The Bushfires and the Great Australian Spirit

Gerringong, NSW

Credit: Sam Markham took this photo approximately 20 minutes after a firestorm tore through his family's home. (Instagram / sam_markham_)

Bushfires in Australia when “tree stumps are kilns” and the land is covered with “red-black wounds” (Les Murray, Late Summer Fires) are certainly not new. They have been elemental to living in this land Down Under for timeless generations. They are an “ever-present part of life.”[1] We have almost become used to them, if that could ever be possible, and we might sometimes speak a little too casually of the ‘bushfire season’. Different parts of the continent given the vastness of our country experience this fiery season both in winter (dry) and in summer (hot) conditions. But it has become increasingly ferocious, where perhaps a more descriptive word for these huge fast-moving firestorms would be mega-blaze. We have had the real bad ones like the Tasmanian Black Tuesday Bushfires (1967), the South Australian and Victorian Ash Wednesday Bushfires (1983), and more recently one of our worst natural disasters the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires. Not surprising then, that we have become more acutely sensitive to both the short- and long-term consequences of these “late summer fires”.[2] And yet, these ones we are currently living through, described by many in the middle of these infernos “as hell on earth”, are like no others we have seen.[3] Australian records for its highest-ever temperatures have been consistently topped together with a number of towns during these months identified as the hottest places on Earth. These fires have not surprisingly caught the attention of the world and it has rightly asked questions as to our preparedness. But how does one prepare for something as terrible as this, for the unprecedented. The inferno, this ‘mega-blaze’, we are living through, even as I write [from the South Coast itself], has even shocked hardened firefighter veterans with flames in some instances reaching heights of over 40 metres.[4] As a scholar of the Apocalypse of John, I can say, that the apocalyptic imagery that has been used by many of the first responders, and by those brave souls in the thick of the bushfires and the ‘devilishly twisted’ pyrocumulus clouds, is not an exaggeration. Where within minutes day turns to pitch black and the sun to blood red. Desolation, an awful word which denotes emptiness and destruction, utterly describes the blackened and ashen landscape. To date we have lost over 10 million hectares compared with the correspondingly calamitous Siberian fires of 2019 where 2.7 million hectares were lost. This gives some idea of the far-reaching catastrophe. As a dear friend from Europe also wrote to me only last night, these are indeed, "apocalyptic realities".

These few paragraphs, primarily written for my colleagues and friends overseas, are not a discussion on climate change.[5] This is not the time for such a discussion however urgent it surely is. This time will come over the next weeks and months when people are safely back into their homes, when the injured have been healed, and when our dead very sadly, have been laid to rest by their loved ones.[6] Rather, I wish to speak and share some thoughts on the ANZAC spirit of Australians (endurance, courage, initiative, discipline, mateship) born in the battlefields of Gallipoli, a legacy of one of the bloodiest World War One engagements.[7] This Aussie spirit, as “tough as goat’s knees” it is said, is also evidenced in peacetimes during periods of natural disasters of which our country is no stranger. Not only ravaging fires but also catastrophic cyclones. Older Australians would no doubt still remember the devastation of the tropical storm, Cyclone Tracy, which smashed into the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory on Christmas Eve of 1974. Australians all over the country responded with incredible speed.[8] Much of this benevolence quiet and anonymous. It is true we are not to be ultimately defined by what we possess, but by what we are able to give. Nothing is insignificant, all things touch upon the eternal.

This same spirit of ‘mateship’, the Anzac ‘attitude’ if I might call it, is being displayed in abundance during these terrifying hours. Volunteer firefighters [and certainly many other essential services volunteers] together with their professional workmates threw the timetable out the window and laboured through darkened days and spectral nights to not only save the lives of their neighbours but also their homes and properties.[9] A number of these firefighters having already suffered personal tragedy of their own. Our own Rural Fire Services (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons who has been a bastion of support and of clear reason throughout these many days, had lost his own firefighting father in a hazard-reduction burn which turned wrong years earlier. Neighbours with no fire experience fighting spot fires on each other’s homes and properties, people opening up their homes to feed and to quench the homeless, truckies driving many, many hours to drop off food supplies and water to the little towns cut off from distribution routes, local communities and clubs opening their doors to those who were in need of shelter and comfort, people putting together essential survival parcels. Here too, I must mention the many reporters who risked their own lives to update us from the front line. These are all people from different walks of life testifying to good deeds of bravery, courage, and compassion.[10] Faith-communities as well have engaged in special prayer services and supported those in need of spiritual succour. Many gifts, too, have come from overseas and for these gifts we thank you. They are very important. Typical of this generosity is Pink’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar donation which made headlines here in Oz and inspired many others from both the entertainment and sports communities to get on board.

