Photo: dreamstime.com
Tomorrow, January 26, is “Australia Day” a slap in the face to our Indigenous people who remember it as Invasion Day. It is supposed to be a national holiday to commemorate the founding of Australia (as a white colony) under the British realm. I would rather we celebrated our so called nationhood in line with the federation of Australia and found other ways to be more united in a commonly agreed set of values and purpose. In another sense, I am not committed to any flag, I am however, committed to people irrespective of status, colour, religion and creed. In my view flags, nationalism and patriotism are dangerous, and the proof of that is in the daily news!
“Mounting an expedition to actualise a Compassionate Commonwealth of all peoples … is the great spiritual challenge of our time.” Sam Keen
But The Earth Laughs
Someone planted a flag and watered it
with jingoism and platitudes that
had no real connection to anything
let alone meaning
in the truest sense of the word,
people made pious statements and swooned
as if the earth might clap with joy
at the sound of our own voices,
exulting over our claims,
but the earth laughs at us as a
parent laughs at a child who thinks it knows,
until the child grows and
poisons the soil with nationalism,
worse, it murders unity with patriotism
and life wilts before us in
borders, walls and detention
where no one is safe,
and words become blades that
wound and butcher
for the mere sense of a date
or the colour of skin,
and yet we skilfully wallpaper death
like nothing is wrong
and we raise champagne to a
beautiful monied lie,
that fiction of ownership,
that we own what we do not own
be it mountains,
or be it myths and legends.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
