Research book (a gem) that I discovered and used for this post: The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine: [Edited by Kaveh Akbar, Penguin Random House UK, 2022]
Rumi: 1207-Lift Now the Lid of the Jar of Heaven (Many Sufis believed: Intoxication might thin the veil between here and the divine)
Pour, cupbearers, the wine of the invisible, The name and sign of what has no sign! Pour it abundantly, it is you who enrich the soul; Make the soul drunk, and give it wings! Come again, always fresh one, and teach All our cupbearers their sacred art! Be a spring jetting from a heart of stone! Break the pitcher of soul and body! Make joyful all lovers of wine! Foment a restlessness in the heart Of the one who thinks only of bread! Bread’s a mason of the body’s prison, Wine a rain for the garden of the soul. I’ve tied the ends of the earth together; Lift now the lid of the jar of heaven. Close those eyes that see only faults, Open those that contemplate the invisible So no mosques or temples or idols remain, So ‘this’ or ‘that’ is drowned in His fire.
King David: 1000BC: Psalm 23 The Lord’s My Shepherd: From The Kingdom of Israel (The music of the ear: Kaveh Akbar: Pp 18-19)
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want; He maketh me to lie down In green pastures: He leadeth me The quiet waters by. My soul he doth restore again, And leadeth me to walk Within the paths of righteousness E’en for his own name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff They comfort me still. Thou preparest a table for me In the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil, And my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Mechthild of Magdeburg (Germany: Christian mystic: 1207-1282:
Of all that God has shown me I can speak just the smallest word, Nor more than a honeybee Takes on his foot From an overspilling jar
Kabir: 1440-1518: India: (Celebrated oneness, wonder and mystery)
Brother, I’ve seen some Astonishing sights: A lion keeping watch Over pasturing cows; A mother delivered After her son was born; A guru prostrated Before his disciple; Fish spawning At the tops of trees A cat carrying away A dog; A gunny-sack Driving a bullock-cart; A buffalo going out to graze, Sitting on a horse; A tree with its branches in the earth, Its roots in the sky; A tree with flowering roots.
Basho: 1644-1694: Japan
In Kyoto, Hearing the cuckoo, I long for Kyoto. Death-sick on my journey My dreams run out ahead of me Across the empty field
William Shakespeare: Sonnet 91 (About Love, Material Possessions and Love’s Power Over Us)
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force, Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill, Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure Wherein it finds a joy above the rest, But these particulars are not my measure: All these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, Of more delight than hawks or horses be; And having thee of all men’s pride I boast: Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take All this away and me most wretched make.
The 1970s were a time of great change in Australia. This post is based on my memories of that time and the beginning of the Women’s Movement in Sydney, Australia.
By 1972, the fledgling beginnings of a feminist movement were evident in Australia. It had started, like many such reform movements, by intellectuals and radicals within university campuses; it was triggered, also, by media accounts at that time.
And then there was “The Female Eunuch” and Germaine Greer.
I was 27 when the book came out and she, Germaine, won me over totally. Up until then, my only contact with radical women’s libbers, had been at university, where often loud and raucous voices raised against the status quo and men in general filled the air.
Here was this unbelievably beautiful young woman with intelligence and wit, who was talking openly about sex. How could I not be influenced?
I knew about the earlier First Wave feminists, the brave suffragettes who faced the ire of their husbands and of the establishment, often facing prison sentences and social ostracism for their views. Great Aunt Louie , my dear Grandfather, “Pop” Skyvington’s maiden aunt brought him up in Islington after his mother died. Being part of a petit bourgeois family, she wrote letters to Australia after he migrated here at seventeen in which she berated the earliest feminists: Such were the times.
The Female Eunuch was not a political book, but a call to women to take part on the world stage and to live brighter, braver lives.
If she was not political enough for some, for others, like me, her book was a talisman, pointing us on the path towards change.