Credit: Jimboomba Police

Of course, we cannot forget the dreadful plight of our animals. A large group of this wildlife unique to this continent. A video of troops of kangaroos escaping the fires says much more than I could justly describe.[11] A rough estimate is around 480 million animal life lost. [12] Including large populations of our beloved kangaroos and koalas. Who can forget those extraordinary images of distressed koalas in dire need of water approaching people.[13] This great number of animal loss does not include “insects, bats or frogs.” It is estimated that in all likelihood even this huge total is an underestimation. The implications of all this to ecosystems, our biological community, is another subject altogether.

These marvellous acts of humanity, sweet-scented as they are, with such heroic mettle and backbone of steel, are of course not only common to my fellow Australians. Other countries face their own devastations and have suffered and conquered through similar tribulations. People are much nobler than what we might normally give them credit for. There are far more ‘angels’ in the world than the opposite which the popular media would normally lead us to believe. Good deeds which move the heart, even “that someone lay down his life for his friends” (Jn.15:13) or deep expressions of compassion [lit. ‘to suffer with’] from ordinary people doing extraordinary things, will rarely make the headlines. It takes such devastations for the greatness of the human spirit to warrant attention. Even now, acts of love and charity move and abound daily about us. Otherwise it would not take too long for our world to ground to a complete halt.

We will ‘regenerate’, it is what we do best. It is what this inimitable land, this “sunburnt country”, with all its natural beauty and untreated harshness, has taught us. To regenerate, is to restore. This enduring is also the ageless story of our indigenous Australians and we have much to learn from them when it comes to the wisdom of land management. That is, putting our ear to the ground and ‘deep listening to the earth’. New and vigorous life, like the uniquely Australian grass trees [the Xanthorrhoea], will return to our burnt places. Our spirits will revive and rekindle. And what is ashen now will once more turn to forest green.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2013/dec/01/history-bushfires-australia-interactive

[2] http://www.lesmurray.org/pm_lsf.htm

[3] https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bushfire-refugees-and-injured-wildlife-escape-mallacoota-armageddon-20200103-p53ojo.html

[4] https://www.9news.com.au/national/nsw-bushfires-south-coast-man-forced-to-defend-family-home-from-inside-firestorm/16cdd92e-3508-4990-bf20-53170fec72a8

[5] https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

[6] https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/what-we-know-so-far-on-the-nsw-and-victorian-bushfires/news-story/9e0268f8b13102c57370df951a6d1483

[7] https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac-day/traditions

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Tracy

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uavHvY7KPXw

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ST_n0_L7dc

[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUGvay_E4s

[12] https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/01/03/a-statement-about-the-480-million-animals-killed-in-nsw-bushfire.html

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwf9yQhYVrA

Random Thoughts (2)

It hurts too much to truly love, more deeply than the greatest betrayal, so we define love in the most absurd and mundane terms, forever failing to understand its ‘terrifying’ and unyielding power.

Do not put off the giving of your charity or the forgiving of your enemy for the day after tomorrow. With the blink of an eye your universe could go dark. And an opportunity forever lost to carry some small piece of light over to the other side.

You will be robbed of many things, childhood dreams and secret labors. The goal however was not the result of these things, but the response to these losses. This was the real purpose which deep down you always knew.

It is all too normal to oftentimes confuse romantic love with fleshly desire. There is common ground between the two, the longing and the lust. More truthfully it is the fear of dying alone in those depressing places which we dread too much to ponder on.

Hunger and thirst are the primary movers [and then afterwards the Creator if we should find some spare moments to reflect upon the divine], all else are choices with which we seek to define ourselves to the world for its crowns of dust.

We are by our nature both political and religious beings, it is how we are ‘wired’ and as much we might try to wash these innate inclinations away, it is not possible so we scrub and scour and still the ‘stains’ will remain.

Every time we silence our true voice we die a little more, like a beautiful song drawing quickly to its end.

If you have two friends rejoice daily. If you have three weep and fall to your knees. Blessed, blessed that you are.

Next to war there is no greater destructive consequence than our idolizing of other human beings, the ‘personality cult’. The elevating of another person to ‘star’ or ‘celebrity’ status is not only the beginning of the destruction of that person, but also reduces the giver of that status themselves. And is not the cause of all war the personality cult in the first place?

I will see light to the extent that I walk in the Light; I will walk in the darkness to the degree that what I do contradicts the truth which has been revealed to me. And it is the accumulation of these contradictions which can ultimately become our greatest ‘stumbling block’.

