Category: Indigenous

where will we go to, my lovelies?

9/14/2014

by Jon Inkpin, for Land Sunday, 14 September 2014

I wonder if you know Peter Sartsedt’s song ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely?’ Written and released in 1969, it is about a fictional girl called Marie-Claire who becomes a member of the ‘jet set’, the fashionable celebrities of the late 1960s. Her life is full of show and excitement. Underneath however there is another reality. For her story is told from the point of view of a childhood friend who, after recounting all the amazing places Marie-Claire goes to, asks: ‘but where do you go to my lovely, when you’re asleep in your bed? Tell me the thoughts that surround you.’ Then, in the last verse of the song, the secret is revealed. Marie-Claire comes from poverty, ‘from the backstreets of Naples’ and her current life is both a welcome release and a desperate escape from that reality, full of continued scars and regret. For what we are, as people, is shaped by the realities of the places in which we are formed and raised. Only when we come to terms with those realities, their promise and their pain, are we truly set free. This is at the heart of today’s readings as we reflect upon God in the Land. For where do you go to, where do I go to, where do we go to, when we are asleep in our beds? What has our experience of land, of particular places, done for, and to, us? How does land and place shape our lives today?...

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will we dance?

7/5/2014

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for Pentecost 4, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Sunday, 13 July 2014 by Jon Inkpin

Are you a dancer? Do you ever go to a dance group, or watch dance? Have you ever been a dancer? – I don’t mean professionally, or even as a hobby, just: have you ever danced? You know, I reckon all of us have danced, at least once, and more than once, even if we have forgotten, or chosen to forget, about it. Think about it: all little children dance. Put on a piece of music, or just watch a little child moving about: he or she is full of natural dance and movement. For dancing is a very natural part of what it is to be human. Indeed, it is a natural, and even integral, part of what it is to be alive. For the whole creation is really, actually, a dance: a dance of all the elements of creation; in, and with, the glory of our dancing God. I hope that doesn’t seem like a shocking affirmation. If it does, then blame Jesus in our Gospel reading today. What is he saying? – why: let go of your burdens and dance with me. So, will we dance?...

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eco-Living in the Spirit

6/8/2014

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by the Revd Dr Jonathan Inkpin, Pentecost evensong at St John's Cathedral Brisbane, Sunday 8 June 2014

‘Come out from behind that thing!’ – the Aboriginal elder’s voice rang out powerfully as I was about to begin the Decade to Overcome Violence launch in Alice Springs. She was objecting because I was behind a lectern: another whitefella, as it were, standing over or apart from her. As it happened, in what followed, every blackfella who spoke also headed behind the lectern. I guess therefore it was probably that elder’s own personal issue. Yet I have never forgotten it. For, in a way, following feminist pioneers, it was a lived experience of what Indigenous scholars (such as Denis Foley, Martin Nakata and Aileen Moreton-Robinson) call ‘standpoint theory’.

Standpoint theory is a postmodern method for analysing inter-subjective and ethical discourse. For a standpoint is a place from which one sees the world. It thus helps direct both what we focus on as well as what is obscured. The specific circumstances of our standpoint then determine which concepts are intelligible, which claims are heard and understood by whom, and which reasons and conclusions are understood to be relevant and forceful.

Now, like any approach, standpoint theory is not without weaknesses. It risks, for example, generalising the experience of different peoples, and it risks suggesting an overly ‘essentialist’ character of particular genders, races, or other identities. Yet it is a powerful means in which marginalised groups can challenge the status quo. Indeed, as the feminist theorist Sandra Harding put it, it helps create ‘strong objectivity’, or strong inter-subjectivity. For when the perspectives of the marginalised and/or oppressed are included, we have more objective, or deeper inter-subjective, accounts of the world. This is vital to a richer, and more life-giving, ethics.

