Month: May 2016

Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime

(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 3)

 

The passage of time: how commonplace, how relentless and, unless you die young, how totally unavoidable. There’s something about the transformative nature of time that I have always found so compelling, and sad/happy. Perhaps it’s just my Western cultural denial of death and decay, but I have always found the pace of change in myself and the people around me a bit disconcerting.

I was grabbing some after-work groceries a couple of evenings ago; it was cold outside, getting dark and the supermarket was busy and  bit hassled as it always is at that time of day. I noticed a young couple near the vegie stands looking  slightly harassed and getting tetchy with one another, and glanced again as they both looked a bit familiar. It wasn’t until they had passed me that I realised  they had the grown-up versions of the faces of children that I knew. Living in a small town, you get to know which of your children’s schoolmates are dating whom, and for the first year or two after they all leave school, it all seems quite sweet and of course you expect them all to move to the city and meet other strangers and that’s that. There was something though about the body language between these two that told me that they were a totally established, long term, probably-thinking-about-getting-married couple, just like I had been, you know, a few years ago, but surely not so long ago that these primary school-aged children could have moved somehow into that spot …I mean, I realise that I’m not doing school lunches anymore, and maybe a couple of the “cool girls” from my year at school are now GRANDMOTHERS but, like, what’s happened here??!

I remember feeling the same way a couple of  years ago when I first got onto Facebook and was able to connect with old school friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen since Year 12.  I distinctly recall how strange it was seeing a picture of one of the guys with his son, who not only looked just like him, but was exactly the same age that my schoolmate had been the last time I saw him. It was such a peculiar Rip Van Winkel feeling, to be looking at the face of a familiar boy, knowing that the young fella I remembered was in fact the greying, middle-aged man standing next to him. What had happened to the boy I knew?

Living in a small town means that you get to see people born, learn to walk, have playdates with your own children, sing at assemblies, finish school, have their own babies and eventually become middle aged.  You get to watch powerful community leaders and fearsome matriarchs weaken, lose their power and disappear from the committees and meetings and boards in which they played so vital a part, and which, at the time may have seemed impossible to run without them. You get to see, first hand, that nobody is indispensable, even if they feel irreplaceable, and you marvel that the  PhD expert you now need to consult was someone you first met as he was pulled from his mother’s womb.

Having the opportunity to watch the effects of time within a small community is both disturbing and grounding. To see the waters close over other figures and to know that one day it will softly close over you as the life of the town flows on is healthy and humbling.  The challenge is to try and live as George Bernard Shaw tells us:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

 

So I was riding my bike home from town the other day, along a quiet country backroad lined with huge karri trees, and I started to daydream, as I often do. Well, to be honest, not so much daydream, but fall into the type of imaginings I had as a child, when I used to love playing various daring roles with my sisters.

I was lucky enough to be raised in a very large family of (mostly) girls, with one long-suffering brother, and the best thing about this was that you never had to scratch around for someone to play with, or for something to do.  We were all very avid readers as well, and having had both parents in the armed forces in WWII, quite a few of our games involved complicated escaping-the-Nazis-French-Resistance storylines, with ourselves cast in heroic roles-always the good guys.  These adventures were always spiced up whenever we could convince our brother (generally as the bad guy) to join us,  because he had awesome “cap guns”, you know, the ones that made a sharp cracking sound and puffed out a little bit of smoke when you pulled the trigger. You can probably still get them in Bali I imagine…

One of my favourite books that I read and re-read (even as an adult) was a Dutch novel called “The Winged Watchman” by Hilda Van Stockum. The story is told through the eyes of Joris Verhagen, a  10 year old boy who lives in a windmill with his parents, older brother Dirk Jan and baby sister Trixie, and it deals with their lives under Nazi occupation. In one scene, a young girl, Reina, who is working for the Dutch resistance, is cycling along with a satchel full of forbidden newspapers, when she is accosted by a Nazi collaborator, who demands that she get off her bike, then throws her onto the side of the road. Bicycles, at that time, were no longer available to ordinary people, and the thug is outraged when he sees Reina coolly ignoring the interdiction and deals with her accordingly. Although Reina lives to tell the tale, the frightening incident sets a super-suspenseful mood for the novel.

So, occasionally, when I am riding along freely, breathing sweet country air, listening to the sound of the birds and occasionally waving to an acquaintance, I get a scary thought about what it would be like to be in a situation like Reina. To be listening out for the sound of drones, or gunfire, or to be looking over my shoulder, and I feel, for the millionth time, how incredibly lucky I am to live in such a peaceful and safe place, and feel so sad for those many millions of faceless and nameless people who don’t.

They’re not all faceless though. I am in touch with a young Rohingya chap on Manus Island, who’s been there in a mouldy tent for nearly three years. For those of you who don’t know, the Rohingya are possibly the most persecuted group in the world.  An ethnic minority in Burma for generations, the Rohingya are unable to be citizens of Burma. Ever.  Even the peace-loving  Buddhist monks there won’t have a bar of them, and the much celebrated freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi has turned her back on them, needing the support of the military establishment there to shore up her fragile fledgling democracy. And I guess I kind of get that, I mean, maybe the end does justify the means and God knows I have never had to be in the position to make huge decisions like that, and maybe it’s easy to criticise when I will never have those responsibilities. But I don’t know.

I do know that it makes me sad to reflect that it’s a lot harder these days,  for me to think of Australia, this land that I love so much, as one of the good guys.

A poem I often think of when I am corresponding with a few of the young fellas on Manus and Nauru is John Donne’s No Man is an Island, but I think this short passage from the Winged Watchman sums it up pretty well.  After liberation, Joris’ mother is speaking to a Jewish woman who was the sole surviving member of her family and says to her: “how you must hate the Germans!”

But Mrs Groen shook her head. “Oh no” she said. “I’m sorry for them. To suffer yourself, that is nothing. God will wipe all tears from our eyes. But to hear God ask: ‘Where is your brother?’-that must be dreadful. The hardest to bear are the wrongs we do others.”

 Wishing all of our politicians the strength and courage to remember for whom the bell tolls.                                                                                                                                                               .

I’m not sure when this poem started running around in my head, but given the week I’m having, the lure of stillness and silence feels very compelling…

It was written by the English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who, in addition to being a Jesuit priest , (don’t let that put you off) wrote some of the most beautiful, exquisitely crafted poetry you will ever read.

Hopkins’ style was unique in that he used non-traditional rhythms, making his poetry fresh and sparkling. He often created words, as though the English language was not big enough to express what he saw and experienced.

The title of this poem “The Habit of Perfection” is a play on the double meaning of a “habit” as a  daily practice as well as the donning of the habit of religion.  I particularly love his description of the silence he has chosen, or “elected” beating “upon (his) whorled ear”, just one of the many acute observations of nature’s replications in the shell-like “whorls” in the human ear.

Having just spent some time in India, I was fascinated by the dozens of religious traditions there, and although the motifs and symbols in this poem come from the Christian tradition, the ideas of seclusion, silence, fasting and the inward journey are common to all traditions. I hope you enjoy it!

The Habit of Perfection

Elected Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:

It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark

And find the uncreated light:

This ruck and reel which you remark

Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,

Desire not to be rinsed with wine:

The can must be so sweet, the crust

So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend

Upon the stir and keep of pride,

What relish shall the censers send

Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet

That want the yield of plushy sward,

But you shall walk the golden street

And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride

And now the marriage feast begun,

And lily-coloured clothes provide

Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.