Helen Martineau's Blog

September 29 is the AFL Grand Final, and it’s Michaelmas. It’s the great day for courageous warriors. Here on earth one football team vanquishes another in suburban warfare. There’s fist-pumping jubilation on one side and heads bowed in anguish on the other; that’s straightforward. In the other-worldly realm Archangel Michael vanquishes the mythical dragon-devil. But behind the usual dramatic picture of ‘war in heaven’ there’s far more than meets the eye. The fighting images have externalized a deep and personal truth. This war continually takes place in us. When Archangel Michael, a mighty spirit, wields the sword, it represents the strong backbone of our own human spirit that overcomes the dross of our lower nature. This is the dragon and it lives in us. It’s all the resentful, fearful, quarrelsome, judgemental thoughts and acts that set us against the world.                              ...

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 a...

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...