Posted 224 days ago

Connection to Land

by Brent Lyons Lee, Urban Seed

I work with dislocated indigenous people on the streets of Melbourne, Australia. Through that work I have learned that indigenous people in Australia find their identity through “a connection with their land.” I never really knew what that meant until I went to the UK in 2004 and started walking on the land of my ancestors and hearing their stories.

At the time, like many others, I wanted to find meaning and identity in the concrete act of tracing the footsteps of my ancestors. I’m Anglo-Celtic through and through—Scottish on one side, English and Irish on the other. My wife and I travelled to the UK to experience this heritage and also to explore our growing interest in Celtic Christian spirituality.

We made a number of pilgrimages to holy sites around Europe, from the tiny monastic village of Glendalough in Ireland to the massive St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Everywhere you walked there were birth dates and death dates inscribed on walls, floors, and even ceilings. I became keenly aware of my own sense of mortality as I visited historical sites, getting some perspective on the slice of time each person is allotted on earth.

The most transforming place we visited was a little tidal island off the east coast of Northumbria called Lindisfarne, or Holy Island. I felt God on that island like never before. I experienced what the Celts call the “thin places,” where only a thin veil exists between the material and the spiritual. Normally, there are distractions that keep us from hearing from God, but in a thin place, you freely encounter God’s presence without hindrance or uncertainty. Since my trip, I have learned about the Aboriginal concept of dadirri. This deep inner listening and quiet still awareness is a traditional approach to contemplation that reflects deeply and listens to the land. Dadirri brings wholeness by enjoying the land, being attentive to the seasons, being together for ceremonies, listening to sacred stories, and being at home in silence and in God’s presence.¹ The thin space on Lindisfarne felt like that.

As I travelled to the places of my ancestors, I began to gain some perspective on the importance of the land to indigenous people. The significance is intuitive and almost indescribable. Australian author David Tacey writes that the power of the land and the influence of aboriginal culture are activating primordial levels of the Euro-Australian psyche, stirring its deeper layers. He believes that a version of ancient Celtic spirituality is being awakened and stirred to new life in Australia’s European population. One can see this in many different ways in Australian folk culture, where the attempt to “grow down” into Australian soil has the effect of revitalising Celtic roots, giving rise to a kind of Celtic revival.²

When I came back to Australia after several weeks away, I felt like an exile in my own country. I wasn’t sure how to make sense of my experience. I desperately wanted to be back in the UK where it seemed like there was some perspective. But instead, I decided to try to locate an authentic Australian spirituality. Anglo-Australian history is not much more than two hundred years old, yet indigenous Australian history dates back as far as mythology can recall. I needed to tap into this spirit, into this dreaming, but didn’t feel like I had the right, as an Anglo-Australian, to delve into the history and spirituality of the indigenous people. I shared my thoughts with a local indigenous man. He looked me steadfastly in the eyes and simply said, “This is your place.” Being given permission to believe this was my place changed everything.

There has been a long history of dreadful mistreatment of Aboriginal people in Australia. But now that the work of reconciliation is beginning, David Tacey suggests that Australia is experiencing “colonisation in reverse”:

The land [Europeans] thought dull and inert, an empty field upon which we would stamp our own authority, is proving to have a spiritual authority far greater than our own. We are witnessing the rebirth of an ancient experience of the spirit. The spirit is holistic, embodied, mystical, and immanental rather than transcendental. And while the process has only just begun, and will take a great deal more time to be realised, Australia could provide important spiritual leadership to the Western world, because what we are undergoing here is a transformation that all Western nations will eventually have to undergo if civilisation is to recover a creative relationship with the earth… ³

Tacey suggests that the popular Celtic revival being experienced is a positive sign that an earth-based, celebrative spirituality is already growing in parts of the West.

Brent Lyons Lee is a Baptist Minister and Executive Officer with Urban Seed in Melbourne, Australia. Some of these thoughts are taken from his book Emerging Down Under, co-authored with Ray Simpson.

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Notes

1. Darren Cronshaw, Credible Witness: Companions, Prophets, Hosts & Other Australian Mission Models (Springvale: UNOH, 2006), 20.

2. David Tacey, Re-enchantment: The New Australian Spirituality (Sydney, Aus.: Harper Collins, 2000), 139.

3. Ibid., 99-100.

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