Principal
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
Dorothea Mackellar wrote the emblematic poem ‘My Country’ over 100 years ago and various verses and stanzas are often quoted. Her poem speaks to the natural beauty of Australia but also its hardness and challenge through which we must prevail.
Her reference to ‘flood’ comes easily to mind given the events in South East Queensland this past week. We continue to be very mindful of the many people still significantly impacted by the rain event and flooding and we continue to hold them in our thoughts and prayers. This applies to the wider community as well as to some of our own families who have been flood affected. We are also mindful of the people of northern New South Wales who are now also experiencing severe floods.
‘Fire’ comes less readily to mind at this time but we only have to cast our minds back just over two years to the horrific scenes of devastation wrought by fires particularly in the South-eastern corner of Australia. In the wake of those fires ashes covered great tracts of the country. Recently, I heard a radio report where there was discussion of the regeneration of the countryside in those areas that were damaged. Reference was also made to the teeming aquatic life in adjacent waters near Mallacoota and other coastal towns. One of the environmental experts talked about the importance of the ashes and how they ultimately brought about the regeneration of the environment. This resonates with Mackellar’s poetry and the ‘veil of greenness’ that can follow flood and fire.
At the time of writing this, I have just come from our Ash Wednesday service where the distribution of the Ashes was the focus. In this context, ashes have a powerful and symbolic religious meaning. I share the following excerpt from an article written by Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ which explores this theme in the context of Lent:
The symbolism of Ash Wednesday is strong and stark. In the Catholic Church, it marks the beginning of Lent when churches traditionally change their appearance. Vestments and altar cloths change from white or green to a sober purple. Statues are covered in purple and flowers disappear from the altar. Taken together with practices such as fasting and other acts of self-denial, they define Lent as a time of austerity. It fits naturally with austere and straitened times and moods in public life – with war, for example, bushfires, COVID-19 …
Ashes themselves are a powerful symbol. They are the remains of destruction by fire. They remind us of the loss of wealth, power, status or health that comes with age, defeat or social change … Ashes remind us of the insecurity of lives, the transient glories of power, wealth and intelligence, the human capacity for savagery beneath a veneer of civilisation, the death and dissolution that come to all human beings, and the seriousness of the call to conversion. These are the themes of Lent.
Ashes are also a symbol of the seasonal regeneration that follows burning. After bushfires tree trunks remain black and leave marks on us if we brush against them. Green shoots, however, gradually emerge from ashes and sprout from blackened tree branches. In the forest death yields to life. That, of course, is also the whole point of Lent. Its ashes do not have the last word. Life continues, regenerates, and spreads from the ashes. In the Christian story the ash of bare and sinful humanity reflects the love that leads God to share the ashes of our life, the humiliation of dying naked on a cross, and to rise green from the ashes.
The ashes of Lent look forward to the green and spreading vine of Easter by which in Christ we are received into the happiness of the kingdom of God.
While it may be difficult to do so perhaps we can consider this dreadful flood in the same spirit. We hope and pray that beneath the mud and flooding waters there lies the green shoots of regeneration and new life of nature. Equally, that beneath muddied faces and troubled lives there are the green shoots of resilience and determination to overcome that marks the character of Australians..
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
Mr Peter Fullagar
Principal