On 2 December 1972, Australia went to the polls, and elected a new party, headed by Gough Whitlam, a reformer. Probably the only real, amazing reformer on the Australian political scene. He brought in laws that promoted the arts in Australia and brought us into the modern era on so many fronts. He also helped the Women’s cause, one of the forward-reaching steps being blame-free divorce laws. The best of times, politically speaking, although short-lived, were about to begin…
A Seventies Feminist March in Sydney
For me back then in the seventies, being a Feminist was all about choosing your own path. I’d been against the idea of marriage because of my parents’ conflicted one. I’d already tried having an adventurous journey or two, living in France for four years as a student during the 1968 Student/Workers Revolution in Paris. And I’d travelled with a girlfriend from Paris into the Ukraine during the Cold War years. I was now ready to take, for me, a different sort of courageous step: getting married. It was my turn to try my hand at parenting, to see if I would be any better at it than my own mother had been.
By this time, you see, I desperately wanted to have a baby, and I’d fallen in love at the ripe old age of thirty-one. But this would entail another journey, an inner one this time, during which I would need to face my deepest fears and trauma from the past—from my upbringing— that were holding me back emotionally.
Today, many youthful feminists are eschewing marriage in order to remain true to their individual needs: Therein lies another pathway for future feminists to follow.
In Western countries, feminist history is generally packaged as a story of “waves”. The so-called first wave lasted from the mid-19th century to 1920. The second wave spanned the 1960s to the early 1980s. The third wave began in the mid-1990s and lasted until the 2010s. Finally, some say we are experiencing a fourth wave, which began in the mid-2010s and continues now.
The first person to use “waves” was journalist Martha Weinman Lear, in her 1968 New York Times article, The Second Feminist Wave, demonstrating that the women’s liberation movement was another “new chapter in a grand history of women fighting together for their rights”. She was responding to anti-feminists’ framing of the movement as a “bizarre historical aberration”.
Does the metaphor of a single wave overshadow the complex variety of feminist concerns and demands? And does this language exclude the non-West, for whom the “waves” story is meaningless?
Despite these concerns, countless feminists continue to use “waves” to explain their position in relation to previous generations.
The first wave of feminism refers to the campaign for the vote. It began in the United States in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention, where 300 gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, outlining women’s inferior status and demanding suffrage – or, the right to vote.
It continued over a decade later, in 1866, in Britain, with the presentation of a suffrage petition to parliament.
This wave ended in 1920, when women were granted the right to vote in the US. (Limited women’s suffrage had been introduced in Britain two years earlier, in 1918.) First-wave activists believed once the vote had been won, women could use its power to enact other much-needed reforms, related to property ownership, education, employment and more.
White leaders dominated the movement. They included longtime president of the the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Carrie Chapman Catt in the US, leader of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK, and Catherine Helen Spence and Vida Goldstein in Australia.
This has tended to obscure the histories of non-white feminists like evangelist and social reformer Sojourner Truth and journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, who were fighting on multiple fronts – including anti-slavery and anti-lynching – as well as feminism.
The second wave: from 1963
The second wave coincided with the publication of US feminist Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan’s “powerful treatise” raised critical interest in issues that came to define the women’s liberation movement until the early 1980s, like workplace equality, birth control and abortion, and women’s education.
Women came together in “consciousness-raising” groups to share their individual experiences of oppression. These discussions informed and motivated public agitation for gender equality and social change. Sexuality and gender-based violence were other prominent second-wave concerns.
Australian feminist Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch, published in 1970, which urged women to “challenge the ties binding them to gender inequality and domestic servitude” – and to ignore repressive male authority by exploring their sexuality.
Successful lobbying saw the establishment of refuges for women and children fleeing domestic violence and rape. In Australia, there were groundbreaking political appointments, including the world’s first Women’s Advisor to a national government (Elizabeth Reid). In 1977, a Royal Commission on Human Relationships examined families, gender and sexuality.
Amid these developments, in 1975, Anne Summers published Damned Whores and God’s Police, a scathing historical critique of women’s treatment in patriarchal Australia.
