25^th November 2009

Next day started at 6am for me. I climbed over the side of the creaking bunk trying not to wake the others. With the National Park Visitors Centre being so close to our Shearers Quarters it was not difficult to find a shower. Water was always at a premium so I was quick. To the other side of Quarters stood a large, well-weathered Shearing Shed. It was not made of split timber but in most cases by the whole trunks of numerous local Cyprus pine that once covered the area. The shed had many features, another being that it had been built by Chinese station hands in 1869.While it was covered with a galvanized iron roof that had been battered over the years there was very little metal or steel used in the construction. As I poked around and walked over the timber grated flooring and past gates made of thin saplings I was amazed at the standard of bush craft. I could only imagine the shed's former glory, the noise, the smells and all the activity of the days of mass wool production.

During morning prayers the Lectio Divinia (sacred prayerful reading of scripture) method was explained and a silent time followed as we individually reflected on Jesus temptations in the desert. No doubt the desert is a place of testing. At one point the early explorer Giles saw it as a "God forsaken place, under a divine curse" but it's also a place where the providence of God can be experienced in circumstances where human strength and ability reach their limit. In it's vastness we are made aware of our human frailty and the stark reality that without shelter, food and water, human life comes to an end. As it has been said,

".It reduces people to a naked dependence upon God and recognition of creaturliness as the basis of trusting God."

Jesus was obviously sustained over forty days and nights and it says angels ministered to him. The desert is not a God forsaken place. Indeed in our own personal desert where we are brought to an end of ourselves we are amazingly sustained by the mercy and grace of God.

After lunch, with sun hat, sun screen, water bottle and booklet we walked the Grassland Trail to the lake foreshore. Walking over the clay base of the lake bed we wandered our way through the blue salt bush to the sandy slopes of the lake where the geographical features were explained. Looking east across the lake bed the white sand dunes on the other side of the lake (the lunette) could be seen in the distance. The vast area was once covered with 15 metres of fresh water fed through a series of lakes from the Murrumbidgee, Darling Rivers. A thriving bio diversity and a vegetated landscape fed the mega fauna and a family of giant birds of which the Emu and Cassowary are the only survivors. Aboriginal people were present and in their antiquity, around camp fires they feasted on fresh fish, yabbies and shellfish.

Today aboriginal Christians believe the wholesale rejection of their traditional culture is destructive and unnecessary. The early Celtic church was very culturally friendly toward those whose land they had occupied. Rather than destroy the old pagan ways they gave them a new Christian significance.

From the early centuries of the Christian era, Celtic people in particular (Pelagius, Columba, Eriugena) spoke of the two books of God, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Creation. They spoke of how the two books were held together and how they enriched our understanding of the Trinitarian God, Gods work in salvation history , creation and the whole cosmos itself.

Here at Mungo we had images of rock and sand, the clay of human creation, the starry night sky and the invitation to read the story hidden in the leaves of the Book of Creation. As indigenous people speak of listening to the land, we were invited to read the land as carrying something of the story of ongoing revelation (An important footnote in our booklet pointed out the difference between the heresy of pantheism, which sees everything as God and panentheism which understands that the Spirit of the Creator God is to be found within creation including human beings.)

The 12th National Assembly of the Uniting Church had agreed that aboriginal people had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of Colonisers, the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law' custom and ceremony. This debate now before Synods and regional Presbyteries for ratification became the context that provoked much of my thinking during the Prayer Retreat.

That afternoon I strolled the Gol Gol Foreshore and the ancient landscape where there is still evidence of the remains of what must have once been a huge forest of Cyprus pine.. Battered by time and the exploits of settlers the crumpled remains of these giants dotted the area yet the place was still teaming with life. The red sand, like a sponge, was still drying out from the driving rain of the storm the night before. I had lived a good many years in mallee country but within those sandy red banks I discovered the largest mallee trees I've ever seen and I noticed that the birds were busy gathering seeds also exposed by the storm the night before. Green parrots screeched, warning the bush of my presence and a brown falcon hovering on a thermal watched down from on high. A family of red kangaroos sheltering in the shadow of a tree stood up straight and twitched their ears. There were neatly bored holes in the sand, larger than ants holes that belonged to nocturnal scorpions. The bobbing white tail of a rabbit led me to a warren where brothers, sisters and probably uncles and aunties dwelt in peace. Then there were puddles of rainwater between the salt bush being visited by noisy galahs who frolicked in the shallows. Noisy baby Miner birds pestered their parents to bring them food from flower heads that swayed in the breeze. As I turned to return, there to my surprise between the bush at my feet on the dry lake bed I discovered a hairy stripped caterpillar reaching for a rare blade of green grass. Where had it come from? How had it survived?
I could only conclude that the Spirit of life was well and truly present in the barren isolation of the "Gol Gol Foreshore".

As I walked back towards the Quarters, from the western edge of the lake I passed a sign identifying an aboriginal workshop where the people practised "stone knapping"
to make their tools. Traditional aboriginal spirituality like that of the Old Testament ancients clearly pre-date a revealed faith in Christ alone but I concluded that if the breath of the Spirit was sustaining the life I had witnessed in the desert that afternoon then there was little doubt that the Spirit of life had in some way sustained the generations that had gathered around that sandy open air workshop as all people everywhere are described as God's offspring, (Acts 17.29) created by and in the image of the great Creator God.( Gen 1.27)
The question remained however, "Is the Rainbow Spirit, the powerful snake symbol who forms part of the land and gives life to the land and all living creatures, in part a limited revelation, an extension of the one we know as the Triune God and the Creator Spirit who we are told in Genesis moved over the face of the waters?" Is it legitimate to claim that there is only one culture that is sole custodian of the revelation that leads to the coming Christ?"

Ted Curnow, Lake Mungo Retreat, October 09