Remembering Bali

Today I wandered down to a favourite place of mine - North Coogee headland, now named Dolphin point after the local footy team which was all but wiped out in the 2002 Bali terrorist bombings.

It's a spiritual place, I feel. The headland juts out into the sea; at its foot a jagged heap of huge fallen sandstone rocks, once the forefront of the cliff face. Testament to how even the mighty will be eventually fallen; by the ebbs and flows of the inexorable tides of life and death.

The salt sea winds tug at my hair, clearing my head; blowing away my fears and worries, carrying them off on the cries of gulls, soothing them in the relentless sushushing of the waves.

Below me, a reconstructed entrance way commemorates the old sea baths that once stood on this headland and now houses a plaque to the fallen at Bali. The archway and the paths remind me of an ancient seaside temple. A little to the side is the (locally) famous fencepost shrine to Our Lady, no longer thronged by black clad Italian matriarchs but well-tended, nonetheless, and replete with statues and candles.

I close my eyes, letting the waves lull me in their timeless liturgy. A Filipino woman asks me if I'm praying. Yes, I answer. But it's not to Our Lady. I've come down here after a health scare to talk a while with that presence I feel so personally, especially here, and which I call "Goddess". Perhaps it's all the same tho'. I'm eclectic and ecumenical or is that easy-going? To me there always seems a hard=edged, bitter and mean-spirited iron in the soul of evangelicals and fundamentalists. I can't see a place for that in the great swirl of livinganddying in which we swim and swarm, each one of us a precious glint in the eye of Being.

A line comes to me, "I am an irridescent scintillation in the undulation of ouroboros"

I watch the waves rise and fall, rolling in towards the beach. A brief froth and foaming then sliding back into the swell and tow. I feel like a brief, oh! so brief frothing of wave, evanescent, transient. A wave for just an instant but the sea forever; water before, during, after. The dewdrop falls into the shining sea. The rainbow serpent eats her tail.

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well, said Mother Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth century mystic.

I've often come down to this spot. During some of my darkest of dark days in the bottomless pit of despair I've sat on this headland letting the sea winds scourge me; soothe me of shame and hopeless despair; smoothe away the deep gougings of pain. And yet, leave them there, somehow, strengthening my joy with a rod of melancholy and humility.

Goddess whispers words of winds and waves, and I am winds and waves whispering her name as I come and go. And all manner of things shall be well.

I turn back. The Bali monument stands before me. I so love this sculpture. Stylistic yet organic, stark yet feminine. Pagan yet universal; speaking, surely to all. It's called "Reclaiming Spirit" and is by Sasha Reid. Three bowed figures interlocked in shared grief and shared support.

Underneath its overarching forms a jar of blossoms left in remembrance has fallen; as others have now, yet again, fallen in senseless terror.

Australia is littered, tragically, with monuments to the fallen of senseless wars. But these were no soldiers, just ordinary, everyday people, unarmed, unknowing, going about ordinary lives as best they could.

I pause and reflect tho' that this has always been so - the senseless slaughter of soldiers is remembered but the senseless slaughter of civilians has never been recorded - until, sadly, so sadly, now.

And I reflect that terror has always had two faces, the ruthlessly fanatical individual with his backpack of explosive and cellphone detonator...and the equally ruthless state and its leaders and generals, raining down cruise missiles and smart bombs.

I wander back through the school holiday throngs, frollicking, carefree. Everyone I see, all of us, it seems, have innocence in our eyes...and blood on our hands.