Stewardship

I sit sipping a late morning coffee. Looking out through the shading trees, the blue of sky and sea mingle.

I have read a couple of pages of Pete Hay‘s book ‘Vandiemonian Essays’ and am pondering the question he poses (first asked of him by Barry Lopez) of whether or not Tasmania is the custodian of an important truth, one which the entire world will one day need.

I came here 18 years ago for just a year but stayed on for the simple reason that I felt Tasmania did offer something. The ensuing years have been an attempt by me to understand what it is.

Am I any closer to this understanding? Let me just say this: when the weather is benign like today, the wind soft and the air warm and birds flicker through the green, I can just begin to tease out a faint voice coming through the land.

Today, I could use everyone’s ears and heart to help me listen.

With the sound of war circling the globe, it is getting noisier and I am growing afraid. With the sound of governments willing the destruction of this earth and of its children, I am afraid the voice that I am only just now beginning to decipher will be lost under a pile of debris of our collective making.

Will this truth be lost forever? Or, just harder to get at?

Will it ebb slowly into silence with each ancient rain forest tree cut down; with each child’s death accepted as collateral damage?

Or, will the voice of the land always be there for us, waiting with generational patience until we are whole enough again to hear its message?