Let life be life.

Unlike most of our travelling comrades, we didn’t have an Instagram account attached to our caravan. When we travelled to the remote North West of Australia last year, like we do every year, we couldn’t quickly scope out other “van life” families we’d meet on the road out to see the image they chose to portray to the world of who they were.

Nor could they scope us out. They couldn’t suss us out to see whether we’d be “good” people to be connected to, whether we liked to do the same kinds of adventures, or been to the same places, whether we were instacool, or shared the same sort of views on the world.

We were dangerous territory… Unknown. Unidentified. Uninstagramed.

Did we even exist? Or matter?

We couldn’t make arbitrary connections by “following” each other. 

Connections we wanted to make and maintain had to be real, and we had to exchange phone numbers and actually text and call each other through an actual phone. 

We collected significantly less phone numbers than we would have followers.

Only one of them became a penpal. 

Also unlike most of our travelling comrades we didn’t have a StarLink Satellite Pod out the front of our van. 

When we were in remote areas, we were not connected to the internet 24/7. 

Something happened this year, on the road, literally every body got a StarLink. Suddenly there were these weird white plastic headstones on a leash a few metres out from everyone’s vans, all facing the same way. It looked like a cemetery the first time we pulled into a caravan park. We had no idea.

How one year to the next, the world can change so rapidly.

So we became one of the few folks to still be sitting around our camp table with cups of tea, embroidery and card games… instead of laying in bed watching Netflix or “putting on a show” for the kids. Our kids played in the dirt and had to find ways to entertain themselves when they were bored. 

Gone are the days of travelling Australia in a van and sleeping under the stars, making friends and connections, the old way.

The real way. 

I constantly look at the world and try to make sense of it. This mess of artificiality. 

Where we’ve come from, where we’re heading. 

I know it’s a pointless and frivolous exercise when I know that only God knows. 

But discernment is hard these days. 

We live in a post-truth, post-modern era. What does that even mean??! 

I honestly think that’s why books like The Bible are making a come back. Because there are some truths that have stood the test of time over the millennia, and have very little to do with our emotional whims or fleeting 24 hour news cycle of cultural norms. When people strip it all back - it’s back to basics. God. 

I often see new Christians who have come through the new age path of spirituality round to Christ (like me), do a full 180 and reject all things spiritual / new age in the name of witchcraft. I get it, I do. But I often laugh because at the same token we’re all still holding a smart phone. And I’m over here like - how can you be worried about a few paper oracle cards when you have literally the most powerful anti-transhumanistic brain-programming device in your hand, live-steaming as you bake bread? I mean, if Jesus were to come back today - he wouldn’t be worried about people wearing crystal necklaces (in a crystal’s defence - at least God made it). But I bet he’d be turning tables over in the temple about all y’all using ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence - because that’s the real witchcraft of our times… and it certainly 100% aint of God or made by God. But we turn a blind eye… and we buy our StarLinks. 

And we travel and we continue to evade connection. Real connection. 

To each other, to family, to nature, to God, to ourselves. 

The source and the solution: Connection. 

Luckily for us, I just felt so grateful this trip that I had unplugged from social media those years ago. On our trip, it didn’t even cross my mind to “filter” people or need to be online. All people were welcome in our world to have a yarn and chat to. Like a box of Cadbury Roses - which one would we get next? (An iconic Australia chocolate brand for those from a different hemisphere).

One day on our trip, there was a new camper van that pulled up next to us in the campground into the site next to us.

The man in the van had greyish, weathered skin, fitting the Central Inland Queensland “bogan” stereotype. 

I felt uneasy all of a sudden with my girls.

He had a “not right” sort of air about him. I started to worry and get protective over my girls that this “strange man” was going to be camped next to us, and told them to go inside to get changed, rather than freely prepare for the pool outside like we normally would.

When we got back from the pools a short while later, he was sitting in his camper chair, outside his van, nothing else set up, smoking cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. Not coming up for air.

My blood started to boil as the smoke came into our campground and was “poisoning” my children, who play outside (because remember, no StarLink). Could he not move to the other side of his van, at least? Can’t he see there are children here? 

I was starting to getting bitter and frustrated and thinking of what I was going to do. What I was going to say to him, sternly and assertively to ensure our health, peace and safety for my girls.

My mama bear protectiveness was rearing. 

But before I spiralled into my own defeat, I took a breath. 

I stopped and prayed. I tuned into Jesus’ love and what he’d do. I tuned into his life-giving energy and protection and asked for guidance.

I realised instantly my children were safe, my children were healthy and stronger than some cigarette smoke and that I was the one who was poisoned in that moment. 

The judgement, the anger, the resentment and contempt. Poison. 

So I did nothing, except pray.

I didn’t pray for myself to find peace, etc, I prayed for the man who was smoking. I gave my love and prayers outwardly. Generously. 

