Stan Grant is talking to his country in a new way. In his most poetic and inspiring work yet, the Wiradjuri writer offers us a means of moving beyond the binaries and embracing a path to peace and forgiveness rooted in the Wiradjuri spiritual practice of Yindyamarra – deep silence and respect.
Murriyang: Song of Time, in part Grant’s response to the Voice referendum, eschews politics for love. In this gorgeous, grace-filled book, he zooms out to reflect on the biggest questions, ranging across the history, literature, theology, music and art that has shaped him, setting aside anger for kindness, reaching past the secular to the sacred and transcendent.
Inspired by spiritual thinkers and sages from around the world, Grant finds connections with Plato, Saint Augustine, Isaac Newton, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, Saint Teresa of Avila, Simone Weil, among others. Murriyang is a Wiradjuri prayer in one long uninterrupted breath, challenging Western notions of linear, historical time in favour of Indigenous concepts of deep, circular time – the Dreaming.
Murriyang is also very personal, each meditation interleaved with a memory of Grant’s father – a Wiradjuri cultural leader – and asking how any of us can say goodbye to those we love.
It is a book for our current moment, and something for the ages.