What sustains us?
Driving through the sweeping plains of western NSW after fresh rain is an extraordinary experience. Paddocks that only days before were parched and dry are suddenly wet and muddy, and already smelling of fresh, new life.
Driving country roads often means driving in the Long Paddock. The Long Paddock is the name given to the corridor through which Australian cattlemen and women (drovers) move stock from one place to another. It’s one huge, long, fenced paddock along the side of many roads.
A journey through the Long Paddock draws focus to a seemingly endless invitation. It is an invitation to reflect and see and be thoroughly amazed in the constant present, as you move into what lies ahead. Few country folk would consider themselves particularly spiritual people, but many hold a worldview that reflects a sound grasp of some of the essentials you’d want to associate with authentic living.
A deeply spiritual person is usually also a deeply authentic person and there is something about living in country Australia that nurtures, in many people, a truly grounded, unique, and honest capacity for living authentically. Driving through the Long Paddocks hones a sense of place and presence and draws us right up close to a glimpse of a unique spirituality. Though many of them mightn’t recognise it, there are country people who understand intuitively what great theologians like Karl Rahner know: that the future is in the hands of our mystics. In the hands of those visionaries who have taken the time to feel their connectedness to all living things and the created world itself.
Insights offered by the wisest of spiritual leaders across so many cultural traditions point to the need for us to return to the experience of authentic life, to the reality of the extraordinary living deep within the ordinariness of life. Mystics believe that it is within the grasp of human experience to have direct experiential knowledge of our oneness with each other.
For many Australians, this is a reality that is known deeply, though it is rarely spoken of. People tend to trust those who have ‘walked the walk’. The people of many remote, rural places have often walked the walk. Those who have done it tough and remained grounded in life’s goodness hold firm to an experience of connectedness with their community.
They know something of what sustains us when the rubber hits the road. They often know what it is to be abandoned, to live in towns where banks, clubs and churches have closed. Many people of remoteness know we need the pragmatism of grounded, compassionate responses to the realities and challenges of our times.
For Australians, the belief that there is an authentic spirit in our living is an integral part of the human experience, and it is alive in the landscape in a way that has never been in doubt. Faith in these communities, in these places, has never been measured by bums on seats. The fact that life in this landscape is often so totally hard and heartbreaking is a fact of life.
There is no room for denial out back, no time for platitudes. Things are what they are, and one has to deal with it. The land, the climate, the heat, the drought, the floods, the flies dominate. The emphasis is always on what is happening, and what matters.
A spirituality of the Long Paddock knows to be cautious, sceptical. It knows about sacrifice and is used to suffering. The faith people hold is utilitarian and the hope that sustains them is everywhere, and within, at the same time. The faithful of the outback know the paradox of change and constancy. Authentic life out there is often more a matter of finding the life and energy from within the experience itself; hope is a part of the psyche of the land because it’s had to be. Life in rural Australia does what it needs to do to feed and nurture itself and others, it does what has to be done when it needs to be done.
And it loves to laugh. It laughs at itself, and at its own inadequacies and limitations. It laughs at futile attempts to alter the course of happenings and of time. It laughs at flies, at snakes coiled up in outback dunnies, cunning old cattle dogs, and buggered-up utes. It hits itself with a wet fish when it needs to get serious, and it is always sharp - even though it might seem to be slow.
We might just discover that it is in this vast, apparent emptiness that new life is waiting, and that great wisdom is ready to be shared for all. The Long Paddock speaks with a prophetic voice for the future of our world. It asks the questions many others have yet to articulate. It offers the pragmatic adjustments that need to be thought about and, most marvellous of all, it draws us back to the mystical heart of our lives and challenges us to experience connectedness in what is happening now. It calls us to get real and get on with it.
A journey through the Long Paddock is a must, as we reach for the map we need to navigate our way through tough times.
If we’re looking for what matters in our country, if we want to take a good, hard, long look at our culture and ask ourselves what matters most, then we might need to do some Long Paddock thinking ourselves.