At the same time as they made advances, so-called women’s libbers managed to anger earlier feminists with their distinctive claims to radicalism. Tireless campaigner Ruby Rich, who was president of the Australian Federation of Women Voters from 1945 to 1948, responded by declaring the only difference was her generation had called their movement “justice for women”, not “liberation”.
Like the first wave, mainstream second-wave activism proved largely irrelevant to non-white women, who faced oppression on intersecting gendered and racialised grounds. African American feminists produced their own critical texts, including bell hooks’ Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism in 1981 and Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider in 1984.
The third wave: from 1992
The third wave was announced in the 1990s. The term is popularly attributed to Rebecca Walker, daughter of African American feminist activist and writer Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple).
Aged 22, Rebecca proclaimed in a 1992 Ms. magazine article: “I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.”
Third wavers didn’t think gender equality had been more or less achieved. But they did share post-feminists’ belief that their foremothers’ concerns and demands were obsolete. They argued women’s experiences were now shaped by very different political, economic, technological and cultural conditions.
The third wave has been described as “an individualised feminism that can not exist without diversity, sex positivity and intersectionality”.
Intersectionality, coined in 1989 by African American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, recognises that people can experience intersecting layers of oppression due to race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and more. Crenshaw notes this was a “lived experience” before it was a term.
In 2000, Aileen Moreton Robinson’s Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism expressed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s frustration that white feminism did not adequately address the legacies of dispossession, violence, racism, and sexism.
Certainly, the third wave accommodated kaleidoscopic views. Some scholars claimed it “grappled with fragmented interests and objectives” – or micropolitics. These included ongoing issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace and a scarcity of women in positions of power.
The third wave also gave birth to the Riot Grrrl movement and “girl power”. Feminist punk bands like Bikini Kill in the US, Pussy Riot in Russia and Australia’s Little Ugly Girls sang about issues like homophobia, sexual harassment, misogyny, racism, and female empowerment.
Riot Grrrl’s manifesto states “we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak”. “Girl power” was epitomised by Britain’s more sugary, phenomenally popular Spice Girls, who were accused of peddling “‘diluted feminism’ to the masses”. https://www.youtube.com/embed/tAbhaguKARw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Riot Grrrrl sang about issues like homophobia, sexual harassment, misogyny and racism.
The fourth wave: 2013 to now
The fourth wave is epitomised by “digital or online feminism” which gained currency in about 2013. This era is marked by mass online mobilisation. The fourth wave generation is connected via new communication technologies in ways that were not previously possible.
Online mobilisation has led to spectacular street demonstrations, including the #metoo movement. #Metoo was first founded by Black activist Tarana Burke in 2006, to support survivors of sexual abuse. The hashtag #metoo then went viral during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal. It was used at least 19 million times on Twitter (now X) alone.
In January 2017, the Women’s March protested the inauguration of the decidedly misogynistic Donald Trump as US president. Approximately 500,000 women marched in Washington DC, with demonstrations held simultaneously in 81 nations on all continents of the globe, even Antarctica.
In 2021, the Women’s March4Justice saw some 110,000 women rallying at more than 200 events across Australian cities and towns, protesting workplace sexual harassment and violence against women, following high-profile cases like that of Brittany Higgins, revealing sexual misconduct in the Australian houses of parliament.
Given the prevalence of online connection, it is not surprising fourth wave feminism has reached across geographic regions. The Global Fund for Women reports that #metoo transcends national borders. In China, it is, among other things, #米兔 (translated as “rice bunny”, pronounced as “mi tu”). In Nigeria, it’s #Sex4Grades. In Turkey, it’s #UykularınızKaçsın (“may you lose sleep”).
In an inversion of the traditional narrative of the Global North leading the Global South in terms of feminist “progress”, Argentina’s “Green Wave” has seen it decriminalise abortion, as has Colombia. Meanwhile, in 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned historic abortion legislation.
