Out of the Shadows, Into the Light 2013

Suicide Prevention is a cause which can never sleep.  Each and every day, people are working to help those at risk of suicide and to offer support to those who have been bereaved by it.  Just the same, here in Australia this week marks three separate events designed to bring suicide prevention into public awareness.

Tuesday September 10th was World Suicide Prevention Day.  I am not so naive to think that we can eliminate suicide completely, but we can certainly try.

Thursday, September 12 was RU OK day.  A question we should be asking every day.

Here in Australia suicide is still the leading cause of death for people aged under 44.  More people die from suicide each year than are killed on the roads.

Many of you will know that I do voluntary work with Lifeline Australia, a telephone crisis line.  Lifeline believes that suicide is often preventable, and that help can be only a phone call away. 

In 2011 Lifeline began  national suicide prevention walks - 'Out of the Shadows and into the Light'.  Symbolically, the walks begin before dawn and continue into the growing light.  The aim is to help raise awareness of suicide prevention and encourage people to seek help.  In addition it remembers those lost and those bereaved by suicide.

I couldn't attend the first walk, but went last year and made a commitment to myself that I would line up this year as well.  Which saw me heading off before dawn this morning.  

It was cool (some would say chilly) but beautiful.  There were more people at the walk this year, and I hope that numbers continue to rise.  This year we started from our National War Memorial and did a loop down Anzac Parade towards Lake Burley Griffin and back to the War Memorial.  Our Parliament House is directly opposite on the other side of the lake.

Some numbers which may be useful for Australian readers include:

Lifeline 1311 14

Beyond Blue 1300 224 636

Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Spring has sprung in a big way here.  The garden is going gang-busters and more comes out each and every day.  With a whole lot more to come.

I am delighting in it.  Some of you (and you know who you are) have said gloating.  I say revelling, you say gloating, but the beauty remains whatever the phrase.  The scent and the colour is incredible.

These photos are from our garden over the last week.  And there are rather a lot of them. (click to embiggen)

Anenomes

Crab-Apple blossom

Wall-flower

Geranium

Grevilia

 

Sunday Selections #136

Sunday Selections was originally brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, as an ongoing meme where participants could post previously unused photos languishing in their files. 

The meme is now continued by River at Drifting through life.  The rules are so simple as to be almost non-existent.  Post some photos under the title Sunday Selections and link back to River.

Like River, I generally run with a theme.  I am back in the garden this week - taking photographs of  weeds.  I love their ephemeral beauty, and remember blowing 'dandelion clocks' as a child.

As always, the weeds will embiggen if clicked upon...

A book which made me think....

I suffer from insatiable curiosity, so it is hardly surprising that biographies, autobiographies and memoirs are among my most favourite reading material.

Being invited into another person's world can be exciting, inspirational, challenging - or any number of other emotions.  It is always a privilege.

I recently completed this book.

It was one I picked up when the book shop at my local shopping centre closed down, and it has been languishing on my unread pile for some time.

The blurb on the back fascinated me 'Ali Eteraz tells the story of his schooling in a madrassa in Pakistan, his teenage years as a Muslim American in the Bible Belt, and his voyage back to Pakistan to find a pious Muslim wife...'  A window into a life very different from my own.

The author's father made a covenant with Allah that if he was given a son, that son would become a great leader and servant of Islam.  A son was born - and was named Abir ul Islam (Perfume of Islam).

Striving to keep that covenant guided the author's life for more than thirty years.  He studied at not one but several madrassas.  He rejected the companionship of non-Muslims.  After Osama Bin Laden's strikes against America he strove to become a reformer of Islam.

At intervals in his life journey he changed his name, to better reflect his path of the moment.  While a fundamentalist Muslim, convinced of the superiority of Islam  he called himself Abu Bakr Ramaq.  In this phase he returned to Pakistan in the hopes of finding a Muslim wife - to protect him from sexual temptation.  And prejudices against the 'American' he was assumed to have become put his life and that of his family in danger.

On his return to America he reverted to being Amir ul Islam, and toyed with anti-Islamic ideas at University, while continuing to remain associated with Muslims and becoming the president of the Muslim Student Association.

I really didn't warm to him.  He was never more pious than when he was using his religion to get access to women - preferably devout Muslim women.  And his ongoing determination to marry a Muslim woman (and a devout one who would wear the hijab) was as far as I could see, the 'best' way he could think of to relieve sexual frustration.  And he did want a 'name' for himself, but I wasn't certain that whether this was to meet the terms of his father's covenant or to satisfy his ego.  He dabbled in political protest - and again, it seemed to be more about the status for him, than for the causes he was espousing.

And then came the attacks on Washington and New York.  And his attitudes didn't, as I feared they would, have me flinging the book aside.

'I felt an unbridgeable distance from those militants across the globe, that I'd long ago felt drawn to and then, more recently, had felt pity for.  I had used to think that while their methods were disreputable, they were simply misguided....'
'Now having seen their vision of justice, and recognising how far it was from actual justice, I felt only anger.  What made their actions even more reprehensible was that they had carried out their murders in the name of Islam.  In a single moment they had destroyed all the hard work - of education and awareness - that Muslims the world over had done over the years'.

I have no arguments with these statements.  None.  As a reformer he changed his name again, and he is now Ali Eteraz, and his journey continues... 

I found the book fascinating and infuriating by turns.  I thought that the time he spent in the madrassas could only be described as child abuse.  Religion, any religion, is almost incomprehensible to me, and I thought his piety was often manipulative and I found it distasteful.  That said, I have felt very similar distaste for noisy proponents of other religions, including Christianity.

I can't say that I 'enjoyed' Children of Dust, and I will probably not read it again, but I am glad I persevered.  Very glad.



 

Sunday Selections #135

Sunday Selections was originally brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, as an ongoing meme where participants could post previously unused photos languishing in their files. 

The meme is now continued by River at Drifting through life.  The rules are so simple as to be almost non-existent.  Post some photos under the title Sunday Selections and link back to River.

Like River, I generally run with a theme. Essentially this week I am running with not one but three of my obsessions.  Click on the photos to embiggen.

Riot Kitty is not a fan of birds, so I am going to post other beauty in the sky for her.  The first is Tuesday's sunset, and the second yesterday's dawn (and yes, I did rush out to do the dressing gown dance again).

All Consuming commented on my last post that she likes the small and delicate daffodils best.  I don't think they come much smaller and more delicate that this...

 

 And I am also featuring an Eastern Rosella again.  These delightful little birds brighten each and every day when they come to visit.  They are low on the pecking order, but still manage to do quite nicely (this one is enjoying pieces of green apple).