National Reconciliation Week - A Call For Action

Last Wednesday night I had a  dream. I dreamt I and many others were in a compound ruled over by a powerful white bureaucrat. There were so many people there they could not all be accommodated. Some 200 were killed  to make room and those left behind were made take the bodies into the hills and leave them. As we watched a black cloud began spiralling into the sky. It took the shape of wedge tailed eagles and black crows. The female and male totems of my clan hovered as the spirits of those who died rose into the sky.

 

Some began a protest and were taken to a police station accused of crimes we had not committed and, believe it or not, of the crime those in power had committed. All the while the spiral of spirits connected the heavens and the earth, both devastatingly sad and infinitely hopeful.

 

This is a hard dream as it highlights the destruction of indigenous peoples by people who worshipped in our churches. It raises modern issues as income management, the Northern Territory Intervention, The Closing the Gap policies, the campaign to assimilate indigenous people into the constitution along with the return to countries such as India of long serving citizens who came here on 457 visas and our treatment of refugees, Muslims, the LGBTI community and others.

 

And it explains why I paint. I paint for the recognition of all people and cultures and for the reclamation of the place of country, languages and culture in this place. Coming from a place where the aborigines were marked for extermination, I have no language and no culture. William Cox, landowner and Anglican at a Public Meeting in 1824 stated the following, “The best thing that can be done is to shoot all blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses. That is all they are fit for! It is also recommended that all the women and children be shot. That is the most certain way of getting rid of this pestilent race." By 1876 the last tribal aborigine, Tom Penney had died, and in 1900 those who were left in a camp at Wollar were forcibly moved to a mission at Brewarrina, never to return.

  

Why do I paint? Thomas Merton wrote, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”  Art is where I find myself. I have been lost to my story and myself and have needed a process in which I can reclaim my identity. The paradox is that once I begin to paint I lose myself again, but this time with a sense of becoming something mysteriously new. I have no country to walk but my canvas. My father would use the indigenous idea of walking country and listening deeply (dadirri) as the means of discernment. I have no such land but I do have a canvas and as I sit or stand before it I begin to hear and respond to the stories hidden within it and those deep within my hidden and ancient self.

 

Thomas Berry, encapsulates the experience of aboriginal people in particular when he says,  “We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou.’”  My art is an attempt to hear the voice of rivers, mountains and sea, and the voice of those who went before us. My art is an attempt to honour that voice and to amplify it into the world that has forgotten them. My art is an attempt to transform creation and people from an “it” to a “thou”.

 

Jesus says in our gospel reading; ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.’ My art is an attempt to make this a reality in a world created to surge towards wholeness though compassion and respect. It is a project with no beginning and no end but is embodied in Jesus the Christ as the Alpha, the still point of creative power in all things, and the Omega, a point far in the ever-evolving future we are yet to see.

 

It is important tonight to refer to the Uluru statement and the hope it appears to offer. While it is hopeful, the reality is our political leaders are not committed to it and have already begun the process of watering it down as witnessed in their initial responses. Many non-indigenous Australians are  ignorant of the issues Indigenous Australians face and of which we who identify as indigenous can attest to on a daily basis, in the world and in the church.

 

We must understand this statement doesn’t fully express the will of the First Nation’s people, having been crafted with an eye to securing a future referendum. It is disappointing there is not a stronger call for treaty and for a body with legislative recognition to act on behalf of indigenous people. This maybe a start and we will work and wait until we get what is just. As Vincent Lingari of the Wave Hill walk-off said, “We know how to wait."

 

While we are waiting let’s consider what this Diocese can do to further this cause.

 

I would call upon the Diocese of Melbourne and the Anglican Church of Australia to:

•    Publicly affirm the Uluru statement and it’s faint call for treaty, self-determination and sovereignty, and commit itself to translating these objectives into the life of this Diocese and the Anglican Church of Australia and not to settle for a minimalist position of recognition only.