I was totally and utterly convicted to pray for him, without really understanding why.

A short while later his woman pops out of the van. 

Fast forward — We connect. We were literally neighbours after all. I met these people with an open heart, instead of asserting myself onto them with “my needs”, I took a moment to get to know them, build a relationship with them, hear them. See them.

“You shall love your neighbour as yourself” - Leviticus 19:18

Their story: They are a couple of 27 years, childhood sweethearts since she was 16. He has lung cancer and probably has a few months left to live, deciding not to do chemo after nursing his mother through chemo recently, and knowing how horrible and painful it was for the family. Having just been through this myself, I understood his choice. They were on their “bucket list” trip. The last trip they will ever do together, before he passes over. And he barely has enough steam to do it with her. She doesn’t know life without him. She adores his every breath, and you can see how much effort she puts into making him happy and laugh with their last and limited moments together. She quit smoking once he got cancer. But he was unable to. Chained by the yoke. Every time he puffed a cigarette it came with such anguish to know he was sealing his fate. We heard of their joys and passions. We heard their beautiful stories. She’d often have to go for walks down to the beach at sunset by herself, because he was unable to join her, too tired. 

It was both heartbreaking and a privilege to meet them, to know them. 

Without ever asking him or mentioning it to him, he moved to the other side of the van when he needed to smoke. Love gives way to life.

They were deeply kind people, going through a deeply hard moment in time.

We yarned and chatted regularly over the days they stayed there. 

My daughters made them a card before they left, and we shared our words of gratitude getting to know them and gave them our prayers for the next, very difficult part of their journey, as they returned home to face the inevitable. 

We shared the love of God with them and they shared their tears and thankfulness with us. Being seen and witnessed yielded undeniable power and healing.

It’s impossible to describe just how moving this experience was for all us, without writing an extremely corny novela here. But the tears were seriously flowing. They still are as I write an remember this.

We never even learnt their names until the last day. It didn’t matter “who” we were in the world to each other. Because we shared our connection in The Spirit. We didn’t exchange phone numbers or emails (or instagrams!). We just shared the moment, wholly and fully, and then continued on in life… 

Letting life be life. 

I suspect he’s probably passed over by the time I’m writing this, many months later… and she’s alone now, and learning how to be in the world on her own. 

The choice to see people, choose kindness, openness and share realness to all people.

No agenda. 

The lost art of agenda-less, judgement-less connection.

Because its simply good and right.

__

After a month at the campground where we were staying, it came time to say farewell to lots of folk we’d shared time with.

The families that all had fancy vans and cars, doing “their lap” around Australia said a particular kind of farewell. Leaving us their stickers / cards with their insta handles on it - the ones they gave to everyone they met on the road. 

But some of the workers that lived full-time at the camp ground for 20 years or more (and who definitely didn’t have insta handles) were the ones who touched us the most. They came over to us and in the week before we left gave us presents upon presents of gratitude and constantly adorned us with gifts. I asked them why. They said - because you’re kind. 

Everyone else just comes here and doesn’t even look at us. But you always took your time to talk to us, and treat us like real people. You made us feel like real people. 

Said shaking with tears.

She confided in me that her partner, Michael, had had a severe brain injury and couldn’t work / function properly many years ago and she herself has bipolar and a number of issues, but she had to support them both, and they live in a camp park. They also looked after their grandson intermittently who was taken away from his mother because of drugs. They were all aboriginal in differing ways.

It wasn’t hard to suspect that they lived with their challenges, but we never asked about or speculated about their situation, and it didn’t matter. 

Ruminating on those words “you made us feel like real people” broke my heart. 

What on Earth state is the world in if our small acts of kindness and simple small talk made them feel like real people?

Of course they’re real people! 

We are no saints. 

We did no great or grand acts. 

Connection and kindness, without agenda - to put our feet right in goodness.

That was it. 

And that was enough to impact people’s lives (including and especially our own) - significantly more, I feel, than any Substack entry or instagram Live or hashtag campaign could ever do. 

Because real and heartfelt connection happens when two bodies are in proximity.

Connection that moves you to shake with tears because you feel seen.

Not illusory connection that exists only in your mind, via the internet.

We are bombarded with distraction in our current times. We are bombarded with screens that take us away to distant friends instead of our seeing our neighbours right in front of us, to digital communities instead of our real neighbourhoods or all sorts and kinds of people, to movies and news and all sorts of entertainment that distorts our perception of intimate connection and haves us hurry to get back to something else, and removes us from witnessing and experiencing the importance of the life in front of us - the one we can touch. 

"He who has eyes to see, let him see, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear."

It is a commandment to see what is in front of you.

To witness the truth, beauty and goodness of your real God-given life.

