
We’re waiting for the love our hearts cry out for
Let us wait with love
May we be kind to one another.
May we strive to be the answers to some of our own questions.
Amen
On the weekend of 24-25 September Whitley College hosted a conference called Constitutions and Treaties: Law, Justice, Spirituality – these are notes from session 8 of 9. We acknowledge that this gathering, listening and learning occurred of the land of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations and offer our respects to their elders past and present, and all visiting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island visitors present.
Terrific to be part of the Minutes of Evidence project – collaborative performance sparking conversations about structural justice.
British colonisers ran a “Paper Empire” – numbers, counting surveillance… combined with counter-archives (other ways of knowing) can be used to create sources/proofs. Presumption of colonisation (denial of sovereignty) complicit and absolutely imbued in statutes and policies.
“…powerfully committed to hunting grounds” the Committee couldn’t break or deny this connection to Country… this is why the regional system of Missions was put in place. The testimony of these men changed the political “solution”/outcomes. Although 50 years later the missions were closed after all and people were centralised.
On the subject of children being taken away, missionaries testified that: Those on the Missions knew of all the children in their District when a white couple adopted a girl then no longer wanted her – they were going to send her to Sydney, the Aboriginal people on the Mission appealed to take her in. There is no such things as orphans… every child had two parents. 100s of letters written by Aboriginals exist speaking to self-determination, religious freedom and for rights.
Political activism was happening pre-1920s. Is it racial prejudice that dismisses testimony of “pining away” or “affection” for the land as irrational/emotional but this speaks to the depth of feeling of cultural belief/commitment, assertion of rights, sovereignty and justice. Not able to recognise the implications of what you ‘see’ in front of you but providing testimony of it jsut the same.
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