•    To work to ensure the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders Anglican Commission is fully funded and empowered in the spirit of the Uluru document as the fully representative body with authority to speak into Anglican policy.

•    To work to fund a First Nations person to educate parishes in this Diocese.

•    To appoint a First Nations person as a Bishop or Archdeacon with oversight of First Nation people and clergy, and to speak on behalf of the diocese and across the province on indigenous issues.

 

These are moderate but necessary steps if we are to take seriously our task of putting right the wrongs we as a church have been party to in the history of our country. These are moderate but necessary steps if we are to release the souls of our ancestors to soar in the sky with the wedgetail eagle and the black crow. 

The way of the heart - one with the heavens and the earth

Paper given at the Carmelite Symposium, May 2017

·      Acknowledgement of Country.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Werrundjuri people of the Kulin nation, and the elders past, present and future.

I would also like to acknowledge that this land was stolen and those who stole it have no intention of giving it back anytime soon.

TALK

When I was asked to prepare a paper for this conference, I made great plans to develop a deep theological paper that would have something significant to say about the future of the church. I had plans to invite my friends Thomas Merton Czesław Milosz to join me with me to provide a deep and meaningful insight to where the future for the church lies in this seemingly anti-church environment.

Then I met Jemma and my focus changed. Jemma is a rescue English Springer Spaniel with PTSD. She is classically beautiful, gorgeously gentle and overly obedient until the madness sets in, then she is carnage on four legs.  After one particular episode when she was on her own in the house for 3 hours and we returned to canine destruction of the maximum sort, we visited the vet, got the diagnosis and some anti-anxiety pills. Now we have moments of normality in its various forms and life goes as normal as possible with a nine -month old pup.

Prior to the medication she was living at a heightened degree of perception. She saw, heard and imagined the very worst at all times. Whatever had been her early life experience dominated her worldview and she was unable to respond sensibly and rationally to any kind of stimulus and input that came her way. After the medication, her irrationality has been tempered and she is beginning to see the world differently, not as a place of many threats, something to be feared and the humans around as those who hurt her but as a place of safety, enjoyment and love.  The world itself hasn’t changed. Her mindset has and that has changed the world.

Now Jemma shares this experience with me. A childhood of family violence, bullying because of my race, being shot at and held hostage for several hours in the mid ‘70’s drug culture that was Wollongong, the loss of children due to doctors errors, workplace bullying as well as the intergenerational trauma that visits many indigenous people has left me with PTSD. This is especially the case for me because of my connections to Jimmy and Joey Governor the protagonists in The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and the subsequent denial of true identity in order to simply survive in a whites only society of the 40’s,50’s and 60’s in Australia. This is an example of the generational trauma affecting many indigenous Australians as they battle to find a place for themselves in this country and which has lodged in me.

What has this got to do with our topic – 'The way of the heart - one with the heavens and the earth'?

The church in the 21^st century is reeling from the attack of new atheists, the hangover of evolutionary science, the destruction of its previous clearly defined cosmology and the many scandals that have left its reputation in tatters. To say it has PTSD may sound trivial but it is not. With the many stressors compounded in its recent experience it seems to me it would be better to say it is suffering from Compound PTSD and that is something both Jemma and I know something about.

It is a diagnosis we both share and, like Jemma, I need medication to deal with the anxiety events such as standing up in front of an eminent group of people such as yourselves or a visit to Chadstone or the dentist brings up.  The church shares a super vigilant, highly tuned sense of being in a world which is sceptical at least of meta-narratives and hostile due to the misdemeanours committed in it’s name. The ills that have assailed it in the past and, particularly in the recent past, leave it anxious and self-destructive. We tend to over react to the criticisms of others, to the failings of our own people and the seemingly glaring embarrassments in tradition, liturgy and scripture.

