I live among gum trees and I love it, but they do block out my view of the sky- day and night. If I crane my neck a little to the right I occasionally catch a glimpse of the moon, and if I peer through the laundry window on a clear night there are stars – just a few. My daughter lives in an outer suburb of Melbourne where gum trees are few and far between and city light all but cancel out a starry night sky, but if I sit on the side veranda of her house, ignore the neighbouring fences and roof-lines that box the house in, and look up, the daytime sky is wonderful.
There’s something very dreamy about masses of fluffy clouds, streaks of deep blue sky and far-off birds dipping and gliding in and through invisible wind currents. Sometimes my feet would love to leave the ground and go cloud walking.
Cloud walking is the kind of poetic expression that drives pragmatists mad. It’s all about insatiable desires, huge talents, boundless energy and grandiose possibilities, dreams that we carry in the depths of our souls. It’s about a hunger that nothing seems to satisfy, arising out of a sense that some dimensions of life go beyond what can be neatly packaged into words that hit the spot.
Its religious name is spirituality, something we express in different ways, such as early morning walks with the dog, surfing, bush walking, essential oils and candles, yoga, listening to music, reading or writing poetry, art expressed in a multitude of ways. Even reading romance fiction can be seen as a search for the elusive ’something more’. talk a
Generally speaking, our spirituality is a private matter. Everyday talk is mostly about matters like the weather, politics, sport, health, and the doings of the younger generation. Anything that goes beyond the day to day stuff can be uncomfortable, either to say or even hear. Mentions of God or practices and beliefs that might have a mystical quality about them, can be met with a polite but veiled suspicion that you’re different, possibly depressed, or maybe you’ve ‘got religion’.
Over my lifetime Christian religions have moved from being familial and tribal to something much more individual. I was a Scully, so it was assumed that I had an Irish background and would be a Catholic. I was educated in Catholic schools, my parents belonged to Catholic social clubs and organizations and, generally speaking, relied on the hierarchy to guide them in moral and political matters.
That’s changed, along with everything else that was once familiar practice. Religion, as we used to know it, might have come alive but it can also be lonely. Finding someone to share a cloud walking experience with can be both confidence-shaking as well as risking a friendship.
Cloud walkers are no longer content with a life of outmoded religious externals and the restrictive rules of an institution that has forgotten something. We’ve begun to cloud-walk, taking small, tentative steps into the unexplored depths of what seems ordinary, and we’re finding out that God is already there.
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Judith ( judith@judithscully.com.au)
Words From The Edge 