Whatever the nuances, the prevalence of such highly visible gender protests have led some feminists, like Red Chidgey, lecturer in Gender and Media at King’s College London, to declare that feminism has transformed from “a dirty word and publicly abandoned politics” to an ideology sporting “a new cool status”.
Where to now?
How do we know when to pronounce the next “wave”? (Spoiler alert: I have no answer.) Should we even continue to use the term “waves”?
The “wave” framework was first used to demonstrate feminist continuity and solidarity. However, whether interpreted as disconnected chunks of feminist activity or connected periods of feminist activity and inactivity, represented by the crests and troughs of waves, some believe it encourages binary thinking that produces intergenerational antagonism.
Back in 1983, Australian writer and second-wave feminist Dale Spender, who died last year, confessed her fear that if each generation of women did not know they had robust histories of struggle and achievement behind them, they would labour under the illusion they’d have to develop feminism anew. Surely, this would be an overwhelming prospect.
What does this mean for “waves” in 2024 and beyond?
To build vigorous varieties of feminism going forward, we might reframe the “waves”. We need to let emerging generations of feminists know they are not living in an isolated moment, with the onerous job of starting afresh. Rather, they have the momentum created by generations upon generations of women to build on.
Anne says: I’m reposting this today, as it is so very relevant to all of us as we age, and risk losing loved ones who are also ageing. My dear Grandma used to say how it’s those that are left who suffer, not the dying. And as Ian shows us, you can be comforted by knowing that loved ones don’t really die but stay with us. I’m also passing on a link about grieving from The Conversation at the end.
DOES TIME HEAL ALL WOUNDS?
They say that time heals all wounds; I believe this to not be completely true. Perhaps time is not exactly a healer, but it can assist other healing strategies. Ultimately, I’ve found, it’s up to the individual to find ways to achieve healing for themselves during the time that passes after experiencing a wound, a trauma, or, particularly in my case, my partner’s death.
These words came to me in the early days after my wife passed away; “It’s better to leave than to be the one left behind.” The lyrics of the song True Love, written by Cole Porter, and originally sung by Bing Crosby in the film High Society, also contain, in part, the following statements …
And you make me so mad, I ask myself Why I’m still here, or where could I go You’re the only love I’ve ever known
…
Nothin’ else can break my heart like true love
…
No one else can break my heart like you”
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME
When your spouse dies, your world changes and everything hurts. You are in what seems like a never-ending mourning, reaching dark depths of grief, sorrow and despair at your loss. You feel numb, shocked, lost and fearful. You feel guilty for being the one who is still alive. At some point, you can even feel angry at your spouse for leaving you. I was told all of these feelings are normal. There are no rules about how you should feel or how long you should be “down”. There is no right or wrong way to mourn. When you grieve, you feel both physical and emotional pain, and as I said, everything hurts.
For many years I felt existentially “alone”, incomplete, despite having the support of a loving family and friends. With a partner’s death your status suddenly changed from a pigeon pair to a single, from two to one … in the most mundane ways, which is hard to articulate. I think it is not unlike being cut off at the knees, like a tree cut down leaving only a stump. Does the stump fade away or does it send up a new shoot and start again?
I discovered that the people you love the most can cause you the most pain. This was a shock to me, but eventually, and given the passage of time, I realised that, equally, the person you love most can mend your heart when it is most broken, even when they are no longer here. That realization was my saving grace when it came; THAT’S what true love is and what it can do. True love can fix what is broken, that’s its true purpose.
To be left alone means you need to make a new life. How simple that sounds, but how incredibly difficult it is to achieve.
Candle from Pixabay
MAKING LIFE CHOICES WHEN YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN
“Make a new life” …. Yes, that’s the task each survivor (widow or widower) faces after the death of their marriage partner. New life choices are complicated at the time by feelings of one’s own mortality and fragility, alarming at profound psychological and physical levels. While there is no hierarchy of bereavement, the death of a partner is among the most profound losses. The death of the adult you love the most is an especially cruel experience. Most of us choose to bleakly live on, because, however bad we feel, the death instinct eludes us in our hold on life. We wait, and long for a change of some sort. Eventually, I became defined, not by loss, but by love. Eventually I came to the decision that I needed to seek to make changes, to make a new life for myself.