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After the war in Gaza started I observed some interesting things about humans. I witnessed some people started to write, speak, think and share prolifically about war, politics, history, religion, colonisation, even if they’d never opened their mouths about these topics before, etc, some people went totally mute (myself), some people carried on as if there was no war posting about homemaking and homesteading, some people tied in the “the lessons of war” to make points about whatever it was they actually wanted to talk about. 

And, of course, I witnessed about a hundred other nuances of people’s inner coping mechanisms to having their brain and life bombarded with actual war or, for most people, simply war-media.

People went into overdrive filling up the space. As they do, when there is space to fill. 

Everyone was affected. Directly or indirectly. 

It wasn’t so long ago that if there was a war happening somewhere in the world - the rest of the world probably didn’t know about it.

People just carried on in their life. And war played out.

Or if they did hear about it, it would have come in the form of a simple letter, many months removed from it’s sending. Not complete and instant saturation in your psyche from every angle of your existence, even though you were thousands of miles away from any actual war, via distorted media unique to your own algorithm.

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? 

I’m not really here to open that Pandora’s Box. 

But I know, for me, every time I went to pick up a pen or consider writing or sharing during this time (about any topic) I just kept asking myself —

But what is the point of all this? 

(Specifically referring to internet-based writing / sharing)

My higher guidance gave me a hard NO. 

“There is no contribution of significance to be made here” - God. 

The internet is not where contributions of significance need to be made to counteract the greater forces of darkness and evil in the world. In fact, what I felt like I was observing, was internet-based “contributions” are as good as a mere perpetuation, at best.

The message was — you will not find / meet / be with God on the internet.

And that is the point.

When the world adopts the pysche of War, we must turn to peace. 

We know peace (and we know God) is found through connection.

Not consumption or creation - both of which are a state of agitation, both passive and active. Despite providing dopamine, they are not by definition the stillness of peace.

Real-life, human-to-human, human-to-nature, human-to-God connection. 

Internet-based connection, consumption and creation, are simply an illusion.

I know this. 

I bet you even know this, even if you try to argue it otherwise to yourself, as it doesn’t fit your current “model” for self-importance and self-efficacy. 

But self-anything… might be considered beside the point too. No? 

So.

Here I am, writing after a 9? month hiatus. I don’t even know… Convicted to write about not-sharing things on the internet, whilst doing exactly that. 

If you can handle my paradox, read on. 

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Last night, after a very, very long hiatus, totally randomly, I decided to go on Instagram and give myself permission to go down an old fashioned scroll-hole and enjoy a session of mindless mind-programming. Why? I don’t know really. I guess to put my finger on the pulse of our times. To witness what’s up.

It was short lived. I deleted the app swiftly from a place of soulful repulsion. 

A literal repelling - like a magnet reversed. Wrong way, back out. 

The straw that broke me wasn’t all the excessive content creation that made my brain explode from hyper-consumption in excessively fast 3-10 second shorts… it was the stuff in between. I just couldn’t bare witness to all these people documenting and sharing their lives, their friendships, their inner processing, their everything online. Something I used to do myself.

Some of them, my face-to-face friends, whom I’ve never had an online relationship with (becoming friends after I deleted socials), existing in this completely different world that was exclusive to their virtual reality, and so far from the person I know, feel and love in the flesh and the spirit of our “real life”.

My brain short-circuited. It felt so un-real. 

I asked myself again, what is actually the point of all this? 

(Specifically referring to internet-based sharing)

My higher guidance gave me a hard NO again. 

Walk away. 

“There is nothing of goodness, truth and beauty for you here, despite the sheep in wolves clothing” - God.

(But.. “social media has it’s benefits” those wolves howled…)

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My sister from the Seychelles visited earlier this year (Hey Sis! I know you read these mail xx). The Seychelles are a group of islands off the coast of North East Africa. Even though she was raised for periods of her life in Italy, France and England (amongst other places in The West), she is mostly an island girl - and her centre of life is mostly rooted in a worldview that comes from living in African, Creole-speaking, Middle Eastern nations. 

Coming to Australia is always a huge shock for her… our privilege. Our excess. 

In her hometown, they have two varieties of cereal / granola on their supermarket shelves. A cauliflour can cost them $20+. Most people can’t even afford petrol. But they don’t have multi-lane roads anyway. 

Of course they have the internet and social media too. 

But of course what one sees, consumes, witnesses and values online is reflective of your unique reality in the world. Big tech algorithms are at least this clever. 

In her part of the world, women are still fighting for the right to be seen and heard as a human being.

In my part of the world, young women en masse are now identifying as gay men with male vaginas and mutilating their bodies to remove any trace of their womanhood, whilst other women are fighting to be allowed to simply stay home and use their womb for it’s natural and Godly purpose without society completely rejecting them as useless. 

An insightful anit-woke article on how Big Tech is fueling this, for your curiosity.

We live in world’s of stark contrast.