Spiritually speaking, standpoint reflections also lead to a richer ethical and doctrinal expression of Pentecost. For, in Pentecost, the Spirit of God is embodied, enlivened, and expressed through all created voices. As God’s voice puts it, through the prophet Joel, in our first reading tonight, ‘I will pour out my spirit on all flesh’: on old and young alike, male and female, not least slaves; and, the passage goes on to say, also through the more-than-human environment, by ‘portents in the heavens and the earth.’ True Pentecostal experience, it seems, is about true inter-subjectivity. All creation’s standpoints are voiced, held together, and contribute to the whole. Pentecost is thus a basis for a holistic, fully environmental, ethics. For Pentecost is so much more than we have often made it...

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true resurrection

4/4/2014

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Lent 5A, Sunday 6 April 2014, by Jonathan Inkpin

This week I met an interesting woman called Viki Thondley. Among other things, she runs a business in Toowoomba, called Mind, Body, Food. As a holistic therapist, she thereby offers others opportunities to address the stresses of our bodies and lives so that we can all enjoy greater wellbeing. She invites us to look into ourselves and our lifestyles to let go of those things which hurt and to open ourselves to those which heal. In that way, as we understand better the intimate connections between our minds, bodies and food, we can find greater health and confidence. For it is as we better understand who we are, what we think, and what we feel, that we can grow in energy and empowerment. She herself is a good example. For like many great healers, Viki speaks from what she knows. As she has addressed her own self, her past and continuing wounds, so her being and actions speak volumes about the healing path.

Now, whilst she has wide understanding of much of the contemplative wisdom traditions of our world, Viki mainly works on the level of the natural. She is thereby accessible to many secular people, and to estranged Christians, who might find our Church’s paths to healing less easy to access. Yet this healing journey is at the heart of our Gospel, not least in the great story we have heard today. For our Gospel story today opens us up to what the 20th century Anglican monk, Father Harry Williams, called ‘true resurrection’...

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What kind of law?

2/14/2014

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Epiphany 6 Year A 16 February 2014 by The Revd Dr Jonathan Inkpin

One of my favourite images of reconciliation is that of Uncle Bob Randall, the multi-talented Yankunytjatjara elder from central Australia. ‘Spirituality’, he wrote in his autobiography ‘Songman’:

‘Spirituality is the ultimate answer to reconciliation in Australia and everywhere else in the world. Loving ourselves, our families, our neighbours, our countrymen and every other living thing is the reason we are here on earth. If we follow the ripple in the pond when a stone hits the water, we can easily see that the entire pond is affected by that one little stone. If the stone represents love, and it drops somewhere in our universe, that love will send its ripple through the entire universe. All the peoples, birds, animals, insects, plants, trees and rocks will in some way be affected by it. It is the same with anger and hate. We must choose which ripples we wish to send into the universe.’

- I really love that image. I used it often in my peace and reconciliation work for the National Council of Churches (in Australia): partly for its intrinsic beauty and wisdom; partly as it chimed in with my own approach to peace making and reconciliation; and, not least, because it is a wonderful Australian expression of the spirit of Jesus in what we call ‘the Sermon on the Mount’, another reading from which we hear in our worship this Sunday...

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A Typical Australian? (for Australia Day 2014)

1/27/2014

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Epiphany 3C, Sunday 26 January 2014 - by The Revd Dr Jonathan Inkpin

Back in 1997, when I first came to Australia on a job exchange, I picked up a wonderful little item. It was an audio cassette: which, in itself, tells you it was quite a while ago! The tape contained the best entries from a poetry competition for schools. The title of the poem the children had to write was ‘A Typical Australian’. What would you have written? It is perhaps a good question for us on this Australia Day. It is not that there is exactly a right answer, as that competition proved. Yet our attempts to give an answer help us to tease out what is truly important to us: what is really important
about being Australian. And, in a way, that is very like what it is to reflect upon the Gospel and to grow as a Christian. For there is no exact answer to that either. Our attempts to give an answer however help us tease out what is truly important to us: what is really important about being a child of God: children of God with Australian features...

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where will we go to, my lovelies?

will we dance?

eco-Living in the Spirit

true resurrection

What kind of law?

A Typical Australian? (for Australia Day 2014)

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