To make a new life one has to ask “what is your plan for the rest of your life?” and then identify one’s problems one by one, work on them one by one, making choices to solve each problem … and then move on to the next, doing the choices for solution steps all over again … by yourself! What I’m talking about is not like one of those so-called life simulation games in which the choices you make have no real point or consequence, but REAL LIFE CHOICES which make important decisions about your life. For example, where and how you choose to live, what you do, what you need and want and don’t need or don’t want in your life, i.e. work out how to live without your life’s partner.
We shape our life through the choices we make … and then those choices reshape the new us. Life is nothing but a totality of conscious choices that you continuously make. Whether you want it or not, directly or indirectly, YOU are choosing everything. YOU are doing the choosing for yourself without taking in the needs, wishes and desires of another (your marriage partner) as was your established pattern. Someone else does not choose for you in your life, or influence your choices; it is you who makes the choices. Just you! How scary is that? Then, because of the love I felt, I took the leap … to start living again … for me … for the moment … a new life … of me, for me, by me.
THE AFTERMATH OF MY LIFE DECISIONS
I now try to live the way I believe she would have wanted me to; for the present not just the past, with purpose, with love for our kids and their kids, while trying to be the best version of me I can be … I do this for the sake of the love we shared and the affection we had for each other. I, of course, miss the daily expressions of love and affection, understanding, acceptance, appreciation, counselling and companionship, but the memories of “us” are as strong as ever and I am so grateful to have had, and to still have, such a life shaping True Love. My life stump’s new shoot is reaching towards the light
ATTITUDE ACTION
A Poem by Ian Wells
I have chosen to wake up anticipating wonder and not fear, To be satisfied with all the gladness I can see around me, Choosing to know that life still has meaning in every day, And accepting myself for who I am and what I can be or do. I thank my mentors for their many constantly flowing wisdoms, That teaching/learning from others who understand the world More deeply than I alone; who glimpse into its various corners, Interpreting its subtle nuances and its potential miracles for me. I have managed to pretty much overcome life’s every hurdle, To start living again … in the moment; of me, for me, by me. Building on my emotional strengths, confidence and happiness, Finding healthy ways to cope with life’s daily dark challenges. Gradually I’ve been changing my life and expanding my horizons. All my small miracles put a smile on my face and I like to be happy, My “new life” attitude has given me finally a measure of peace, It’s a real boost to my existence and a lift for my tortured soul.
Editor’s Note: This made me think of The Lord is My Shepherd, psalm (28), created by Kind David circa 1000 BC, which I’d always associated with deaths in battle, especially the lines: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. thy rod and thy staff comfort me.” But there are internal battles going on in all of us: accepting death itself as we age, not being the least of them, and especially fear linked to the death of losing our loved ones!
Thanks to Ian for sharing his real experience with us.
See also: Sign up to The Conversation for an article published February 2024 about Grief and Grieving.
The Mardi Gras festival for the Gay and Lesbian community (LGBTQ) occurred as usual in March, within stricter guidelines than in the past, because of Covid. Randwick Council showed great initiative in promoting a rainbow coloured walkway on the steps at Coogee Beach. It brightens up the area and makes a statement about supporting stigmatised peoples, including gays, lesbians, trans and First Nation peoples.
The Eora people were a vast and complex Indigenous group of family and kin relations who occupied the area where I live today in Coogee. Their territory spread from the Georges River and Botany Bay in the south to present Sydney Harbour and north to Pittwater at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, then west along the river to where Parramatta is today. It is said that the men swam on the north end of Coogee Beach and the women at the south side. If this is true, it is mirrored by certain practices today.
