A Labyrinth Walk

Saturday 21st February

A Labyrinth Walk

or 'Take a Stroll with your Soul'

Some comments:

'It's a soul journey of integrating my centre with the rest of my life. It's a journey shared by all people down the ages, so it's archetypal.'

'In this era of career goals, it's nice to have the centre to aim for.'

'But when I walked the labyrinth the second time, at some point the centre didn't matter. It was just the path.'

'It brings out the pilgrim feeling.'

'There was a still point at the centre, but you have to come out again and continue your life.'

'I felt strong with the centre just behind me.'

'The vastness of the way back.'

at one stage I felt the path was going on for ever.'

'The overall effect is very calming - and at a depth, too.'

The mood is intensified a lot by having other people walking too.'
'You have to trust in the path. Rationally I know there's a centre so I've just got to take one step at a time.'
'It's the same path, but sometimes you're going in the opposite direction.'

'At the start, the path goes close to the centre, so you get a glimpse of the 'Promised Land', but later the path is right out at the edge of the circle. In the end, you get to the centre quite unexpectedly.'

'I had a sneaking fear of being on the wrong path.'

(The bricks of the path are laid /\, i.e. chevron-style, or like arrows.)

'At one stage the chevrons were pointing in the direction I was going, and at another stage they were pointing in the opposite direction. I thought, "One wrong step and I'll be going round in circles"'.

'I was worried, am I going too fast or too slow?'

'The path of the labyrinth is a great metaphor for the path of life. But there's another layer: the deep physical feeling of calmness and peace that you get.'

'Fire-stick Farming', from Dr. David Tacey

Dear colleagues and friends,
some thoughts on the fire situation and the Australian landscape:
It does seem to be true that the Australian land is designed to burn, and that it "wants" to burn, for the sake of regeneration. As Germaine Greer has been saying recently, this has been the case for the last 50 or 60 thousand years. I don't know where David Attenborough gets his science from, claiming it is on a 300 year cycle (?). In my experience, the cycle is about every 30 years or so, or even less, 20 years. The land has to burn, to allow regeneration. If it does not burn, the forests get choked up with bark, leaves, branches, logs, and regeneration will not properly occur, and so we almost need to factor in burning as a "seasonal cycle", but not occurring within a 12 month cycle, but within a 20-30 year cycle.
Of course, it is easy to say it must burn, but how to allow this? Aboriginal cultures often worked around this by remaining nomadic, and when the fires started up, they moved to a different part of the country, and came back later, after the regeneration. If the land did not burn of natural causes, the indigenous people used to set fire to it deliberately, to bring on the regeneration. Yes, this is "fire-stick farming". Perhaps the much-hated "arsonists" who light fires today are acting on some ancient imperative, about which our modern mind knows nothing. It is true that the "stay and fight" option is a very Western idea: the heroic battle against the natural forces. This time, however, it has not been heroic but suicidal to stay and defend property against the raging fire storms. Greer is very right in saying that we have to learn how to use fire, else it will destroy us. Controlled burnings seem to be the way to go, however that might be implemented. Ironically, some "environmentalists" are opposed to controlled burnings, and yet to deny these is to risk everything going up in smoke.
Greer writes: "Fire plays an essential role in the cyclical life of Australian forests ... for 60,000 years, Aboriginal people used fire to manage the environment, she said. "Aboriginal people burned for a reason ... every season, sclerophyll [hard-leaved trees] build up and great amounts of detrius drop and collect and this must burn if there is to be new growth," she said.
"It's the same old story. We need to educate people, we need to find the courage and we need somebody to direct the operation ... we have to burn off during the cool time of the year so we can lessen the risks created by blazes in the summer."
It is almost as if the land has an archetypal memory of burning and fire, and white people have done much to wipe out this memory and conform the land to our heroic needs and wishes. But now the land has reasserted its ancient pattern, and we have to learn from indigenous people about how to live on and in the land.
best wishes,
David