Tummaville Christmas
Is it the same for you, that Christmas always takes me back to childhood? For me that’s growing up on the black soil plains of the Darling Downs. We are primed for the much anticipated trip to get a Christmas Tree, kids piled in the back of the ute, bare feet “watching out” for the sharp axe. Traditionally it’s a Cyprus pine from the sandy country down the Leyburn Road. Its aroma and sticky resin are indelible.
Halloween and Meeting with the Goddess
Trick or Treat?
Halloween is upon us and all manner of costumes, witches, skulls, skeletons, ghouls and vampires are in demand again. Of course this is a northern hemisphere festival, invented in Ireland and popularised in America and is exactly out of phase with the seasons in Australia. In the north it is Fall, leaves are dropping as the sap stream of plants is retreating into the earth for the winter. So it is a little bit curious that here in Australia we celebrate, all souls and the undead, at precisely the time that the life force and vitality of the natural world is gathering to a crescendo. But regardless of being in sync with the seasons or not, there is a clear impulse to have a time for honouring the cycles of life, of creation and destruction.
It got me thinking about young children inventing and fantasising about monsters and ghosts in their games, so much so that they will frighten themselves with just their imagination. It turns out that the brain has the same reaction to imagination as it does to real events. Neuro Linguistic Programming uses this phenomenon in a great many situations.
Pumpkin Power
I remember an occasion from childhood, I must have been 4 of 5 and my brother 2 or 3. He really wanted to go and have a look at some baby chicks that had arrived that day in the post. He wanted someone to go with him but no one was so inclined, He was simply told, "You know where they are, just go down the hall and turn the corner and they are right there by the laundry tubs." But no matter how much coaxing, he wouldn't go on his own.
In those days in the latish 50's we didn't have mains power, there wasn't yet a telephone service, I don't think we yet had a radio. We did though have power for lighting from an ex army generator connected to a diesel engine that powered it and the bore water pump. The 32 volt system was much more convenient than the hurricane lamps that neighbours used but it still cast a dim shadowy light that played tricks on the imagination. Naturally, we had a wood stove for cooking and water heating and a substantial wood box, with a hatch that opened to the outside of the house kept a plentiful supply of dry firewood at hand. It just so happened that it was also a good little nook for storing pumpkins through the winter.
When we finally got to the bottom of why my brother wouldn't go to see the chicks on his own it was because he was frightened to go past the pumpkins. Now I have no idea where that came from other than his own fanciful notions because we didn't celebrate Halloween or pumpkins in any way.
The Creator/ Destroyer
The idea of life and death, creation and destruction, the undead and wandering souls is alluring to young and old alike. The realisation that we don't remember were we came from makes us curious not only about that but also about the end of life. I think it is one of the big themes we suppress for most of the year in order to get on with a normal life, and having a special time especially devoted to it compensates.
There are other times when this motif becomes important, at transitional times in our lives especially. The hero journey places this phase directly after the Belly of the Whale and the Road of Trials. Emphasis is not so much on the wandering souls as recognising the great cycles associated with the Mother Goddess. It is an inner conflict that needs to be integrated, for not only is the mother or Earth Goddess the source of all nourishment, affection and protection to the infant, She also incorporates the destroyer and the grand recycler from which none are immune.
Harnessing the power for Transformation
So as you light the Jack-o'lantern either figuratively or literally, remember it has magical power in being able to identify malevolent spirits, and once identified they lose their power, in this halloween, think about what you are letting go of, releasing to the compost as it were, that will provide the raw materials, and the nutrients for your next stage of growth. Relate it to a project, a stage of life, anywhere you desire progress and be inspired by the energy, the wisdom and the knowledge of those that came before.
Subscribe to the mailing list for more information on empowering your life and projects using the Hero's Journey. Read more about stages of the Hero's Journey in Threshold Crossing and Belly of the Whale.
Misplaced Concern About Ageing
I'm turning 63, It's time for something new, and I'm looking to the future.
There has been a lot of discussion about the burden retirees place on society as the baby boom bulge moves towards ageing. To my mind it is applying a stereotype from a time gone by to today. It simply doesn't apply. Describing "Youth" as a discrete category was only invented in the 1960s. Before that, when children grew up they became adults, now they grew up and become youth.
There is increasingly a new demographic appearing, one that Mary Gathering Bateson calls "active wisdom". Yes, there will be some who devote a couple of decades to golf and cruises but I believe that they will become a smaller and smaller proportion of the population over time. Older people simply want to be creative and use the skills, insight and wisdom they have acquired during their working life and to make valued contributions to society.
The Hero's journey is a powerful tool in making an inventory of such qualities to move into a time of renewed creativity, service and satisfaction. In one study of tertiary graduates 20 years on 80% were unhappy with their lives. With hindsight they reflected on could haves and should haves. With a slight altering of perspective that can be turned around.
Review your skills, insights and wisdom at Soul Talks
Interestingly using the Hero's/Heroine's Journey paradigm is useful at any age or stage of life. It is the subject of my presentation this Thursday, 10th August at Soul Talks Click for more info.
