One lovely and pertinent story that was told at our recent University Chaplains annual conference came from Aboriginal scholar Nerida Blair. She had been trying to recover lost aboriginal culture of a Nation in the north coast on New South Wales. But all seemed lost forever – language, artifacts, history…

One day she was talking with renowned Australian landscape photographer, Ken Duncan, who lives up that way. She was conveying her sense of loss and frustration at the complete annihilation of that once Nation. Ken quietly said to her: “Sit in country and it will tell you its story.”

I wonder whether, in our culture of the quick fix, we do enough sitting. I wonder whether we give our ‘country’ the opportunity to speak to us – at least to give us perspective about what is really of value, what we can hold and what we can let go, what really matters and what is ephemeral.