Reciprocity & the Resentment-Denial Dance
Blog by Valerie This week I am moving through some grief. I had known that a friendship would end had been observing it fade away for a while, and I was hoping it would just fade and drift gracefully into…
Category Culture
Healing Whiteness Trauma
Blog by Valerie “The first step in liquidating a people…is to erase its memory…Before long a nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.”—Milan Kundera Whether you are…
Thanks-Giving at Solstice
Blog by Valerie A few months ago somewhere in the outback around Broken Hill, I experienced a spiritual lightning strike inside. Something in me died, an old dream (maybe it was always a lie), and its energy has been emerging…
My Jewish experience
Blog by Valerie A few weeks ago I was watching a couple of rabbis and their wives driving around Australia looking for Jewish people. They said throughout history Jews have been hunted down by persecutors, so now they’re hunting down…
On Climate Change
Blog by Lukas Dear Greta, I admire your fire and passion, and your courage to take on so much of the world’s attention. Whether this attention be loving, ambivalent, or hostile, the sheer weight of it is no doubt burdensome,…
Earthly nourishment
Blog by Valerie All Law-breaking comes from that first evil thought, “I am greater-than,” that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people. Tyson Yunkaporta The above quote is the definition of “unsustainable” to me. I…
Earth Ethos child development
Blog by Valerie Some studies of newborns suggest that humans’ most fundamental need is to be part of a culture, to engage with their social environment and try to make sense of their surroundings. It can be helpful to conceptualise…
Anglo-Celtic Australian identity
Blog by Lukas One of the hardest things about being an Anglo-Celtic Australian is not having a culture that gives deep meaning, context, and guidance to the struggles of my life. The stories of Anglo-Celtic Australian resilience I was fed as…
Altars, Shrines & Power Objects
Blog by Valerie I am delighted to hear from people having success working with ancestral altars and have been asked to write more generally about altar and shrine practices. I will also talk about power objects. Starting with etymology, “altar” is…
Existential Wounds
Blog by Valerie Existential wounds seem to occur more often for those of us with multi-cultural, immigrant, and colonial heritage. When we are (or our ancestors were) forcibly moved, forced to adopt unfamiliar cultural practices of spiritual worship, live in…