I'd like to leave you with this TED Talk from Mary Gathering Bateson. It's particularly for my age group and anyone who is thinking ahead.
Flooded Memories
Dad, Me and the Wheat Board Inspector at Brookstead c.1962:This picture appeared in the "Grain Grower" newspaper with an article about the change from delivering wheat in bags to bulk handling.
Over the past two decades I have learnt a lot about Australia's first peoples, around the campfire, listening to stories, watching inma and travelling over country. Like so many "Europeans" it's a curiosity I have had since growing up on the farm in South East Queensland. We lived near the Condamine River and when it flooded, which it did more more then than it does now, the Grasstree Creek would flood and cut the road for the school bus at Yandilla. Canal Creek and the Condamine would cut the road to Pittsworth and flooding on Dog Trap Creek cut us off from Warwick. No school. Now normally it would be welcomed as providential, a bonus holiday. But not so one year, one of the few times I felt I was missing out on something by being kept home from school.
This was the middleish 60's, we'd only had the electric wireless for a couple of years and ...
Read moreBad Prickles
By the time I showed our documentary, "Two Brothers Walking" to the senior men and women at Umuwa we had been working on it for about five years. It was a time of discovery for me. I was acutely aware that I didn't have any experience of how first nations peoples see the world. I knew that interpreting what I heard and saw in terms of what I knew would filter out the most valuable insights. I was on a journey of discovery. The big question was, "How do you discover new things when being there stops it happening?"
The colonisation of Australia was as brutal as ...
Read moreThere's An Old Bridge
There's an old bridge on a farm where I grew up. The approaches have grown over and the deck is in a sorry state of disrepair. (Link to Google Earth Image) Every flood demolishes it further. Locals with wheat crops on both banks of the Condamine used the gravel road to get to their paddocks and bring in their harvest. When public demand for the bridge subsided, a few local farmers still needed it.
So ownership was passed to local interests on the proviso that ...
Read moreNight Sight
Belinda posted this evocative image on her FB page, check it out. From https://www.facebook.com/belindabroughtonpoet/phot...
I remember this night. This time of the year, 2015. We were camping out at Mulga Bore. The feral donkeys were particularly raucous that night, braying and galloping around at 3 in the morning, waking us with a start, anxious not to be in the path of a stampede.
Hardwired for Story
Men having kupati in Fregon
It usually happens in the sandhill country north of Pimba on the Stuart highway. I don't know if it happens for everyone, I guess not, but for me it is as palpable as it is subtle, and as perceptible as it is predictable. I call it a brain reboot.
In 1978, I completed a science degree. Wow, now there's a ...
Read moreWhat Has Moses To Do With Making Two Brothers Walking?
Wati showing the underground stream
We were sitting in the departure lounge of Adelaide airport on route to Cairns, the Manta Nganampa Dancers and me, their cameraman. From there we'd continue by mini-bus to Mossman and on to the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival, singing all the way, Ngintaka (perentie), Caterpillar, Wanampi (Rainbow Serpent), Hallelujah. I turned to the tjilpi (old man) across from me and asked him over my cappuccino and his kupa-tea, "How is it, since Anangu have their Tjukurpa, still alive, right back from the beginning, their songs, their stories, their country, how is it that Anangu are so interested in Christianity?"
He often took inspiration from the Old Testament to get ...
Read moreThe Rainbow Serpent | A Meeting In The APY Lands of South Australia
Sunrise Out Side Port Augusta On Route To Pimba
Map Link for Pimba
The old man sat on the ground as if he were rising up out of it, his cowboy hat and mile wide smile making him more caricature than real to my untrained eye, exaggerating his features and amplifying his presence.
The main meeting over and the circle dispersed, he nudged over to me and said he had been a camera man too, with PY Media. He recorded many, many Inma and celebrations over the years. But that was a long time ago.
I struggled with the rising and falling cadenzas of ...
Read moreThe Cow Shed
That's my dad, Arnold Salomon on the right with his poddy calf at the calf show in 1938. He didn't win. Notice the footwear (or lack of). From this we can safely assume he is still at school and dairy farming and raising poddy calves is a part time pursuit.
The milking shed photo from the previous post turned up when we were going through Dad's things. Looking now, I realise I hadn't really looked at it before. The people had caught my attention, my granddad in the right milking stall, and my dad, or so he told my sister, is in the left. It was his eyesight that grew dim in later years, not his memory. Grandad's about the age of my children now, perhaps a bit younger and Great Granny Goos with camera in hand, was then about my age now. I remember the Box Brownie she passed on to Grandma. We only see her shadow, her back to the morning sun.
Condamine Dawning
The photo was taken of morning milking on a typical morning at Proston in 1938 by Great Granny Goos. By the look of her shadow, she's most likely using a Kodak Box Brownie like the one I first took photos with. It was a useful camera with two viewfinders.
Memories of old women with thin boney hands and skin incapable of thermal retention. In my farming community, men's hands and women's hands were oh so different, men's, growing thick and calloused, like a pair of bricks as their lady's hands grew thin and wispy.
Life on the land wasn't for me. Mum said ...
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