Sunday School

Lands of the Awabakal people.

My good friend Leanne, whose faith I do not share but who shares my own love of nature, told me recently that the church she loves best is the church of the sky and the forest.

I think I already guessed this about her, but it made me reflect on my own worship - of tree and of river, of sea and stone and mountain. It made me think too of long nights of ceremony, years ago now in a distant desert with the traditional owners of that land, and the sound of ancient songs sung by firelight beneath the slowly whirling stars.

Meg has told me, too, that I am myself at my best out there in a desert - or on a mountain, by a river or in amongst the trees, so it was Sunday today and the first sun after a week of rain and I grabbed my bike and pedalled out to a place where I could listen to the world and feel like the infinitesimal element of it that I am.

It wasn’t all that far away and I soon found the latest version of a track I have known, in various forms, since I was a child. It leads down through a little rainforest filled valley, past a waterfall or two, to the ocean. I slid to a halt, locked my bike to a fence in the latest version of the carpark, and headed out to see what I could sea…

And this is what I found.

Come with me?

Where I ended up….

Sunday School

This

was the world

not waiting for me

but being itself, patiently,

not caring what day I thought it might be.

The view from above

This

was the land

wedding itself

to the sea with a gift of

water, wrung from the hills, secretly.

Onto

the beach

under the sky -

each cloud palpable -

a symbol, a portent, a parable.

Over

the ocean -

that endless story -

articulated on the tongue

of the sand, each wave a syllable.