It's evening, and finally this day has come and I have loved my way through its unexpected unfolding.

I was sitting outside a library in Melbourne when I received the email passing on the mantle to me for the day, and I felt such an immediate sense of sisterhood, shared purpose, and personal mission. So much gratitude for that, Anna.

The day chose itself because it is the 21st birthday of my son, half a world away in South Africa. So for me the day of Wellkeeping was an intergenerational honouring, an acknowledgement of all the ancestors whose lives made ours possible and a promise of hope for the future. I didn’t expect to be in Melbourne, but I know that life unfolds as it must. I thought I would be an emotional puddle when I phoned my son to wish him, but I felt only joy for his own amazing journey.

With my Melbourne hostess we visited a stained glass installation, Towards a Glass Monument by Tom Nicholson, at the Melbourne University. We accessed it through the Ancient Lives exhibition and it became its own meditation. The installation is an honouring of moments captured – a walk, a stone, a delicate fern fossil, a drawing, a book, the first woman university graduate…

Then, another exhibition, this one entitled Sutures, displayed at the Footscray Community Arts. A plaster cast embraces the leg and the elegant high heel sandal on a well manicured female foot. Artist Sophie Cassar describes her exhibition as “a response the sexual politics of disability”.

Finally, a visit to an ornate Taoist Temple, the largest in Australia, many parts of which are still under construction. I had some fruit in my pocket – uneaten breakfast – and made an offering on the altar as I felt the deepening of the well within.  There was something about the welcoming invitation to all at the door, irrespective of religion; something about the stateliness of the 15m statue of the deity Mazu, the Chinese Goddess of the Sea and Patron Deity of fishers; something about the overwhelming opulence of the shrines to Guan Yin, Wenchang and other Tao deities, that reminded me of the noble purpose of interfaith and intercultural engagement. The reminder that beyond our differences we are all one human family. So many facets of life and creation, so much to learn, so much to love.

The day turned out to be a pilgrimage.