Easter. Australia

I live in the Southern Hemisphere; in Australia. Where the night sky is illuminated by the twinkling stars of the Southern Cross. Where, as the days grow longer in the Northern Hemisphere, Easter comes as summer breathes her last warmth into cooling days. The heat at this time of year is subtler, steady, the days shorter; dusks glowering into bleeding gold and triumphant reds. The native trees are mostly eucalyptus. Some tower with ghostly white trunks but most are wily, their gnarled brown bark full of living things like beetle and weaving spider, or the winding highways of black ant, the dark hollow of sleeping possum. The ground at this time of year is hard, the native trees shedding leaves to cool their roots. Closer to the equator, wet season is closing and rivers run full with brown water. This land is no stranger to the extremes of nature. To Nature's cycles of death and rebirth or the miracle of regeneration. Where, after fire or drought or flooding rain - fire-blackened trees, cracked earth and deserts bloom full to leaf and flower, seemingly resurrected back to life.

"If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion. Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that relationship and emphasize instead the calamity of the event. But crucifixion is not a calamity if it leads to new life. Through Christ’s crucifixion we were unshelled, which enabled us to be born to resurrection. That is not a calamity. So, we must take a fresh look at this event if its symbolism is to be sensed." ~Joseph Campbell

At this time the blue hills break with the colour of deciduous trees brought in from Europe, autumnal hues streaking the landscape with the magnificent shades of far distant climes. Vibrant crimson and orange and brown spotted yellow, strange and beautiful colours creating a cross or conjunction here, of south and north, native and foreign; a reminder of the shorter, more defined seasons of the northern hemisphere amongst our slow and ancient ones. They mark time in the Land of Dreaming. Striking and beautiful, and like so many other opposites here, they have also brought their own troubles.

From March 21 the days are counted to the first full moon; and from there the first weekend is marked for Easter. On the other side of the world this is spring equinox - here it is autumnal, marking the slow march toward winter. Many might question if Easter belongs in this land at all, as children search the dry, browned grasses for melted eggs, or see the death of a man on a cross from a place on other side of the world, another world and time. ...If this foreign festival from the pagan traditions of the north finds relevance in this upside down place. Like the image of Santa in his red fur-lined suit, in a sleigh made for snow when the tarmac here melts and broils. Many also shy from its religious connotations. -It's understandable. This land's First Peoples are far older than Genesis.

"Rebirth is not a process that we can in any way observe. We can neither measure nor weigh nor photograph it. It is entirely beyond sense perception. ... One speaks of rebirth; one professes rebirth; one is filled with rebirth. We have to be content with its psychic reality." ~Carl Jung

But still, the tradition persists. With eggs and crosses and hot cross buns, and chocolate bunnies. Or the Australian version, the Easter Bilby, a native animal that hops like a rabbit though is more like a robust, miniature kangaroo. But something more than roots and tradition has perhaps captured us, for Australians are no strangers to "crosses", to life's deaths under this Southern Cross, and the rebirths of nature after extremes and endless waiting. Traditions have power, but perhaps something in us also recognises the deeper symbols that Jung and Campbell mention above which connect us to something universal. Far larger than the old or the new, north or south, foreign and ancient - the differences symbolised in the cross. Deeper in the psyche - the tension of such extremes may bring us to the centre - the universal processes we all share, and that have been echoed in the myth and symbol of so many cultures throughout the ages.

Many of us have already wept the loss of the old scripts, egoic beliefs and childish "shoulds" that are symbolised in the Easter story, in Gethsemane. Outgrown so many old selves and found new ones, when pinned to the irreconcilable crosses or crises of life. Easter reminds us there is hope in these symbols, in death, yes - but also in rebirth, whether personally or collectively. A process that leads us into the greater Self and into deeper, more enlarged, realities.

The process, like the seasons, is on-going.

Both ancient pagan and Christian symbolism unite as one at Easter, as the ancient and the new exist in my own land, its own cross, that must one day find new ways to reconcile, to be reborn and find new. Perhaps Australia needs its deeper symbols, its need for reconciliation and union of opposites, more than most - even if its only conscious in a few. It faces the death/extinction of so much of nature under the weight of this new culture, still unable to live in concert with the old and their understanding of the land. The kernel of new life promised by the symbol of the egg may be needed here more than ever.

Like the emu or kookaburra chick that breaks finally from its restrictive shell. That has grown strong in its drought-like struggle against unyielding walls, the symbols and processes of the egg symbolise the processes of birth through such challenges. The walls do not grow weaker for the chick however, it is in the struggle that the chick grows stronger. Until finally – with no promise but only the soul’s call to endure, it breaks through into Light. Like the figure of the divine conquering death from the cave - Life becomes infused with a whole and enlivened perspective, ready to grow into enlarged realities.

“Unless you are constantly practising it - this dying and being reborn, you are only a guest on this planet.” ~ Goethe

This process is in itself a Great Mystery. Like the long wasteland and struggles of lingering drought, of bushfire and the relentless heat of summer - so often we come to a point where the soul finally dies to the old life and ways of seeing, only to be watered again, flush and revived, into the new. Like the chick emerging from the egg, or Christos from the tomb, the soul rises once again from our dark nights of the soul. As people. As nations. Of the “enlightenment” that comes each time we go through such deaths, such rebirths, to finally stepping free of our restrictive caves of perception...

And out, into broader visions and understanding.

May your Easter be a true one.

With love, Rachel Alana (R.A. Falconer) Midwives of the Soul.

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