Oct 2010
The boat slid through
satiny water to an infinite edge of sea to the breakers beyond. Overhead
ospreys circled; whales glimpsed through laid back leapings and turtles mated
far from shore. I wondered about the name “Whitsundays” (for this is where I
and a colleague and friend was
last week) and I remembered: Whitsunday is the
other name for the day of Pentecost (the 49th day after Easter
Sunday), the Christian feast when the Holy Spirit descended upon the people and
gave them capacity to understand and speak many tongues, join in community, and
celebrate the new church. Whitsunday, or White Sunday, is thus called, for the white ceremonial robes of the
celebrants of this feast - appropriate for the white beaches of these islands.
Central to the idea of the feast is an ability of people to share things
together, to talk and to have a sense of community.
The Whitsundays are a
scattering of approximately 150 handsome islands peeking through the sea
between approximately 20° and 21° south latitude off the
subtropical central Queensland coast. Captain James Cook found these islands in
1770 and named them ‘the Cumberland Islands’ and their passage, the
‘Whitsunday’s Passage,’ because it was the
feast of Pentecost when he sailed among them. The Aboriginal tribe, the Ngaro,
however, knew and explored the richness of these islands for 8,000 years,
paddling in boats made from saplings, bark and fern fronds. I imagine the Ngaro
talked of many things.
Though somewhat a
culturally biased account of things, and I do this in deference to other
cultural experiences, I am moved to write of the elegance of this wondrous place as itself a Whitsunday
experience: of a place where strangers come together, sharing their disparate
experiences in the making contact with one another, and conflating this with
what I experience in my clinical practice.
It always strikes me
as something of a miracle when people from diverse backgrounds can come
together and get on so well. I often find myself really enjoying the presence
of others so very different to me. Listening deeply, a tool of psychotherapy,
isn’t just what makes contact possible, but it is part of it. Such listening situates
the practitioner in a place of present-centredness as well as an exquisite
awareness of self in relation to
the other person. The co-createdness of the relationship is also heeded and
responded to, even played with. There is a dance-like quality to the sharing
and with it, a sense of togetherness and
separateness; feeling states that are like the tense and loose states of
a boat riding Whitsunday waves.
On the boat up north,
my American psychotherapeutic friend and I encountered many people who showed a
delight in talking of their lives to us. These were contacts with people we’ll
probably never see again, and yet – in that short time – we came to know quite
well. It felt to me that the islands were like a net thrown out, gathering
people in shared experience, yet
each maintaining their unique perspective and eager to speak of this to us: a
magic of commitment to conversation, a magic of community.
I imagine that the
first Christians felt their commitment to dialogue (listening, receiving, and
sharing) as a palpable energy and as a means to generate and hold safe a sense
of community. I feel my commitment to dialogue is likewise a means to create a
safe therapeutic place where diversity of experience can be expressed without
anxiety, held and released when the time is ripe; a place that is the
relationship of selves who do not need to agree with each other in order to get
on with the work of increasing awareness and discovering in themselves healthy
freedom and new ways of being.
People talking
together are like the Whitsunday islands strung together like individual pearls
in a necklace of great beauty, and like a necklace, the elements of
communication are not glued, but linked by likeness and difference. So, let’s
talk!
