Wanderings in a desert

I stayed at this community for only three days. Most of what I saw and heard was at “Rangerville”, where the teachers and rangers live. I do not claim that all Aboriginal communities live in the conditions I have described. There is hypersensitivity talking about these things.

There is a tendency to see the Aborigines as either sub-human or as super-human. Both attitudes are in fact two sides of the same coin. It is not often they are seen as simply human. Finding a balance requires vigilance and continual self-reflection.

The Aborigines are very clear about the way we must treat their land while we are there. At Uluru, nothing can be touched. Every stone is where it should be. They communicate their spirituality with enormous dignity. The entire place felt like a temple. Despite the 200 years of torment, they have maintained their essential and sacred relationship with the earth.

In the Jewish calendar we are counting the Omer now. We are crossing the desert. For seven weeks we walk, facing our fears, self-reflecting in preparation to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai. Soon, our leader will climb a mountain and look down to see where it is his people stand. From whence they have come. What the land holds. And then he will look up and receive our destiny from the divine.

We all need to climb the mountain and look down. To know our history, and see all that has been left in its wake. To see where and how the people of this land stand. To inherit the truth, grieve it, and then carry it on our shoulders all the way to Jerusalem.

And to rise to our destiny - that of loving our neighbour as ourselves.

It is not for the Stolen Generation alone that we should being saying sorry. It is the loss of those extraordinary people that Phillip saw as he sailed into harbour 200 years ago. It is for the disgraceful lack of understanding: for the brutal imposition of a race of people who foolishly thought they knew best.

And the greatest sorrow of all is for the loss of knowledge that we so desperately need to save this earth of ours. To save ourselves.

Almost, almost - but not too late.