We have four rock or tidal pools in Coogee, Giles’s at the north end of the beach, and the Ross Jones Memorial Pool at the other end. A little further along the coast is the Women’s Pool, built in 1886 and Wiley’s going southward and across the rocks from the Women’s Pool.
The Ross Jones Pool at the south end
Giles’s Baths north end
The Coogee Ladies Pool used to be known as McIver’s, named for Rose McIver, from a swimming family who ran it until 1922. It is the only pool in Australia granted a 1995 exemption under the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1977 to operate for women and children only. It’s not the same as the exclusive Australian Club on Macquarie Street, the country’s oldest gentlemen’s establishment, which has drawn prime ministers and wealthy males to join its hallowed walls, and has still not as yet taken firm steps to invite women to become full paying members.
Like Balmain’s Dawn Fraser Baths, several long-time swimmers had been entrusted with keys to open up early for pre-dawn swims and to close up on sunset. Sometimes Muslim women in burkinis attended and topless women liked to sunbathe there, taking refuge from perverts, who were the reason for a fence being erected by the council.
Controversy erupted recently after the new operators of these ladies baths stated on their website: “Only transgender women who’ve undergone a gender reassignment surgery are allowed entry.” The mind boggles at the idea of the committee women enforcing this!
There had been an authoritarian atmosphere at the pool of late, with lots of restrictions and a loss of the welcoming, leisurely atmosphere and spirit the place once had. Long term members wanted to give the pool back to the community. It had lost its soul and ethos under this management.
After a well-attended public meeting, the managing committee was ousted by the council, with a new interim president and committee elected to run it. The club’s website now says the pool “provides a safe place for women of many ages, religions, and backgrounds” and “a sanctuary of healing, acceptance, and security”.
Wylie’s Baths southern most end
Nearby Wylie’s Baths is also a wonderful place, with some of the spirit of the old Coogee’s Ladies Baths. Mina Wylie (1891–1984) was one of Australia’s first two olympic swimmers, along with Fanny Durack. There’s a statue of Mina Wylie on the top level of Wylie’s baths. Timber ramparts reach out from the cliffs like a modern-day fortress. You pay $6 to use the facilities and lounge on the timber decks with spectacular views, or descend down a timber staircase into the waters for a swim from the cement. In summer a masseuse sets up her table on the timber floor of the upper deck.
I love the part in the “Life of Pi” movie where the hero explains how he came to be called ‘Pi” from the French word (piscine) for swimming pool (pronounced pee-seen, not piss-in). Swimming pools have always been an obsession with me too: from the rough ones built into the Clarence River bank at South Grafton when I was a kid when immersion in water was a necessary counter to the cruel humid summers. To the sparkling unreal turquoise of the first modern pools I experienced in Sydney visits as an eight-year-old.
“It’s what happy and successful people do,” I was told, when I first started learning about meditation and how to do it. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhists believe that happiness is the actual goal of most people on earth. But we in the West are brought up with the idea that finding a job, buying a house, getting married and having children are what we should aim for. Yet, while aiming for these goals, and even on reaching them, quite often we feel depressed, dissatisfied, and, yes, unhappy.
Meditation has been around from time immemorial; it was first recorded in written texts from seven thousand years ago in China. While meditation has become linked mainly to Eastern cultures, it is integral to most spiritual paths, and basic to all major religions in some form or another.
Dr Ian Gawler of the Ian Gawler Foundation claimed to have been cured of cancer through meditation and dietary changes. He states that “No matter where in your life you want to see improvement, meditation can help. It does not matter what age you are, your culture or beliefs; meditation is for everyone and can provide you with great benefits, many of which have been scientifically confirmed. This simple, yet powerful mind training tool, can bring long-term improvement to your health, well-being, relationships and career.”
Modern doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists recommend “mindfulness meditation” practices as part of stress management skills. These practices are based on the same millenia old Buddhist meditation skills, often stripped of their religious connotations. Research shows that changes take place in the brains of practitioners, even after a short time utilising these methods. Nevertheless, ritual in some form or another, gives structure to these practices and encourages the formation of habits.
