Helen Martineau's Blog

You could say that light is a major Christmas theme. We see light everywhere at Christmas time – big glittering baubles lining the streets, fairy lights festooning trees and strung across houses, multitudes of candles twinkling like stars. Behind all this light is the story of a certain star. Magi from the east followed this star all the way to Bethlehem in Judea. And there they encountered baby Jesus the Christ child. Light can mean many things. On a significant level for us today it’s a symbol of awakened consciousness – we ‘see the light’ when we understand something. Darkness is unconsciousness; it’s ignorance. And this kind of darkness breeds unthinking prejudice and resentment, surely a serious problem in our world. Light enables us to see beyond limited thinking, to be open and generous. This is the light we need. It’s relevant to us now in a world so full of ill-formed opinion, enmity and strife. Light offers us vision and hope. Christmas glitter and glitz has grown apace with

As another Christmas approaches I feel urged to resolve the question of what to celebrate, and when. Our Australian timing is upside down and back-to-front. Christmas happens in midsummer. And over the years it has developed its own characteristics – barbeques, open-air carols by candlelight and all. For me the timing opens up deep spiritual questions beneath the secular activities. Are we right to change Christmas to June, our midwinter, or not? I delve into answers in my latest website post which you can read by clicking on this link: The light forever shines in the darkness.

I had a startling experience on November 24. It was a Friday. I opened my email inbox to find loads of messages encouraging me to enjoy the 20%, 40% etc discounts on all products 'Today Black Friday only!'  On Black Friday?! In Victoria, Australia, my home, there are certain days, black days that mark the most horrific bushfires, the unbelievable devastation and death, and the blackened land left in their wake. For example, there was Black Saturday of 2009 and one of the earliest devastations recorded (by European Aussies) on Black Friday, 1939. I wasn't alive for that one but it's  our history, the history of people pushing too carelessly, without understanding, into a dry, heat prone, vulnerable and threatened land. Bushfires were my nightmare w hen I lived in the country . I still dread hot north wind summer days in case, in case ... I have walked through the aftermath, lost a friend in a bushfire and can barely imagine the horror of being in one.  Oh,

                                                   The battle for and against assisted suicide, what used to be called mercy killing, is always fierce and heartfelt. But in the State of Victoria in democratic Australia an act to make it legal for the terminally ill is close to being passed in parliament’s Upper House. And then it will become legal. In some countries it is legal already. To take the responsibility for ending a life, even your own, is momentous. And there has been plenty of passion around the euthanasia debate, with valuable and compassionate considerations on both sides. These are widely accessible and most likely you will know them. I want to look from a different direction. Humans have a complicated, conflicted and often irrational attitude towards taking the life of another human being. There’s a universal injunction against it that lies at the heart of who we are, and we believe we have evolved beyond the days of human sacrifice. Yet we are still killing people, an

It’s the season of Archangel Michael right now. In the Christian calendar it runs from Michaelmas on September 29 until Advent on December 1. Archangel Michael appears in many religions, portrayed as warrior fighting against evil. Mostly ‘he’ is wielding a sword in the cosmic fight, or gripping the weapon in readiness for action. But is this the kind of fight we need to embrace today? Michael is often portrayed as neither male nor female – that’s the nature of heavenly beings. It’s how my artist friend Monika Bisits painted the archangel in this beautiful work. In her portrait, however, the sword is present but not in use. You get the sense of it being held back, to be used differently, when humanity is ready for its transformation from a weapon of war. Archangel Michael is known as the regent of our current age, the age we live in. Today the sword as a symbol of battle has become redundant. So what is the sword’s purpose, inwardly for each of us, and for the world? In the penetrat

When someone says, ‘I love you’, that potent word ‘love’ can lead to embarrassing misunderstandings. This is because in English it has a range of interpretations and we need to ask, ‘What do you mean by love? Other languages are more efficient. In Greek, there are at least eight different words. Four words in particular mark the evolution of love into its purest expression, with each earlier stage enfolded and enriched within the ‘DNA’ of what follows. These are eros, storge, philia and agapé . Ancient Greek philosophers so revered love in its highest form, they compared the way love transforms and evolves to a fat caterpillar metamorphosing and taking flight as a beautiful butterfly. Eros The first budding of love emerges in passionate infant desire for the one who nurtures it and appeases its hunger. That’s eros – it’s a desire-filled hunger, and it is experienced in all the myriad ways where pleasure is sought, including food and sex . Eros is a life force. We couldn’t

                                                                                                                                A world of difference Society on Gethen is ambisexual. That is, for most of the time people are androgynous, but once a month at the time of kemmer they become sexually active as either male or female – they never know which it will be. This is the setting for Ursula K Le Guin’s stunning sci-fi novel The Left hand of Darkness. In her mutable fictional culture, the rigid gender divisions we hold have no relevance. I think ambisexuality is worth a close look when the issue of equality in marriage is a hot potato for politicians and a source of fierce polarising debate in the community. Duality of male-female is supposed to be self-evident because of differences in genitalia and bodily characteristics. But recent genetic discoveries have revealed a more complex story, as if the characteristics of dimorphism only represent either end of a pole. In attitudes

  My grumble today! The Arts Party of Australia has a great suggestion - that in innovative, integrative education, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) needs to become STEAM to include the arts. If anyone cares to look, practising artists, in all fields, work integratively with those STEM areas, so why is the 'A' losing traction in schools? Are we heading towards a Terminator society where mechanistic thinking rules? The arts (including humanities) speak to  thoughtfulness about our place in the wider world and the implications of our actions, past, present and future. That's important! The 'A' areas are not lesser, soft options, lacking rigour and discipline. The thinking involved is creative and imaginative and this is vital for innovation in all fields, but is learned through thoughtful creative activity explored most intensely and openly in ... yes, the arts.

I came across a website by women fed up with the patriarchal church and its centuries-long subjugation of the feminine. I liked their section exploring the importance of women in early Christianity and thought they might like to know about my novel  Marriages of the Magdalene.  S o I made contact. A message came back. ‘Sorry to be blunt when you have been so complimentary, but we couldn’t possibly have anything in common or continue to communicate. It appears to us that you are a Gnostic!’ (they had looked over my website). There was no explanation. Mystified I was motivated to find possible reasons for the rebuff. After all, Gnosticism didn’t  reject the feminine spirit or her human counterpart. Wisdom,  Sophia  in Greek was very much part of it, and Mary Magdalene was often cast as a guide to wisdom. A look at Gnostic origins Gnostic comes from  gnosis,  the  Greek word for knowledge, the kind of knowledge that enables insight into spiritual things unknowable to the senses. W