Summer 2006 Place A publication of the Australian Student Christian Movement Jubilee Grapevine Jubilee Grapevine is a publication Contents for students across Australia, and friends of the Australian Student Christian Movement, to provide a 2 Being Me in Different Places forum for discussion, stimulation and challenge in a Christian context, Nick Gill encouraging a student voice with an emphasis on being open, ecumenical, 555 Saving Indigenous Sacred Places in a Secular active and critical. Society: the struggle to find a common language More information regarding the ASCM Carolyn Tan is available at: 999 Laying Down Roots www.ascm.org.au Chris Albone Contact details for your nearest ASCM branch are on the back page. 111111 The Loving Welcome of the Land Opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of Karin Donaldson the editors or of the movement as a whole. 151515 Sea Spirituality To subscribe to Jubilee Grapevine or Hanna Schulz to access previous issues, visit www.ascm.org.au/jg.htm 161616 A Splace to call Home: Domestic Abodes Creating Identity The magazine is produced three times each year, and annual subscriptions Flossie Peitsch are $15. 191919 Life, Spirituality and Depression: a personal Jubilee Grapevine is free for reflection on mental illness students. Meagan Palmer Please send submissions and comments to jged.at.ascm.org.au or 212121 Ethics, Place & Mythology 128 Westminster St, East Vic Park WA 6101. All submissions are to be Robert Tulip respectful of all persons and opinions. They will be accepted at the editor’s 242424 Serve where you are Placed discretion and may be edited for Sarah Mills reasons of space or clarity. Submissions need not be related to 262626 Philippines Exposure the theme of a particular issue to be Annabel Dulhunty considered for publication. As requested by the Council of 282828 News from the Movement Christians and Jews, Jubilee Grapevine uses the terms ‘Hebrew and Greek Scriptures’ rather than ‘Old and 323232 Letters to the Editor New Testaments’. Tiffany Winn, Barrie Baker, Nick Gill, Robert Tulip Jubilee Grapevine is printed using 100% recycled paper. 353535 From the Editor Cover Photograph: Hanna Schulz Editor: Clare Schulz 2 Summer 2006 BBBEING MMME IN DDDIFFERENT PPPLACES I am writing from Ululla, a sheep station and Mardu aboriginal community that lies 900 kilometres northeast of Perth. I lived here for two years some time ago and have recently returned. Here is an entry from my journal shortly after arriving back at Ululla: What has driven me back to Ululla? What conscious and subconscious whips have been cracked across my behind to make me anticipate returning so keenly? An oasis from the Protestant work ethic perhaps? Albeit a flawed oasis for I am in thrall wherever I go. But still, here I can feel that by being I am doing something remarkable and so being is OK. How to be free of this horrible logic? A place of purity. Without endless 'if onlys'. This is a place of clear evening skies, silhouettes of unbroken mulga against a dying sun, a moon that appears on schedule, frequent and complete silences, rushing winds. I am free of regret, of middle-class obligation. I am too small to do anything thank God. Diminishment of the individual. Where a sense of self is not normatively primary. A landscape over which ego does not preside unchecked. My desires, wants and needs are a function of my surroundings and community - not a function solely of my whimsy. My achievements are not trumpeted, neither are my transgressions. Christendom tries and fails to escape the latter but is the bound and shackled slave of the former. Freedom from both is a blessed relief. All actions, indeed, are diminished. The soundtrack to our lives is not that of the media but that of the scratching pen, brewing tea pot, barking dog. Not images of life but life itself. I am Nick, 28 years old from England/ Australia who Reading back over this it occurs to Maybe what we call 'ego' is really this me that all of those points are likes playing 'sum-of-actions-self'. In most places about the same thing. I want to be football and ego=me. "Who am I?" you might ask rescued from myself. Or, more reading, who and I will tell you that I am Nick, 28 precisely, rescued from that part of studies maths, years old from England/ Australia myself (the part that is all of which who likes playing football and I am usually aware) that is the sum blah blah blah. reading, who studies maths, blah of my actions. What else is blah blah. What else is there? there? 3 Jubilee Grapevine I find when I am out here that there is town may form - but the great wilderness something else; I have access to another continues on constant, unimpressed. It is a part of myself - a part that does nothing, slate that is too hard for humanity to write that is achievement-free. I feel strangely upon. We can beetle about on its surface uncompelled to do anything at all. Sitting but not a great deal more. Thank God! We here writing these thoughts down is can't fuck it up! something I have anticipated for several It is not just the landscape here that days, but only now have I managed to get diminishes my ego. The culture of the local my act together enough to do it. And it's not people here, unlike the culture from which I like I've been rushed off my feet... come, does not place the individual at the Back in the city centre of all considerations. the boundary What is at the centre instead I between me am not sure but it's somehow (=ego) and not- different. For instance, no one me is a hard, cares here about my impermeable achievements. The things in one of which I my life of which I am most am constantly proud elicit very little aware. Here I response. Like the land, the am at once people are unimpressed. conscious of Here I am not Nick being very The hard nuggety sumsum----ofofofof----mymymymy----actionsactionsactions---- who has this small and degree and read insignificant as well as self seems a lot smaller than when I am that long book and being a part of something in the city, but the warm human restrest---- scored that great majestic and important. ofofof-of ---myselfmyself is suddensuddenlyly much more goal, I am Nick. I The hard nuggety sum-of- obvious and I see that it is beautiful. am the person my-actions-self seems a who, like everyone lot smaller than when I am in the city, but else, gets bored of an afternoon and hungry the warm human rest-of-myself is suddenly and sometimes gets drunk and and and... It much more obvious and I see that it is is not that I am the same as everyone else, beautiful. only that it is not my achievements (or This rest-of-myself is not just something that transgressions) that make me different but I carry about with me; it is something that myself. The rest-of-myself. forms around me as part of the place and It is hard to imagine how this can work when people and experiences of where I am. It is one is reading within a Western context. different depending on where I am. At Ululla What must it be like for the starting point of it is bigger. one's existence to not be 'ego'? I don't mean The landscape has something to do with how is it possible to be unselfish. That is this. The land in which I currently live is another thing entirely. The question I want gloriously indifferent to my existence. A vast to ask is far more fundamental. It is about blue sky is half of my world and I cannot somehow accessing life through a different touch it or change it. At night it becomes a prism, one that perhaps will give more, or black blanket, bringing light from places that maybe just different, colour.... I will never know and where I will never be Let me give a practical example that might known. The other half of my world, the make sense of what I'm talking about. bottom half, is almost as eternal. Picture this scene that I experienced: Superficially things may change - a new I'm sitting in the passenger seat of the building is put up, a road is built, even a station ute with Daniel, a local Mardu man 4 Summer 2006 driving. We're trying to follow an old bush immediately on our lips, in our heads. Our track but it's very hard to see. On the back physical perspective is fixed and defined by of the ute are several other people including our physical body. Molly, a Mardu woman, who is standing up. What I am suggesting more generally is that She can see the road more clearly from her our mental perspective is fixed and defined higher vantage point and she is shouting out by our ego, that part of us which is the sum directions for Daniel. The words that she is of our actions. There is nothing wrong with using are 'kakara' and 'kayeeli' and other this necessarily but it is interesting to words in Mardu wangka, the local aboriginal observe that this need not be the case. We language. What is remarkable about this are not defining our perspective by the scene is that the words she is using do not whole of ourselves.