How to Meditate
There are many different groups offering many different meditation practices. Here is an article outlining the main different types of meditation.
Simply put, you sit with your back erect, close your eyes, focus on your breath, and practise mindfulness. It takes time and continued practice to learn how to do this easily and comfortably, without being pulled around by speedy, agitated monkey mind which refers to a person’s inability to quieten their thoughts and pacify their minds. Buddhists compare thoughts to clouds moving across the clear background of the sky.
A Simple Meditation
Sit or lie comfortably. You may even want to invest in a meditation chair.
Close your eyes.
Make no effort to control the breath; simply breathe naturally.
Focus your attention on the breath and on how the body moves with each inhalation and exhalation.
Focusing on a special sound (om) or on a source of light, such as a candle, are other useful tools.
You can use a mantra to get you in the mood for meditating, especially if you know that it has special powers, which some of them have. Om Namah Shivaya is a sacred mantra that has been used by Hindus for centuries to invoke the blessings of Lord Shiva, one of the most revered deities. Try it or look on line for others. Even better, find a guru who can pass one on to you.
A Personal Story
When our daughter was born, I asked my husband if he would give up smoking, to which he was heavily addicted. Not being a mystical sort of person, more practical, a fixer-upper and strong-willed, I was surprised when he joined a Transcendental Meditation course and was weaned or cured from nicotine addiction after two or three weeks. He didn’t even talk much about the experience, of having glimpsed people levitating, for example, that I would have loved to discuss in more detail.
A Peer-Reviewed Method of Meditating
Mark was becoming top in his field of Stuttering Research by the time our two children were in primary school. His method of treating anxiety in people who stuttered was based on peer reviewed cognitive behavioural methods rather than on anything mystical or spiritual. He used a love of classical music for relaxation, and meditation was put on the back burner. Until recently, that is. He came across this method for meditating online that is based on peer reviews and can suit anyone who wishes to meditate without having to believe in the spiritual dynamic. Now he likes to meditate in the mornings and exercises at night. He’s very motivated and disciplined and I think he’s going to benefit hugely from this new interest. Here is the link to the article he found online:
My Current passion is researching mystical poetry down through the ages.
WILLIAM BLAKE
The Tyger
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake’s Painting of a God-like Image
Auguries of Innocence
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
A robin Red Breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. A dove house fill’d with doves & Pigeons Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
The Sick Rose
O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm. That flies in the night In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
Sonnet 91: About Love
Sonnet 91: About Love and its Power Over Us
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force, Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill, Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure Wherein it finds a joy above the rest, But these particulars are not my measure: All these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, Of more delight than hawks or horses be; And having thee of all men’s pride I boast: Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take All this away and me most wreched make.
From The Merchant of Venice: Act IV Scene I: Portia to Shylock
The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the earth beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s.
Ann Hathaway’s Cottage: Unsplash
John Keats: Ode On A Grecian Urn
* Beauty is truth, truth beauty
Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
W. B. Yeats: The Second Coming:
Relevance to the cultural chaos of today
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everyhwere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
* Note the melodic iambic pentameter and internal rhyme
Lord G.G. Byron: (1788-1824): Extract from Beppo
A great example of romantic poetry: expressing sentiments, emotions and the imagination
I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which we’re obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.
I like the women too (forgive my folly!), From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze, And large black eyes that flash on you a volley Of rays that say a thousand things at once, To the high Dama’s brow, more melancholy, But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance, Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes, Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
Eve of the land which still is Paradise! Italian Beauty didst thou not inspire Raphael, who died in thy embrace, and vie With all we know of Heaven, or can desire, In what he hath bequeathed us? – in what guise, Though flashing from the fervour of the Lyre, Would words describe thy past and present glow, While yet Canova can create below?
