sustain:if:able kiwi

Desert country: a poignant reminder from Aboriginal art on Australia day

Desert country is an art exhibition currently on display at the Art Gallery of South Australia. In the foyer is a huge (5 m high, 10 m wide) photo of the outback, red dirt, a road rolling into nowhere. It’s the standard Western perspective, a snapshot of a moment in time, captured from the viewpoint of the individual staring outward. The red road is surrounded by scrubby bush – better stick to the road, cos in the desert lies the possibility of slowly parched death.

Inside are six rooms, containing the first ever attempt to chart the forty year evolution of the internationally acclaimed Australian desert painting movement. The paintings are drawn entirely from the the Gallery’s extensive holdings of Aboriginal art.

The exhibition is a haunting reminder that there is entirely other way of viewing, and living, in desert country. (These are just my thoughts, as I wandered. I might be well be well of base in my interpretation, but here is what struck me).

The perspective is topographical, looking down, rather than from the perspective of a person looking outward. How a desert people can conceive of land as birds eye is remarkable and shows an active and powerful imagination.

This land is given shape, takes form, through dots, rather than lines. Dots suggest a different way to measure, to enscribe and appreciate scale.

Most pictures have a narrative, a story. Thus land is shaped by the past, by the interplay of human and history and it is this that gives meaning, value, identity. Or tells of bush tucker, the path of emu, the spots to sample bush oranges or plums. What to Western eyes is arid rock, is for Aboriginal a place of sustenance.

The paintings also suggests a radically different approach to time. Often European art captures a moment, a snapshot. In contrast, in this art, a narrative over time seems embedded in the painting. Thus time seems to not be linear, but to be shaped by a sequence of past events, that can all be represented on one single canvas, Desert country.

The standard of the paintings is variable. Some works looking decidedly amateur. Others are simply stunning. But everyone is a reminder that there is another whole way of looking at life.

Land need not be for exploring, fencing, settling, mining. It can also give us identity, tell our story, offer us sustenance, provide a different perspective on time and space.

Desert Country will be making it’s way around Australia. Well worth checking out when it comes by you – Western Australia (13 May – 31 July), Victoria (17 August – 2 October), Queensland (18 November 2011 – 30 January 2012), New South Wales (18 February – 6 May 2012). For more details, go here.

haunted hope

A poem that give might give some expression to my current stage of being. Or it might not.

home
is there
while i am here
changing

home
becomes then

and i am here
now
changing

memories seep
to faded deeds
haunted

coloniser to migrant
tongued tied, in
church, old,
thriving to dying

grief to grow

time ticks
to new hopes

is God holding a white-y Bible? (introduction, chapter one)

Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire is a fascinating read by Australian, Mark Brett. He’s a lecturer in Old Testament at Whitley College and has been a researcher in Aboriginal land claims. It gives him a unique perspective from which to consider the question of whether God is a white-y, and whether God’s book really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. In this chapter by chapter review, I plan to summarise the book and offer some down-under reflections, specifically from where I sit in New Zealand. It’s an urgent discussion for those of us who live in a post- world, and have to face the abuse of the Bible, it’s complicity in slavery and colonisation and whether we can have any confidence in our ability to use it better than those who have gone before us.

In the Introduction Mark lays out his aims. He acknowledges the crucial role of the Australian context in shaping his work and the fact that he Bible has been used, historically, to legitimate colonization. He outlines his method, in which he refuses to adopt one particular hermeneutic. Instead he uses a range of questions and methods to ask the question: Can God be decolonised, freed from this past? What might it look like for Christianity to not only say sorry, but to find ways to live that are freed from historical injustices and power imbalances?

Chapter one The Bible and Colonisation explores how the Bible was implicated in colonisation and the key texts that might help a ‘post-colonial’ re-reading of the Bible. Brett notes the uniqueness of Australia (unlike New Zealand, South Africa or North America) it was settled with a mindset that which considered Australia “waste and unoccupied.” Social evolution was a huge driving factor in European colonisation, applying Darwin’s theory of evolution to suggest that white people were superior.