Where we are now is not unlike the world Thomas Merton was commenting on from his viewpoint in the monastery.  In Peace in the Post-Christian Era "He writes, ‘We …live in an irreligious post-Christian world in which the Christian message has been repeated over and over until it has come to seem empty of all intelligible content to those whose ears close to the word of God even before it is uttered. In their minds Christian is no longer identified with newness and change, but only with the static preservation of outworn structures."

Merton recognised and stated clearly that we were and are living in a post-Christian era, if in fact we ever had lived in a Christian era. He spent much time commenting on the failure of the church to catch up with society and to stand with it and at the same time separate from it. He wrote passionately about challenging the politics of the time and those who advocated violence and destruction of the ordinary people. He wrote against the hierarchy of the church and those who said they were believers and who supported the destructive policies of nuclear war, the denial of race equality and more.

His discussions with Milosz in terms of those who are living in exile are of value. Read these letters. Both men felt the pressure of exile, both had very different experiences. But both recognised the importance of exile as an impetus to change and revolution. Both argued that only those who find themselves exiled from the centre of controlling power have the right to speak into the future, to act as prophets. And it is in exile we, the church find ourselves today and it is indeed a place of prophetic power.

Indigenous Australians know this place. We have lived there for 200+ years. And the church has been responsible for some of this, as it has used it connection to the dominant powers in society to maintain a certain white European hegemony. We will be there for many more but now we find ourselves sharing this place with the very people who helped to put and keep us there – the church. Thomas Berry comments that this is the way of those whose life are committed to power and control. Sooner or later those who took the land will have the land taken from them by those more powerful than them, and this will go on and on and on.

Part of the issue for the church, and part of the solution, is found in how we read the Jesus story and in particular how we read the Easter story. It is important to consider what Easter story we engage with and what is consistent with a progressive and modern reading of the Gospel stories and the context of the world we now inhabit This is important for one of the solutions to our future involves a move away from a popular reading of the cross as Jesus being the sacrifice to atone for original sin and whose death was planned by God to occur. Accompanying this is the need to have all people converted to this world view regardless of how inappropriate such a demand may be. Such a reading (penal substitution) often sits underneath our presentation and interpretation the cross and the subsequent resurrection despite our many protestations to the contrary. Our liturgies and our interpretations of scripture reinforce this worldview. Our approaches to the failings of each other often involve a crucifixion, generally not of Jesus.

Is there an alternative reading? I suggest there is and we will return to it in just a moment.

Now many modern or post-modern progressive Christians would say that this no longer the case. Scholars such as Greg Jenks have clearly shown that scripture has many different readings and a literal interpretation is not one of them. The Christian myth touches on meaning making and speaks into the psyche or the mystical imagination of human beings, not the intellect alone. As Elizabeth Johnson comments, “The word acts.” And how we interpret and speak the word influences how we see ourselves as and how we see the others we share this world with. As Jemma shows, the word can create a monster on any given day.

This reminds us that the church is not just about the institutional body nor is it just concerned with human beings. The church is about all creation – every created thing in its own place and with its own sense of being. It is the millennia of life in progress before human beings began to walk upon the earth and it is the millions of species living and going extinct around us now and in the future.  Our worldview has to be broader and deeper and higher than the average human being. This world is not designed only for us and we were not designed to be the primary reason for its existence. As Haught, Johnson, Berry and others suggest all that has gone before us, all the varieties of creatures who began to exist at the beginning of creation, have culminated in who we are today and we are to look forward to what is yet to come for we are part of its interconnected birthing, however mysterious the outcome maybe.

From my point of view a reading of the Jesus story as simply a solution to original sin leaves out the long history of creatures (flora and fauna for example) and restricts the actions of Jesus to human beings who are only recent additions to God’s creation. It also fails to address the evidence of science as to the violence and brutal survival of the fittest that sits underneath the concept of evolution and an ever-expanding universe. It also fails to understand that there was no paradise to lose only a paradise to gain somewhere in the future and that Jesus, as the ultimate example of creation’s consciousness leads us forward, not backward.

