Month: July 2023

Central West Sunset

Dusk at Millthorpe is enchanting. The western sky, dappled in mid-level cloud, plays with a palette of yellow, orange, pink and bruised plum. The colours layer on top of one other like an extravagant celebratory cake. The initial yellow and orange hues are followed by an intense pink reminding me of specimens in the Bathurst begonia garden. In part it is like pink tulle draped across the sky, lifting in intensity, and for a few glorious minutes, the sky lights up just as its embers are about to die out.

The soft duck egg blue above this showy palette is slowly transformed to lavender, plum, mauve, and violet before the sky changes yet again before my eyes. Blues now dominate the sky. Moving from azure to cerulean, delft and finally to navy before turning into an inky black sky, I gaze as if into the eyes of a lover. Slowly, stars emerge, first one then another, and before long hundreds fill the night sky. Away from the city lights, they illuminate the firmament and light the way, even on this moonless night.

I have long been fascinated by celestial bodies and as a child could name many of the constellations until my northern sky was replaced by the southern cross and new shapes for which I had no name.

I am intrigued by the Australian Indigenous way of viewing the stars. The images I look for are formed by lines connecting star to star while they look for images in the spaces between. This reminds me of those optical illusions where you see either a young or an old woman depending on your perspective, until you can see both images and move between them with ease. I’d like to learn more about Indigenous astronomy and move between the two skies with ease.

It is too cold to stay outside. The temperature drops fiercely once the sun withdraws. I shiver and take a last look at the night sky and still can’t tear myself away from the spectacle before me.

A special type of mystic

I have neglected my inner life. I know this because I have an increased longing to be in nature and I have a fidgety, niggling feeling that I can only describe as ‘divine discontent.’ I know that change is in the wind, I’m just not sure that I am quite ready to leap into the unknown.

A friend suggested I read Raynor Winn’s ‘The Salt Path.’ She knows me well – I devoured the book. I marvelled at Winn’s resilience and trust in simply walking, putting one foot in front of the other until the path revealed itself. Since then I have read her other two books. I have been deeply moved by them all.

I have long harboured a desire to walk the Camino but now I am wavering. I have watched footage of hordes of people on this ancient track and I doubt I will find the peace I long for walking with thousands of others. It has lost its appeal. Maybe I need to find my own way, my own path to tread.

In her second book, ‘The Wild Silence’, Winn mentions the venerable Celtic concept of a ‘thin place.’ This is a place where the membrane between the ordinary and spiritual world becomes translucent, and we can touch the ultimate, even if only for a moment. It is a place where it is possible to lose oneself and find oneself at the same time.

Maslow called these moments ‘peak experiences’ and puts them at the top of the hierarchy of human needs. According to him, they play an important role in self-actualisation. He describes them as moments of pure joy and elation that stand out from the everyday where we experience a heightened sense of awe.

I realise that given my preoccupation with work, finances and plans for the future, I am not open to perceive thin places, should they choose to reveal themselves to me. Before that can happen, I have to get out of my head and be present to the here and now. I need to experience the earth under my feet, the air I inhale, and the space around and within me.

Lately, I have been drawn to interviews with Brother David Steindl-Rast, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, and Thich Nhat Hanh. I feel that each of these great spiritual leaders have spoken to me directly over the years. I am not at all surprised that they knew each other and that they have been in inter-faith dialogue for years. Using the language of their own tradition, they too speak of the thin places where the sacred and profane meet and there is a momentary dissolution of the self and a sense of universal belonging. It all makes sense. And so I leave you to ponder Brother David’s words: ‘The mystic is not a special kind of human being, but every human being is a special kind of mystic.’

Unsolicited Advice

I’ve just returned from a trip down south to see my sister. We haven’t seen each other often in the past thirty years, in part because of the long distance between us, and in part because we have been busy with our own lives. Lately, she hasn’t been well at all, and I knew she was looking forward to my company.

My sister lives alone in a substantial three-bedroom house which has an additional formal lounge and dining room as well as a study. She keeps the whole back section of the house closed off to save on heating and spends most of her time in either her bedroom, eating alcove or family room. She is surrounded by a lifetime of memories, enormous collections of blue and white china and heavy wooden furniture that fill the sizable rooms. Once a keen gardener, her backyard is overgrown and inaccessible, especially now that she has great difficulty walking unaided. It was hard for me to see the enormity of what faced her day in, day out.

While out for dinner at her son’s place, she brought up the subject of the upkeep of the house and garden. Would he be able to come and prune the trees and weed the garden? Maybe even paint the house sometime? I immediately knew this wasn’t a viable solution. My nephew works full-time, has his own family and a house to maintain and certainly doesn’t have the hours on the weekend to do it all.

I had brought it up in conversation before, but it seemed like the perfect time to say it again. The house is simply too big for her to manage, and she ought to sell and downsize. Unbidden, my advice fell on deaf ears. When my nephew joined in with the many advantages this would offer, she picked up her bag, tried to rise from the chair and said, ‘Let’s go!’

I didn’t respond. I let her calm down, changed the topic and enjoyed our dessert. I wasn’t going to let this outburst spoil an otherwise enjoyable evening.

I stayed with her for another couple days before heading home. I never broached the subject again. I still worry that she will have yet another fall and that no-one will be there to call an ambulance. I’m concerned about her heating costs and her steep driveway which most days keeps her marooned in the house. But I also acknowledge that it isn’t my decision to make.

The saying ‘Don’t let anyone who hasn’t been in your shoes tell you how to tie your laces,’ echoes in my ears. I realise I’ve been treading that fine line between concern and meddling.

School holidays

For many years as a teacher, I lived my life in ten-week blocks. The first few weeks of term were always crazy busy as I wrote programs, prepared for extra-curricular activities and of course faced the day-to-day challenges of teaching up to 30 children. During the term, very little was done on the home front except for cooking, shopping, washing, and keeping a basic level of hygiene around the house.  Everything else was put on the backburner until ‘the holidays.’ Inevitably, when those two weeks arrived, the first week was spent in a stupor on the lounge. The best I could do was to finally read a novel or two. The second week, I madly spent tidying up and trying to get ready for the term. At the end of the year, during those blissful five weeks off, I would finally relax and wonder how I would ever ramp up again to face a new year, but I somehow, I did.

For the past four years I have been in the privileged position of mainly working from an office and going into schools assisting teachers with improving their students’ literacy. I have set lunch breaks, can make a cup of tea whenever I want, I have weekends off, and rarely bring work home. It is the closest I have come to a ‘work-life-balance.’ My heart goes out to the teachers in front of classes who must cope with the pressures of teaching, the increasing burden of admin and the expectation to constantly improve their practice. Whenever I am in schools, I do my utmost to help teachers in ways that don’t increase their already unsustainable workload. I have not forgotten what it is like at the chalkface.

These school holidays, I am taking a week off to see my sister, elderly mother-in-law, and my daughter. That’s quite a bit in a week, especially as I will travel several hundred kilometres. When I get home, I will be going straight back to work, and everything will be left in the state that it was in before I left. But unlike my colleagues at school, I know it will only take me a weekend to catch up. So, these school holidays, spare a thought for teachers who have not only finished a long term of teaching but have also written reports, had parent-teacher interviews, spent hours on playground duty and are now preparing for the term ahead. I have nothing but admiration and respect for everything that teachers manage to accomplish.