In early 2007, Sally MacKinnon, one of the Ethos Foundation’s founding team and former Ethos executive officer, decided to step back from some of the frontline sustainability activity she had undertaken for over 15 years and have a break. She spent a lot of time sitting on the verandah of her old Queenslander home drinking tea, listening to the wind and watching the shadows and light shift through nearby trees and forest. After some time in relative stillness and solitude, she began to write for herself, something she had longed to do since early primary school. She found her voice through poetry, short personal essays and finally discussion papers and she now integrates creativity throughout her life as a wellspring of personal sustainability and nourishment.
This section of the Ethos website contains quite a bit of Sally’s writing in these three genres. It is also open to other forms of writing and writers within or connected to the Ethos Foundation, whose work expresses some of the values that are at the heart of Ethos.

Poetry

Priest and author Matthew Fox believes that poetry can redeem language; that poetry is the second step in the creative relationship between humans and nature after artists have expressed their direct experience with nature through images. In these days of spin doctors and political speak, psycho-babble and virtual language, poetry can be a balm for the soul, a joy for the heart, a place of authenticity and a space where one can truly surrender.
I started writing these poems in early 2007 in a process of personal disassembling and reassembling when I realised I had reached the limits of activism in sustainability. At that point I began to crawl into the soil and sky of this place where I live – the home of the Wangerriburra people in Yugambeh Country, Binna Burra, South East Queensland Australia.
I’ve been gathering up some of these poems in a collection called “My Black Heart – Love letters from Wangerriburra Land” which I hope will be part of a combined photographic/poetry exhibition with my sister Cal in early 2010. It’s about the experience of being an invader on Murri land and the journey to learn to see and hear with a blackfella heart that’s embedded in Country.
I’m now growing a second little collection under the title “Sentinals and Saints” which is inspired by my lifelong love of trees. A few of the poems from both of these collections are presented here with gratitude and humility – they are not ‘my creations’ but a gentle record of an ongoing conversation with this land.

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Short Essays

On the evening of my 45th birthday in 2008 I had a most extraordinary experience which triggered the writing of my first short, personal essay while camping at Lennox Head in northern NSW. That essay is called “Who will help bury the body: a birthday meditation” and I enjoyed writing it so much that another eight or nine essays followed during that year. I have gathered some of them together here in case they’re of interest to anyone – they have a tendency to explore sustainability from a heartfelt, personal perspective and I often think of a line from one of Bernard Fanning’s gorgeous songs when I describe their purpose: “...write yourself a message of kindness, sing yourself a song to reconcile...”

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Discussion Papers

During 2008, I was a member of Gold Coast City Council’s Bold Future advisory committee within a project that aimed to create a 30-year vision for Gold Coast City, built largely upon sustainability practices and principles. It was a real honour, priviledge and learning experience to be part of the committee and I got quite a bee in my bonnet about ensuring participatory community engagement and governance were put on the table for discussion and hopefully inclusion in the Gold Coast’s Bold Future vision. To that end, I wrote a discussion paper for the committee called “Turning on a Sixpence: Creating a learning foundation for community engagement”.
I enjoyed that research and writing process so much that in early 2009 I wrote a conference paper for the International Association for Community Development’s conference about community-centred economy. The paper was called “Learning as We Go: Cross-boundary collaboration to grow local living economy in South East Queensland” and was a writing collaboration with my wonderful colleague and friend Nick McGuire from the Logan Office of Economic Development.
Now I’m finalising a discussion paper about social-ecological resilience called “Exploring Resilience and Prosperity as Pathways Towards Integrated Sustainability” which I intend to post on the Ethos website in August 2009.

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