The Metaphysical Poets wrote as if God was in heaven and all was well down here on earth
John Donne: The greatest love poet of them all wrote to God like a lover: 1572-1631
The Good Morrow
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee …
The Canonisation
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honour, or his grace, Or the king’s real, or his stampèd face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love …
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; ’Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love …
The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school boys and sour prentices, Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices, Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time …
Batter My Heart, three-person’d God
Batter My Heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due, Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’e fain, But I am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again. Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Eliot Quote: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
[The feature image for this post is of a painting by Henry Holiday of Dante and Beatrice]
In the Sutherland Shire 32 kilometres south of Sydney is a hilly tree-rich suburb on the edge of the National Park with an indigenous ring to it: Yarrawarrah. It lies next to Engadine with Heathcote and Waterfall further to the south. It takes one hour by train to get there (Engadine Station) or a bit less by road along the Princes Highway. The traditional inhabitants of Yarrawarrah are the Tharawal people. Below is a map showing the suburb near the bottom at the southernmost end of Sydney.
It’s hard to believe the difference when we escape from Coogee near the beach for a tree change in Yarrawarrah. The peace is palpable. Mark puts it down to all the oxygen floating in the air around us from the trees. I think, too, that there is an indigenous aspect to it. It feels like a sacred place, surrounded by gum trees above a deep gully, where you can find wetlands if you descend into it. Could it be that there were no massacres of indigenous people here as in other parts of the country? It feels that way. It’s great for meditating.
One of the streets near our daughter’s place is Bridgeview Road, named because there was a clear view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from this road in earlier times. Today you can get a good view of the CBD skyline to the north with Centrepoint Tower a recognition point. When I walked around the area recently I noticed this and other interesting scenes and motifs that typify the area.
Looking north to the city skyline from Bridgeview Road, Yarrawarrah
There’s something quirky about this place when you come across something like this, in the neatly kept streets, alongside the beauty of the native wildlife and nature in general.
An abandoned tray truck with junk in an otherwise pristine street with neat and well-kept pathways, gardens and houses.
Still, you can understand it, as people who settle here are probably those in need of more space to keep their pets, including horses to ride or boats as the case may be. Some of our neighbours are “horsey” people—like I was in my childhood— and keep horse trailers out the front in the street. Another quirky photo I took is of a tree with a trunk in the shape of a horse or donkey’s face.
Horse head tree
Our daughter’s favourite time is dusk every evening when the white cockatoos fly along the valley from south to north as the sun sets in front of her to the west. The back of the house which is the “living part” faces the south/west and north so that there is sun most of the day and the sunsets are magnificent.
Here are two videos taken towards sunset.
Kookaburras of all sorts and sizes abound here.
A favourite rock for meditation
Our grandson’s school Yarrawarrah Public is in walking distance. So too is Engadine High School which he will attend next year. The older boy goes to Healthcote High and stays with his dad who lives in Waterfall. The small Yarrawarrah shopping centre is also in walking distance form the house, but Engadine is better for shops.
Twin Ragdoll Cats suit the house and luckily they are bred to not live outside, so they won’t kill wildlife.
I’m remembering the Jacaranda Festivals of my childhood at Grafton in northern New South Wales, with a certain nostalgia. Did such a time of innocence really exist? Is this celebration different today?
Below is a photo from my sister’s album of her, Sweet Susan, and our dear little sister, Jillian, folk dancing with school friends at the Grafton Jacaranda Festival in the fifties.
This annual spring-time celebration begins at the end of October and lasts until the first week in November. It has gone on since nineteen thirty-four, and was the first such folk festival in the country.
The Grafton Jacaranda Festival is nearly in full swing in my hometown as I write this post. It is a spring celebration that is held every year during the first week in November. At this time, the jacaranda trees are in full bloom.
Some childhood memories are golden. Or, in this case, mauve, lilac, purple, and, as Dad once said, “heliotrope”. It’s hard to pin down the actual colour of the flowers that bloom on the jacaranda trees, and form carpets of blossoms on the surface of the roads and avenues. Sometimes they seem lighter hued, mauve in my memory, at other times, darkly purple.