We are to be judged with how we have responded to the Light with our conscience “bearing witness” to the integrity of our thoughts and actions (Rom. 2:15). So be delighted enough to allow for each heart to discover its own path and its own way home. But you must remain faithful to that which was set aside only for you from the beginning.

The most beautiful things will remain hidden, the flower with the heavenly aroma hidden in the rocky cleft of the highest alp, the greatest poem forever lost in the draw of a demolished bedroom, the profoundest music not put down on paper, the most incomprehensible sacrifices seen only by guardian angels.

Your brother and sister, your next door neighbor, despite the violence and the suffering which we witness each evening on our television sets, they are by their very nature good people. There are far more ‘righteous’ people in the world than there are ‘unrighteous’. Have you asked a stranger for a cup of water and have been given a cup of stones?

Enlightenment is not a mysterious process available only to an elect group of people. We have without need complicated it with the passing of time. The first and perhaps most challenging step towards enlightenment, is to desire it in the first place. That is, to find ‘meaningfulness’ in that very moment.

I know how deeply you are suffering, but hold on a little more. This, too, it will pass. You have travelled far to reach this place and measured many distances upon this earth. For the present, for now, this is where you must be.

Nothing is insignificant, all acts and all things, touch upon the eternal.

I am neither more decent nor any more devout than you. And so I must all the time remind myself of this apocalypse by committing it to words.

MGM

Random Thoughts

In the first instance some random thoughts to myself:

Oh sweetest Jesus to exist in that moment when we act and are moved by selfless love alone.

Pure self-love is to practise compassion on your dying self.

Pure selfless love is difficult to practise because like light it reveals all which is not clean in our hearts. For a season this divine disclosure can hurt more than physical pain.

We shall be given a second chance to embrace the magnificence of humility as our death draws near. Let us hope our deaths are not sudden.

Few things are more beneficial for the soul than to pray for our adversaries that they might outlive and outshine us, but it is not easy and the revelation of that hour might disappear for many years.

We cannot practise love or any of the virtues outside our encounter with the other. Your spouse, your neighbour, the brother or sister at the check-out counter, the cook in the café, and particularly those who might will us harm.

Vengeance clouds the mind and is a sure step to a catastrophe. It has nothing to do with justice.

It is oftentimes more difficult to forgive ourselves than to forgive those who have trespassed against us. Outside our Creator nobody knows the depth and extent of our transgressions better than I who has committed them. So we continue to unnecessarily punish ourselves and without mercy.

It is a temptation which goes under many names, to dismiss the spiritual insights of those outside our own community of believers, but in so doing we would hold to no account the beckoning call of the Holy Ghost to all His children.

If we cannot acknowledge the Creator in the presence of our brother and sister through acts of charity and mercy, we would have accomplished nothing even if we should have gained the whole world.

Hold no high expectations from people, and particularly from those nearest to you, for similarly to you they are struggling and fighting to survive. This is one of the surest ways to peace, to recollect and to reflect upon our shared moral infirmity. To meditate upon our common brokenness.

It is important to remember the distinction between solitude [which is good] and isolation [which is bad]. Such is the difference as is between angels and demons. There can be community in solitude, but not in isolation.

Do not be deceived by those sleek presentations which promise fast paths to ‘inner knowledge’. In the beginning the path to inner knowledge is strewn with difficulties and it can be offending and brutal. At the start it is not at all comely to look at. Few would want to have anything to do with it.

The search for truth does not end, it starts afresh from a higher vantage point as revelation increases. We must be careful that ‘truth’ does not become our comfortable resting bed.

Belief comes before faith, like prayer comes before the heart which doubts.

Philosophy cannot teach us how to pray or to offer up ourselves as a living sacrifice. But prayer can reveal the truth of philosophy to us.

Truth and interior silence are synonyms. Noise is the great enemy.

Ego and pride will be the last to go. “Who am I?” When you are gone the world will go on without you. Who will weep for you?

Hope is not an illusion or a fantasy. I can place my trust in hope but not in an illusion or a fantasy.

The most useful tears are those that dry like herbs.

Despair, too, like all things, it will pass. It is not who you are, it is a response to those painful things which presently surround you. 

To practise discernment is to recognise that alongside the dumbfounding beauty of the world there also exists dreadful wickedness. And then to be able to judge well between the two.

To contemplate upon the great mystery of existence, and to look inwardly to discover that Creation has not stopped. You are aflame with stardust.

Compassion is the key to unlocking the deeper mysteries of love.

Gift your neighbour the benefit of the doubt and a thousand lives will be saved.

MGM