Or perhaps they’re exactly the same world, just expressed at different ends of the pole. 

It’s a ride, these times. 

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So what on Earth does one do in “these times”? 

That’s what I’ve been pondering all these silent months I’ve not written to you. 

That. 

That processing, has been my silence.

The processing of how simple acts of face-to-face kindness can bring people to tears and make them feel like “real people”.

The processing of how lost we are as a society, and yet we carry on with digital content creation and the like, and I don’t really know why and if it’s actual doing our souls a disservice and whether I should participate any longer or not?

---

So I actually decided to pause writing completely. I decided that this whole writing to share on the internet thing was a huge and giant mess that has been utterly hijacked. (Substack feels more and more like every other Big Tech platform these days, with notes and DM’s and everyone tagging everyone left right and centre). Like most things that started off wonderful and good and pure in the world - the climate movement, the vegan movement, equal rights movement - now utterly hijacked by Big Agenda. IYKYK. 

But even still, I didn’t write privately in a journal or start a hundred half-written posts that I’ve let float off into the ether. I didn’t take photos either. I found that I’d be going on prayer walks and I’d be consumed with downloads of things to write about. My creativity was hijacking my peace. I stopped creating entirely.

Peace is always more important.

I just Let Life Be Life, for a moment.

Without trying to anchor it, or capture it, or process it, or transform it, or using it to help empower, inspire or connect or have an impact in a small or big way.

I just decided to live my real daily life, without more. 

It was not beautiful, not perfect, not distraction-free, not without misaligned priorities, not without burnout, not without feeling lost, confused or in conflict, not without very real human experiences…

Not writing didn’t equate to deep and total presence in my daily life.

Of course, it didn’t. 

But it did equate to letting the creative surges or needing to create, anchor and share wash over me like the white-wash of a shorey. 

It did equate to letting my Self and life and body get tumbled in all that, without that extra layer.

And was it fruitful nonetheless? Yes. 

I’ve come to realise, whenever I go through this process (which has been often these last few years it seems), it’s always worth letting life be life. 

Letting God be God. 

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On our trip to The Kimberley this year that I described in the beginning, the whole thing felt completely different. 

We’ve been going 9 years in a row now. Next year marks 10 years. For nearly a whole decade, once a year, we embark on a legit pilgrimage to the far North West of Australia, one of the most remote and ancient places on Earth, and run a community program in the ocean. I’ve written about it before, you can check the archive.

It’s a mission. It’s beautiful. It always transforms us.

This year, what I noticed was that I didn’t have the same “breath out” that we usually have as we start to embark on our literal 5,000km drive into the desert and back. 

Normally daily life and the preparation period before we leave is so contracted for us that when we hit the open road, the body, the mind, the soul just expands and releases and relaxes. You know the feeling of letting go… holiday mode. 

All the worries of the world behind you as you drive into the sunset.

We didn’t have that experience this year. 

Since living a God-led life, life has actually felt pretty expanded already. 

No major high or low, just peace. Contentment. 

It just felt like we left our already blessed and content life to continue our blessed and content life, just in a different location and backdrop. Lucky us. 

Nonetheless, the trip was still eventual in the spiritual sense, as it always is, and we received a loud and powerful message that it was time for a significant change. That our work was done here. The next chapter of something bigger was in the works of manifesting in the world of form. 

God was sending us on a new direction, one He’d been preparing us for in the years prior, and that He felt we were ready for… now. 

If you’ve been reading along since the beginning, you’ll have witnessed much of this preparation period - the stripping back to nothingness and emptiness to be a vessel.

When we got home after 2 months away, we were called to move into a new venture for our life and start the journey…

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Over the last few years I was presented with a number of visions. Some of them audible. Some of them visual. Some of them a whisper of feeling. Sometimes I’d write or draw them out, but I’d always certainly talk about them to someone.

They’ve all converged recently and our new venture and path was not what we expected, yet exactly what we expected. 

After writing 3,700 words already today, I actually think I’ve lost the steam to “go there” and share the details of what God was preparing me for. 

Oh the suspense, right? 

I’m finally getting to the crux and I’ve lost the impetus to share it? 

Perhaps that’s exactly the point… What is the point of sharing it?

I trust it will touch it in the flesh and the spirit the ones who God wants and needs to be part of it. It doesn’t actually need to be anything more than that.

This whole digital content creation thing is most likely a racket for the enemy anyway. 

So how about — for now — a video of my current sunrise…

After all, this book is meant to be about Stories of Sunrises — the beauty of God. 

So now I’ve broken my silence, if I write again soon, I’ll try and stick to the topic.

In truth, beauty and goodness. 

Sweet and simple shares of a story that might inspire you to get offline..

… and let life be life. 

x x 

My current sunrise - wait for the kangaroo to hop by at the end.. (volume on for birds!). Captured by my sister when she was visiting.