The question is: if God’s creation is unfinished is the cross a response to a paradise lost or a paradise yet to come into fulfilment? If the latter, as I believe it to be, is Jesus death on the cross a sacrifice for sins or the complete and fulfilling response to a forward moving feast of possibility we are to embrace and to live in in conjunction with the Holy Spirit? In other words Jesus wasn’t sent to die to put right something that was and has been lost through original sin, but to model the possibilities to be found in the future glory of a creation in continual becoming. What we perceive as original sin is the by-product of creations surge for wholeness and its fulfilment in Christ. Merton and Milosz had an interesting exchange on this very point. Milosz suggested that Merton was able to speak philosophically about the violence in nature such as when a hawk takes down small prey bird but that he speaks less philosophically and without any excuse about human violence. Merton struggles to answer this to Milosz’ satisfaction but appeals to the consciousness of human beings as requiring a more appropriate solution to issues than reverting to unnecessary violence.

God has not finished and neither have we. The work of Christ’s redemptive consciousness calls us forward into a wonder we have no possibility of seeing or understanding from where we stand. It challenges us to reinvent or reimagine language, liturgy, posture and presence and to engage as if this is just the beginning. We are to stand where the characters in the Resurrection myth stood, on the cusp of great possibility in the midst of terrible chaos. All that they knew and trusted in had collapsed. Jesus was dead. They were scattered. Their story had all but been demolished. Yet, Jesus came and pointed, not back but forward, and called Mary with the caution not to hang on to what she had known but to go tell others of the hope she now had oh so briefly glimpsed.

Like Mary, the church stands on the cusp of an ever expanding-universe God is continuing to create in the midst of the rubble of our collective failings and is called to go and tell of the hope we have seen. Karl Rahner suggested that unless we become mystics or contemplatives as Christians, we would cease to be both Christian and present in the world. Unless we step out of the dubious comfort of past traditions, rituals and language and engage in the deep unknown then we are doomed to report the mistakes of the past. The sins of the fathers (pardon the pun) will be visited on the sons.

In Matthew we read “Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. ¹Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

What strikes me about this little dialogue is the direction Jesus gives to the disciples to return to where it all began - in Galilee. It does seem a little odd that the resurrected Jesus would want to go back to the beginning and not to move forward into new places and new territories. A worldly leader would have used this amazing return as the opportunity for an assault on power and control. No politician worth their salt would take a step backward when he or she held the element of surprise.

They are to go to Galilee and begin again without a leader to grab the limelight and give them the upper hand. The campaign begins again, this time it is not about an incarnate Christ but a Christ incarnate in the disciples. The emphasis shifts from the Son of God to those empowered by the Cosmic Christ, the spirit of the Son of God. The disciples are to be themselves by being empowered by the spirit of God and to live out Christ in their own lives.

This is a powerful message. This is no longer about the physical presence of God changing lives and challenging authority, this will be about the ordinary men and women from Galilee standing up and taking responsibility. They return to Galilee for the transition of authority and responsibility, for Jesus to hand over the reins of the kingdom to ordinary men wand women now empowered by the resurrection Spirit.

We all have to return to the beginning at some point in our lives, be it our faith lives or ordinary lives, to go back to where we first commenced our journey and take the time to recalibrate our compass to ensure we are in touch with the Source of all being. Galilee was the place where they first encountered the Source of Life and it is where Jesus takes them as they begin the second half of their journey.

And this is exactly where the church is – reclaiming the future through a return to its beginnings in the form of a human shaped God walking boldly and courageously into a problematic future. Like the disciples who have to go back to the place where they first made that connection, the church is being challenged to leave aside the accretions of the centuries, undo the violence of law and guilt, to let go have of well worn doctrines and decrees and pulled down the fences of exclusion. It is time for the church to return to the uncertainty of an incarnated life and to reclaim the future as a humble, fallible and vulnerable presence, not unlike that of the Christ of Galilee.

