From The Heart

I found Lowitja O’Donoghue’s biography on the library shelf.

Fifth child of a Pitjantjatjara woman Lily and first generation Catholic Irishman Tom O’Donoghue.

Lowitja was born in 1932, on country north west of Oodnadatta.

The first aboriginal nurse in South Australia; tireless advocate and public servant; inaugural ATSIC Chair.

Australian of the Year in 1984.

Her biography charts the struggle for Aboriginal rights through the 20th century.

A welcome education before the Voice To Parliament referendum.

One more partial attempt to bridge a gulf between worlds.

It’s source, the Uluru Statement From The Heart asks for considerably more – for Voice, Treaty and Truth.

Australia again avoids wholehearted commitment to resolving the injustice of ‘terra nullius’.

I ask myself why?

Strip away the sophistry and politics and the obvious issue is always economic.

The fear of money flowing from white pockets to black hands.

Which leads me to ponder …

What if the richest Australians weren’t a pair of mining magnates from Western Australia.

What if instead our wealthiest citizens were First Nations people.

Treaty

Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi on 6th February 1840.

In 1988 Prime Minister Bob Hawke promised a Treaty by the end of that term of parliament.

Yothu Yindi created a worldwide hit in 1991 with their protest song ‘Treaty‘.

Sydney Leadership Formation

The next opportunity is a mid-year intake, starting late July or August.

I welcome expressions of interest and referrals.

PS: It’s not a closing down sale, but fair warning I’ve got maybe a decade left in me!

Duration

Leadership Formation Series.

The commitment starts at two years.

Duration is a state whose movement is not worn down by hindrances.

The dedicated human embodies an enduring meaning in their way of life and thereby the world is formed.

Whatever endures can be created only gradually by long-continued work and careful reflection.

Thirty-two …

Formation

In 2010 I subscribed to The New Yorker magazine after years of reading dated copies from the local library.

Quality essays, quirky cartoons, a weekly education.

And then occasionally, like in this April article, ‘Baking Bread in Lyon‘, a real gem shines.

An unremarkable pair of sentences to most readers, I am certain. An oblique aside, explaining a French term.

Yet to me, those words leapt from the page, full of meaning.

Describing a special relationship between formation and callingcomme c’est magnifique!

Chief Seattle

Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish tribe of the Washington territory is said to have delivered this prophetic message in 1854, to mark the transfer of ancestral lands to the federal government.

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”

Detour

Detour

by Ruth Feldman

I took a long time getting here,

much of it wasted on wrong turns,

back roads riddled by ruts.

I had adventures I never would have known

if I proceeded as the crow flies.

Super highways are so sure of where they are going:

they arrive too soon.

 

A straight line isn’t always the shortest distance

between two people.

Sometimes I act as though I’m heading somewhere else

while, imperceptibly, I narrow the gap between you and me.

I’m not sure I’ll ever know the right way,

but I don’t mind getting lost now and then.

Maps don’t know everything.

 

The Road Not Taken

Road Not TakenThe Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 .
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
 .
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
.

Preparation

Carl JungCarl Jung wrote …

“Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life.

Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world?

No, thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”

In my thirties I met a teacher able to prepare me (and many others) for the years ahead. With capability and wisdom she challenged and guided me onto a path more closely aligned to my real self.

The long-term process examined ingrained patterns of thought, behaviour and relationship; offered an over-arching healthy psychological framework for self-awareness; and taught skills and tools to support more powerful and integrated self-leadership.

This development process is Leadership Formation.

On her retirement I began to offer a new generation this opportunity to prepare themselves for leadership and their ‘evening’ years.