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Governor-General taps Australia’s heart

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AUSTRALIA’s Governor-General, Quentin Bryce AC, tapped the nation’s heart with her address in Melbourne today at the service commemorating the national day of mourning for Victoria’s bushfire communities -

Thank you. For gathering this morning. Gathering here, and in the countless places across our country and world. For filling up the spaces with your warmth, compassion and understanding. Thank you, for being present in this moment. And for exercising your humanity in the most human way. It is a good thing that we know what to do. That it is as natural to us as life itself. And that we know it is good for us.

In the last two weeks we have experienced and witnessed in Victoria devastating ruin, bereavement and pain. For the months and years and decades hence, those struck down will reassemble what has been dismantled of your lives, your property, and your communities.

The helpers – the firefighters, emergency support workers, aid workers, neighbours and strangers – will come to accept that there were some forces too swift and too potent to ever humanly overcome. And the others, most of us, who could only shed tears at the unfolding horror, will open our hands and reach out and deep to give of ourselves whatever we are able. We each have our separate tasks – we know what they are. And together, we know the responsibilities we share.

In time, what was, will be restored, no matter how colossal the effort. Today,  however, we must pause to give time and due to what has passed, to what has brought us to this point. The unthinkable, we must think. The unimaginable, we must see.     The unspeakable, we must speak. The unbearable, we must weep. We must allow the thoughts and images and words that have so recently scorched and swamped us to gently settle,  and find their proper and worthy place in our hearts and minds. We must recognise these memories as an inseparable part of us. They are the makeup of our growing wisdom and our fresh intent. We are altered by them, yet they are what will forever sustain us.

We must tend to the gaps left by those we have lost, and we must keep their smiles always in our sights. We must hold onto the pride we feel in what we’ve built, the admiration and gratitude we have for others’ strength and courage, and our belief in our own.

To be a whole person, or a whole nation, is not to enjoy a perfect, untrammelled life, untouched by challenge or catastrophe. Rather, it is the blisters and cracks, the scars and loss, the failures and sorrow, and our honesty and hopefulness in all, that are the essence of our resilience, unity and completeness.

Australians here and everywhere, today we acknowledge that life is indeed not perfect, and we give thanks to one another for being whole.


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