A future reclaiming church will:

• Will be smaller numerically as the uncertainty of the unknown will leave people who are seeking certainty behind.
•  Will take seriously the task of making amends for its past failings and fully embrace the process of embracing all it has destroyed, and excluded as away to begin again.
•  Will be looking to see a Creator at work in all of history, not just that of human beings.
•  Will be engaged in the evolutionary project of the urge for wholeness in and for all of life and, therefore, will see it committed to all people and creatures, not just those within its sacred walls.
•  Will not be chained by traditions stifling its capacity to move intellectually, technologically or spiritually. For example, it will be challenged to include such as Artificial Intelligence within its moral and spiritual brief as it becomes technology becomes more communicative and conscious.
•  Will let go of tribalism and embrace the full gamut of spiritual form and philosophy, looking not for what excludes but what includes.
•  A forward-looking church will not be about itself but about a universe driven by the dynamism of a creator who is the master of unfinished business.  

Returning to Jemma and we find we have a decision to make. Do we continue to defend our place in the world; the place we feel is under threat and in some cases already gone? Or do we recalibrate our worldview and return from Galilee to take a vital role in the surge for wholeness driven by the Spirit of God within the ever-becoming world? It’s up to us. Today.

On Being Australian

Mathew 5:1-12

 

This week we celebrated Australia Day. For some of us this is not an easy task, we come from many places, backgrounds and experiences and find it difficult to connect to the major narrative about our nationhood. That is not a bad thing. In fact, it is healthy for us to discuss and debate what defines us as a nation and as a people.

 

We are not all Anglo Saxons with a long held desire to remain wedded to a story that only speaks for some of us. We come from countries, faiths and ethnicities encompassing the wide expanse of diversity that colours our world. Is the story of colonialisation the only story worth telling and holding on to? Is there not much more which defines and enlivens us and is it not time we began to let go of out-dated myths as the basis of our identity? Is it not time we included the sovereign inhabitants of this land and reconsider date and name of this celebration so that it fully recognises the violence done to, not only them, but the convicts cruelly transported to these shores in appalling conditions by contracted former slave runners, another part of the story we rarely hear?

 

As we have been saying over the last few weeks, as a church we are being called to relinquish out of date world views, myths and stories which have previously underwritten our faith for those which reflect the science and reality of an ever expanding and evolving universe. Is it not time for such to occur for us as Australians?

 

Jesus certainly thought this way when he spoke in the sermon on the Mount as given to us today. In this passage Jesus rewrites the narrative of faith for the Jewish people. What they had accepted as the story of faithfulness was turned upside down to include those who had previously been excluded.  The poor, the widows, the ordinary gentle folk, peacemakers and warriors for justice and more took the place of the rich, the powerful, the hardened, the warmongers and the ruthless.

 

God was seen to be interested in those who did not fit the stereotype of those who had God’s blessing. Rulers and the powerful were replaced by those who were ruled and weak. It wasn’t a physical coup, but a transforming mindset for all. You matter and you have a role. You are not excluded from this story by virtue of race, gender, wealth or lack there of or the seeming lack of power.

 

Jesus congratulates the ordinary person. Not as we heard in the speech of the new US President, a gratuitous throw away line, but as valued participants in the evolution of wholeness in the world. Like the ordinary incarnate Jesus engaging with ordinary fishermen in an ordinary village, the individual has value and is to be congratulated for what they in their circumstances add to creation.

 

Jesus is saying:

Congratulations to the poor in spirit!

Heaven's domain belongs to them.

Congratulations to those who grieve!

They will be consoled.

Congratulations to the gentle!

They will inherit the earth.

Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice!

They will have a feast.

Congratulations to the merciful!

They will receive mercy.

Congratulations to those with undefiled hearts!

They will see God.

Congratulations to those who work for peace!

They will be known as God's children.

Congratulations to those who have suffered

persecution for the sake of justice!

Heaven's domain belongs to them.

Congratulations to you when they denounce you and persecute you and spread malicious gossip about you because of me. Rejoice and be glad! In heaven   prophets who preceded you.

