'James Cornell's world is "charged with the grandeur of God", in Hopkins' words ..... each person is a tessera in a timeless mosaic, a murmur in a songline' (Dark Diamond Dancing: a mosaic of encounter. London, Athena Press: 2004). In this text, he devotes pages 144-151 to the consideration of 'The Process of Personalising Cosmic Love'.
He writes elsewhere:
Encounter with nature-archetypes wakes qualities within us that make us strong and balanced individuals, with the equipment we need to face the challenges of life. For this reason, besides watching our cholesterol and sugar levels, we city dwellers need to watch our relationship to country.
There are obvious dangers. Where do we encounter the Family of Being? Where does it get the chance to minister to us?
Does encounter survive the switch to the virtual world? Is passivity affecting more than just my waistline? Does the axiom 'spend time with your family' have a wider and equally critical meaning for us urbanites of the twenty-first century?' (2004:136)
'The Aboriginal people ... mainline the land.' (ibid, 137)
'The comprehensive beauty of the environing cosmos and the warmth and communion of personal love are innate and equal objects of human passion. The human heart instinctively seeks to integrate them.
I am currently privileged to live in one of the last great wilderness areas of the world, the semi-desert region of inland Australia. The beauty of nature is awesome here and especially so as it is so vast and isolated. It is very much like Otto's description of God: tremendum et fascinans (terrible but fascinating).
It is easy to feel irrelevant to this fiercely beautiful world of relentless, inner dictated change.' (ibid, 144-5)
In introducing the song 'My Country' at a Red Land Concert in Innisfail, January 1986, Rod Cameron stated:
Maria Rosa has taken (my poem about my encounter with the myall who asked me:
'Where is your country?') and universalized it. She has seen friendship between peoples, the country, the land (in my following words to the myall):
You are my country. ...
If I like and love you, you are my country. The country - the land is not only the ground on which we walk, the land is the total environment, is the universe; it is the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, the mountains, the ocean, the birds and everything that exists all around ... It is where human life is lived. This is where we find the sacred, this is where we find our friendship, this is where we work out our destiny, in the midst of this universe, in the midst of this land.'
Video creation - Brent Hodgkins, Bruthen Music
Photography - Maria Rosa
Recording, mixing and mastering - Brent Hodgkins, Bruthen Music Studio
Vocals and musical accompaniment - Maria Rosa
Musical composition - Maria Rosa
Encountering Country theme - James Cornell and Rod Cameron
Producers - Brent Hodgkins and Maria Rosa