“[William] Ward’s prediction was based on the assumed superiority of European literature in general, of which he took the Bible to be a part – even though not a single line of it was first composed in the colonizing nations of Europe.” (Brett, 22).

Brett notes a variety of responses: from evangelical Anglicans like William Wilberforce advocating for indigenous peoples (influencing the thinking of the British Government in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi), through to the published opinions of Australian missionary clergy that Aborigines were “brutes” and “beasts.”

Genesis 1:28 was interpreted (for example by John Locke) to suggest an original empty creation. Land could be owned by no-one until the advent of agrarian labour (ie colonisation).

However, missionaries could not control the reception of the Scriptures once they were translated. “[B]iblical faith presented a form of sovereignity higher than government and it thus provided a foothold for Indigenous resistance.” (Brett, 26). Hence Gandhi drew on the Sermon on the Mount to shape his resistance to British rule, as did the Gikuyu tribe in Kenya in the 1920′s. In New Zealand, Te Kooti drew on the Bible in founding the Ringatu faith. Aboriginal leader David Burrumarra urged holding together both traditional and Christian life.

Despite this subversion, “the overall effect of most of the missions was cultural genocide.” (Brett, 29, quoting George Tinker, an Osage/Cherokee theologian). Ironically, “most biblical texts were produced by authors who were themselves subject to the shifting tides of ancient empires,” (Brett, 31) and this is the focus of Chapter Two.

For discussion: Does it worry you that the Bible might have been used to endorse colonisation? What does such knowledge do to your respect for, and reading of, the Bible?

For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here

finding God with flax as Easter spirituality

For the last 10 years, the Easter Journey, has been a feature of ministry at Opawa. However, for the last year or so, there has been a growing feeling that it is time for something new to emerge. Opawa is changing and so are Pete and Joyce. While the Journey has been a tremendous blessing, we have to be sensitive to the moving, changing winds of the Spirit. Too often, good things for a season become institutions the church feels compelled to keep propping up. Letting things go is an essential Christian discipline.

To help us let go, and to start the process of dreaming again, we are starting with an Easter Saturday day of paper making. April 11, 9:45 am for coffee. Bring lunch to share. Together we will turn flax into paper, both for individual journals and for use in the church at Pentecost.

Why paper making? Well this is what I said on radio recently. (more…)

holiday poetry 4

Summer sounds @ Sounday
Slip slop slap
Bass hot
DJ Spanky got no skank
Beats Fat freddy
Sway with my family in hope for my generation

Had a great day at Sounday yesterday, returning especially from holiday to groove with the kids to Fat Freddys Drop. It’s such a great concept, gates opening at 11 am, finished by 7 pm, invitation to take seats, sun umbrellas, even paddling pools!! Our kids packed their books and art gear: in other words, its great for the family.

Fat Freddys Drop were simply grand. Some new songs, mixed well with old songs. A more diversified sound, making the promise of an album on the horizon worth waiting for.

holiday poetry 3

High country Molesworth
Cob cottage settles to history
Neath cloudless blue and Hyracium burn
Warm wind caress
River chilled restore

Back country is high country,
is hard country
Beech my carpet and my roof
St James a Walkway
Pilgrim in n out
At 8 year old pace we stride

holiday poetry 2

Malborough
sounds
quiet
Paddle dip n water trail drips into clear blue
Gull cry over wave slap
Kaimoana
Wine n saffron infused clam paella

holiday poetry

I’ve been tweeting these holiday geographical poetic reflections in by cell phone (left-hand side of blog), but they do lose their formatting:

Kaikoura
Rock jagged ocean cast
Gulls fight o’er salt fingered excess.
Mine. Mine.
Holiday dreams
Drifting out to sea

Blenheim
No sheep dot
Now wine twisted terraces
Etch gaunt faced hills
Taste dry white
Mussell paella infused