[Scholars Version]

 

So what makes us Australian or what is being Australian like? Is it being good at sports, such as cricket, tennis and bocce, being great at business aka the billionaires, being successful in “Australians Got Talent” or “Married At First Site?” or being the BBQ wiz with lamb chops at family gatherings’?

 

I think not. I think

•     Being Australian is the smell of summer, the feel of sand whether red or white between your toes, the rush of fire, the surge of water and the capacity to come together as one to further the well being of all.
• 
  
•      Being Australian asks all who reside here to engage in deep dialogue and listening so we break down stereotypes, fears, ill informed prejudices and racism we hold about each other.
• 
  
•     Being Australian is celebrating the success of all regardless of the culture, faith or language; celebrating the amazing success of indigenous Australians across this country in sport, education, medicine, law, self-government and more.
• 
  
•    Being Australian is opening our borders and welcoming others and giving them the same opportunities our colonial forebears had. And it is extending such opportunities to the first residents of this country.
•      Being Australian is being honest about the treatment of the most vulnerable in our society, children and women in particular and to begin to tackle the domestic, gender and sexual violence that has occurred and continues to occur.
• 
  
•       Being Australian is being brave enough to recognise indigenous sovereignty and beginning the deliberate process toward reconciliation and treaty without getting side-tracked by government and pressure groups particular agendas’.
• 
  
•       Being Australian is recognising the damage we are doing to the environment and restrict the destruction caused by mining in all its forms, particularly coal mining. 

Congratulations are due for a nation who begins to embrace these ideals, not just as stated goals but as lived realities. Congratulations go to each and every Australian of all races and backgrounds who work to make this a reality in our daily living.

 

Like the Sermon on the Mount, this is no easy task, no list of ‘nice’ goals we can ignore when they become to hard to implement. Jesus commitment to the Sermon on the Mount and the values embraced by it took him all the way to an agonising death on the cross. In such a way, our commitment to what being Australian means we will look at how we celebrate our nation, whether how we do it now is inclusive of all and be prepared to let go of, give up, crucify old myths on the cross of congratulations – you are being Australian.

 

GK Chesterton famously wrote: ““The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” 

 

My suggestion is that being an Australian is difficult and instead of trying to so be we find excuses to exclude and build walls around our fearful denial of all that is at odds with the myth we believe about ourselves.

 

Jesus bluntly lays open the truth about being fully included in the surge for wholeness as an ordinary individual, it looks completely different to that which we have been told.

 

Perhaps it is time to take seriously being an Australian and embrace a new and different narrative. Amen.

An Aboriginal Christian's Perspective On Treaty, Sovereignty and Constitutional Recognition.

I find this a difficult discussion to take part in. I cringe when I hear the words “Christian perspectives” as if there is such a thing as a Christian view of kindness, justice and compassion that is necessarily preeminent to others. There is only one ethic in the New Testament and that is the all-consuming unconditional love for the other.

I struggle also when I find myself speaking on first nations issues as an individual who has had a privileged white education, who has been dispossessed of his culture and language, and who runs the risk of acting as colonially as those who now rule this land. Yes, I am a Wiradjuri man, but I have no inherent right to speak on behalf of that nation or any of the other sovereign nations now under colonial occupation.

Yet I do have the right to speak on behalf of my own people – ABMT – Aboriginal but not tribal (traditional). As a dispossessed person without connections to traditional language, culture and community I stand in a different place but not alone. My people are many and we are searching for a way to have a voice, to speak into this place but find ourselves impeded by both white and black culture. I receive letters questioning my aboriginality from white culture and I hear indigenous voices questioning it also. “A shame he’s not black.”

As a follower of the way of Christ – kindness, respect and compassion – love; I find myself unable to support constitutional recognition on the grounds that it continues the colonial project of assimilation and erasure. Indigenous people suffered genocide in my hometown with the last reported as being killed in 1876 according to one of the key exterminators, William Cox.

