Changing perspectives

This is a challenging post to write.

Recently, #the40project posed a question – “what would stop you in your tracks and cause you to change?#direction?” Initial intentions for the post slipped away in the wake of recent local and global events.

Rather than start this final term of the year on a positive and optimistic tone, celebrating the achievements of 13 years of schooling and wishing Year 12 students all the best for their final exams, we’ve run directly into the face of complexity and moral ambiguity.

Educators across the nation, and the globe, now face a range of challenging and loaded questions from students and families. As the year started, #the40project began with a focus on questions of “being” rather than “doing”; as the year now enters its last phase, such questions have loomed larger still. Who are we as humanity? Who are we as a nation? Who are we as a school community? Who are we as friends? Who are we as family? Who am I?

This last weekend in Australia included a referendum “to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”. The overwhelming response, democratically speaking, was no – 60%. What does this mean for First Peoples in Australia? What does it mean for the ongoing story of our nation? How do our near neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region, home to myriad indigenous peoples, view Australia? I do not know, and partly this is because the result is not clear as to what it means.

Politicians and commentators who opposed the referendum have argued it is not a rejection of our indigenous peoples, but of the form of recognition posed. Perhaps that is true for some, but perhaps for others it is not. And while it appears many indigenous voters did support the referendum, some did not. Some are less concerned with the details, seeing that whatever else it might be, it is also a failure to support aspirations of communities who have disproportionately adverse life outcomes.

The Prime Minister’s plea of “if not now, when?” has not moved a majority of the nation, or even a majority in any of the six Australian states. The new question is “what now?”

Elsewhere, complexities of land, identity, and shared humanity face a different, urgent future for what currently seems a rather un-Holy Land. Entwined in the histories of the three Abrahamic faiths is a tension between aspirations of peace and questions of troubled co-existence. Accusations are thrown by, and at, both sides. We are daily witnessing circumstances that exemplify why the US Army over 35 years ago coined the acronym VUCA– Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous.

Respective diaspora, and their supporters and detractors alike, have globalised the tensions through protest and pronouncement. While clamouring voices intensify, more lives are lost on both sides. Many more are yet to be lost…and will be. Both sides vow to destroy the other, and in the meantime, innocence and peace are the biggest casualties. Lives lost by terrifying violence is tragic. Lives lost in a war not of one’s choosing is tragic.

Eventually the conflict will subside, as history records. Apocalyptic literature in all three faith traditions will likely provide numerous images and analogies to describe what is left after the current phase of this long and ongoing hostility. Funereal dirges and heart-breaking wailing will go on, and the land will receive again the dust that was taken from it.

All this was meandering through my soul while having lunch in the garden on the weekend. And then an unmistakeable buzz came from the lavender. It, too, spoke of the frailty of life, but also of beauty, of connection, of mutuality, of interdependence.

This humble bee, destined to live merely a month, was toiling away on its simple task – extracting pollen. Yet that one job keeps beauty in our gardens and food in our mouths. It is integral to life.

Land, life, bees. The ancient Jewish prophets described their land as one “flowing with milk and honey”, and the Holy Quran points to the benefit of honey “in which there is healing for people”.

May there be many more bees!