Principles and Disciples
Principles and Disciples
Though all these men are long dead, the principles of their frontier remain latent for Victoria. These proto-Australian principles survive, like the foundations of the Kingdom of God in the teachings of Christ and His church: 1. a planting of a seminal identity that is made germinal in the more or less distant past; 2. now, a fraught ordeal of nurture, growth and development of that new and living plantation of identity and character in the present; then, 3. finally, hope in a fulfilment of this hybrid being, in our Australian (or Christian) identity in a fuller becoming yet to be. I have never heard a historian speak of ‘Holy Australia’ in the way Russians do of their Slavic Lands, or Jews do of Israel, but, maybe such a way of thinking has a possible validity, at least in poetic spirit[1] -if we are to look towards a more reconciled future in terms of greater being, of better belonging, of embrace and definition in a largesse of truer identities and loves. I use ‘embrace’ in a hermeneutic using Miraslav Volf’s[2] formulation of ‘Exclusion and Embrace’ in analysing the dialectic of polar choices in any frontier event. This adaptive hermeneutic broaches questions of Race, Identity & Otherness in terms of Reconciliation.[3]
That Robertson survived the paradoxes and chasms of the frontier divide, and flourished, is probably an indication that he did not go so far as the other three mentioned, in their going out towards the other on that cross-cultural divide. Possibly Batman and Gellibrand and almost all of the Aborigines went too far! That the early Robertson’s native or ‘pre-aristocratic goodwill’ was short lived tells us enough. I only begin with Robertson because he was a catalyst in our acts and stories of Gellibrand, Batman and Buckley and the Aborigines. It was romance, that special naive quality of frontier that allows a return to the simples and basics of deeper human curiosity. Robertson from then on represents the mixed feelings in the ongoing history of Victoria since the frontier. He, like his wider settler society, often turned back to be more monochrome[4], to be culturally monolithic, attempting, after the baptism of the frontier, to go back to being ‘British’ -and failed, - yet, by exaggeration, seemed so as time increased them.
[1] James McAuley’s ‘Captain Quiros’ sets the South Pacific ‘Australia del Espiritu Santu’ scene for an ‘Australia of the Holy Spirit. Collected Poems.
[2] Miraslav Volf: 1992. Exclusion and Embrace: Theological reflections in The Wake Of Ethnic Cleansing. ‘Liberation theologians taught us to place the themes of oppression and liberation at the center of theological reflection. ... Nothing should make us forget these lessons, for the "preferential option for the poor" is rooted deeply in biblical traditions. But the categories of oppression and liberation are by themselves inadequate to address the Balkan conflict - or, indeed, the problems in the world at large today. ...The categories of oppression and liberation seem ill-suited to bring about the resolution of conflicts between people and people groups. I suggest that the categories of "exclusion and embrace" as two paradigm responses to otherness can do a better job. They need to be placed at the center of a theological reflection on otherness, an endeavor I would like to term a "theology of embrace." p 24
[3] Miraslav Volf: 1996. Exclusion and Embrace: Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation
[4] Miroslav Volf ‘Theological Reflections on the Wake of Ethnic Cleansing.’ ‘An embrace is a "sacrament” of a catholic personality. It mediates and affirms the interiority of the other in me, my complex identity that includes the other, a unity with the other that is both maternal (substantial) and paternal (symbolic) - and still something other than either. ...The others - other persons or cultures - are not filth that we collect as we travel these earthly roads. Filth is rather our own mono-chrome identity, which is nothing else but the sin of exclusion at cognitive and voluntative levels - a refusal to recognize that the others have already broken in through the enclosure of ourselves and unwillingness to make a "movement of effacement by which the self makes itself available to others. In the presence of the divine Trinity, we need to strip down the drab gray of our own self - enclosed selves and cultures and embrace others so that their bright colors, painted on our very selves, will begin to shine.’ pp 22
Though all these men are long dead, the principles of their frontier remain latent for Victoria. These proto-Australian principles survive, like the foundations of the Kingdom of God in the teachings of Christ and His church: 1. a planting of a seminal identity that is made germinal in the more or less distant past; 2. now, a fraught ordeal of nurture, growth and development of that new and living plantation of identity and character in the present; then, 3. finally, hope in a fulfilment of this hybrid being, in our Australian (or Christian) identity in a fuller becoming yet to be. I have never heard a historian speak of ‘Holy Australia’ in the way Russians do of their Slavic Lands, or Jews do of Israel, but, maybe such a way of thinking has a possible validity, at least in poetic spirit[1] -if we are to look towards a more reconciled future in terms of greater being, of better belonging, of embrace and definition in a largesse of truer identities and loves. I use ‘embrace’ in a hermeneutic using Miraslav Volf’s[2] formulation of ‘Exclusion and Embrace’ in analysing the dialectic of polar choices in any frontier event. This adaptive hermeneutic broaches questions of Race, Identity & Otherness in terms of Reconciliation.[3]
That Robertson survived the paradoxes and chasms of the frontier divide, and flourished, is probably an indication that he did not go so far as the other three mentioned, in their going out towards the other on that cross-cultural divide. Possibly Batman and Gellibrand and almost all of the Aborigines went too far! That the early Robertson’s native or ‘pre-aristocratic goodwill’ was short lived tells us enough. I only begin with Robertson because he was a catalyst in our acts and stories of Gellibrand, Batman and Buckley and the Aborigines. It was romance, that special naive quality of frontier that allows a return to the simples and basics of deeper human curiosity. Robertson from then on represents the mixed feelings in the ongoing history of Victoria since the frontier. He, like his wider settler society, often turned back to be more monochrome[4], to be culturally monolithic, attempting, after the baptism of the frontier, to go back to being ‘British’ -and failed, - yet, by exaggeration, seemed so as time increased them.
[1] James McAuley’s ‘Captain Quiros’ sets the South Pacific ‘Australia del Espiritu Santu’ scene for an ‘Australia of the Holy Spirit. Collected Poems.
[2] Miraslav Volf: 1992. Exclusion and Embrace: Theological reflections in The Wake Of Ethnic Cleansing. ‘Liberation theologians taught us to place the themes of oppression and liberation at the center of theological reflection. ... Nothing should make us forget these lessons, for the "preferential option for the poor" is rooted deeply in biblical traditions. But the categories of oppression and liberation are by themselves inadequate to address the Balkan conflict - or, indeed, the problems in the world at large today. ...The categories of oppression and liberation seem ill-suited to bring about the resolution of conflicts between people and people groups. I suggest that the categories of "exclusion and embrace" as two paradigm responses to otherness can do a better job. They need to be placed at the center of a theological reflection on otherness, an endeavor I would like to term a "theology of embrace." p 24
[3] Miraslav Volf: 1996. Exclusion and Embrace: Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation
[4] Miroslav Volf ‘Theological Reflections on the Wake of Ethnic Cleansing.’ ‘An embrace is a "sacrament” of a catholic personality. It mediates and affirms the interiority of the other in me, my complex identity that includes the other, a unity with the other that is both maternal (substantial) and paternal (symbolic) - and still something other than either. ...The others - other persons or cultures - are not filth that we collect as we travel these earthly roads. Filth is rather our own mono-chrome identity, which is nothing else but the sin of exclusion at cognitive and voluntative levels - a refusal to recognize that the others have already broken in through the enclosure of ourselves and unwillingness to make a "movement of effacement by which the self makes itself available to others. In the presence of the divine Trinity, we need to strip down the drab gray of our own self - enclosed selves and cultures and embrace others so that their bright colors, painted on our very selves, will begin to shine.’ pp 22
posted by Wayne D Knoll | 5:32 PM
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