Lighting the Dark part II

It was over a year and a half ago that Biz and I attended the first Light the Dark in Sydney and I blogged about it Lighting the Dark part I.

Here we are again, just beyond sunset at the feet of skyscrapers in Hyde Park under a sparse canopy of fig trees lit from below by the glow of 10,000 people holding candles. We are here this time in response to the death of little Aylan (the picture of the boy on that beach in Turkey). I am here because I don't know where else to be or what else to do.

The first time I came across the image of Aylan, the agency reporting it had a disclaimer under the heading warning of pictures of a graphic nature. I skipped past the image. Five minutes later it was all over social media and I saw it again and again though I did not wish to. I wasn't sure if I should be resentful towards those shoving the image in my face. Was it an invasion of a very private moment – what should be more private than one's death? Or was it a good thing because as that picture swept around the world it became harder to ignore the devastating loss of innocence and the plight of his people.

We seem to need a human story to rally around. The story of Aylan is just such – a visceral one as it reaches beyond our desensitisation and haunts us. The speakers here at Light the Dark refer to his story. Father Rod Bower speaks eloquently to his story and how it speaks to us in our shame. He asks us to look into the flickering flames of light that we hold and he shares a poem written by Ken Morris.

Father Rod Bower

sometimes a life goes out
marked in the dust of memory by
pale sad trembling lovers
and old men who weep
for loss and the passing of things
setting an unfilled place
at the table each night
this tiny red bud
of life went out
alone
in dark water


I stare into the flame and imagine it snuffed out. I stare into the flame and let the words of the poem wash through me. The poem goes on, beautiful and sad...go here for the Full poem of 'Aylan' and a reading of it by Father Rod Bower And in the stillness we listen and reflect together as the final stanzas echo out.

the hands that picked him up
were warm
and all the earth sobbed
for the loss of him
that we felt
to the burning magma heart
of our shame
we will remember aylan
tiny bright sad perfect
alone
forever sleeping
on a beach
at the shores of us 

But his story is one of many. And while our government talks about taking in Syrian refugees, which I welcome. And yet there is a hollowness to the gesture when refugees, children included, sit in detention centres just off our shores and are cruelly and routinely dehumanised. Aylan took a boat, had he survived, would he be welcome here? If stopping the boats is so vital then as the Premier Mike Baird said "stopping the boats can't be where this ends, it is surely where humanitarianism begins."

I didn't vote for him – but yes even Mike Baird gets a round of applause here at Light the Dark and I join in. He is right and I wish he'd go further in stating very loudly that unless we provide a process and a place for refugees to find safety and dignity then we have done nothing bar let them die elsewhere – out of sight, out of mind. Well the story of Aylan is in the sight and in the mind of many, not just those that are here tonight. Us 10,000 here are but a small representation of those of us who care. There are more at home unable to come, there are more in other cities holding their own Light the Dark. As many of us as there are I fear that there are just as many who do not support welcoming refugees.

How does this all sit with those that want the borders closed I wonder? They need a story to rally around as well. But their story is built on the demonising and dehumanising of the other. That is how we discuss the response to asylum seekers in this country. They spout the rhetoric that labels such people as 'illegals' and a threat to their vision of what our society should look like. There has to be an enemy. If they were ever to totally vanquish this enemy they have created how awkward would it be for them to then look around at a society that still didn't meet their ideological vision? Their ideology would be naked without their enemy – sickly pasty white, gluttonous and covered in sores. This is why I am uncomfortable with more bombing, more warmongering and offshore detention with no end in sight.
 

Imagine a world without borders

I am here tonight because I don't where else to be or what else to do. I am overwhelmed and angry and sad. I don't want to hate on my fellow Australians that I don't agree with. I don't want an outdated tribalism leading our Nation to pour funds into Border Force or Border Patrol or whatever they're calling it this week.

Father Rod's finishes speaking by saying, “May your God bless you and if you don't have a god may you bless one another”. Soon after It finishes. We stay with many though, friendly looking people, gentle people, seated on damp grass near a makeshift shrine to Aylan.

thanks to Biz for the pictures

I ponder Father Rod's words and his quoting of Richard Rohr that “We don't think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking”. How do we live ourselves into this new way in this divided Nation? How do we heal the brokeness of Australia's heart and soul? How can we hope to see the scenes like those in Germany and Austria who have learnt their lessons from a fascist history where the people welcome refugees with flowers and stuffed toys and smiles? That is what I long for.