A healing message

Jim Mynard
ST MICHAEL’S School, Berwick has delivered an Aboriginal message stick to the Casey Hospital.
The message stick called at Berwick on Friday 26 August while on transit around Australia from Alice Springs.
Message sticks are a traditional way of Aboriginal correspondence where carriers would deliver messages carved or painted on a piece of wood to inform other Aboriginal groups of celebrations or events.
These sticks were carried from community to community and the carriers always had safe passage and a welcome on arrival.
St Michael’s Catholic parish in Berwick was custodian of the message stick for the week.
The message reads: “To all who walk this land may you always stand tall as a tree. Be as gentle as the morning mist and as strong as the earth under your feet. May the warmth of the camp fire be in you and may the Greater Spirit of the Wurundjeri people always watch over you.”
St Michaels Church representative Elizabeth Overdyk welcomed the message stick, a sacred symbol, and gratefully received it in a spirit of hope.
Ms Overdyk said the message would be carried through the land.
“Just as this hospital is a sacred place because of the healing that takes place here, so too, may the healing of the spirit of this great southland begin to take place within us today.”