In Amos Oz’ book Judas, the two protagonists are discussing the relationship between Jews and Arabs and come to the conclusion, “The Arabs live with the disaster of their defeat, and the Jews with the dread of their vengeance.” It is a comment, that if we exchange the words appropriate to our situation holds true for the Australia in which we live, ““First Nations people live with the disaster of their defeat, and White Australia with the dread of their vengeance.”

As I child I learnt that white was good, black was not good. My father referred to anybody he deemed a good person as a white person regardless of whether they were white or not. Recently I officiated at a funeral in my hometown. A person who has known me all my life came up and said, “You’re blackfella’s young bloke, you’re young blackfella!.” 61 years later I still had no name, no place other than that of a nameless black fella.

Constitutional recognition enshrines such in the DNA of this country and gives credence to the stereotypes we read and hear each day. It erases any sense of being a real person with real rights. It erases from the national psyche the history of independent nations who have populated, governed and managed this land for 10’s of thousands of years. It continues to recognise these people only as the ‘previous custodians of this country”, if it recognises them at all, as I recently read on a plaque in a church school ground close to here.

As a follower of the way of Christ – kindness, respect and compassion – I support the process required to institute a treaty or a series of treaties acceptable to the sovereign first nations people. Note I have not said we need a treaty now. I have not and cannot advocate for such a thing until we fully understand and undertake the process required to do so. A treaty requires incarnational dialogue in order to overcome the ideologies, prejudices and deep trauma that stands in the way of constructing a workable relationship.

The model for this is breaking into the world of Jesus through which God became present in this world in order to empathise and dialogue with humanity in its own country. This took time, many centuries before God took such a step. It then took Jesus a lifetime to connect, challenge and dialogue with those around him. It has taken the Spirit of Christ many centuries to bring us to where we are to day. The Triune God has patience and we need to bring such patience to the task we face today.

If non-indigenous people are serious about working towards reconciliation then they must not be in a hurry. Simply saying sorry and popping us in the constitution may make you feel better but it doesn’t change much for us. We are still under occupation by a foreign government. To change that, even by a treaty, will require incarnational patience – sitting in the dirt and listening, not to answer or solve, but to hear, co-operate and get out of the way of the process. It begins with the first nations being given the opportunity to come together and agree on what such a treaty should look like. Not an easy task. It won’t happen quickly but it must precede any dialogue with the non-indigenous society. Then dialogue can begin in kindness, respect and compassion, allowing communication and action to reflect a mutual desire for reconciliation.

What about my people? What is their place in this world of exile, disconnect and generational trauma? What are we to do while we undergo this long process toward treaty and reconciliation?

Jeremiah, writing to those in exile in Babylon, provides a blueprint for action:

29:⁴ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

We are in exile but in exile we are not powerless. We are to remain in charge of our own heritage, traditions and dreaming; we are to build up our mob while living off-country in another’s land. We are to seek wellbeing for those we live amongst, in doing so we ensure the well being of our own mob.

This is not giving in to a foreign culture but becoming proud of who we are and who we can become. We are to excel in another culture so we can lead our own people into excellence for their own sake. Instead of responding to stereotypes of politicians, media shock jocks and naysayers, let us celebrate the extraordinary achievement of communities and individuals as they address our issues and find ways to be world leaders in health, education, arts, sports or whatever they turn their hand to. Let us ignore the temptation to blame, hate or attribute guilt to others. Let us avoid the temptation to play the victim.

Jeremiah reminds the exiles that right will win in the end, even though the end may take a long time (the meaning of the word 70), it will come.

^{“ 10} For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

 Our people have a long and proud history, one that is still being made. It has not finished. A treaty will be accomplished but let us not allow the desire for such or the push by others for it and/or constitutional recognition prevent us from flourishing now and remaining sovereign in our own being. Let us get on with the business of building pride, respect and community within our mob so there can be no option but a treaty.