Keeping the faith: Lee Rhiannon on balancing atheism and spirituality – ABC Online

Updated May 05, 2017 10:52:26

She walks the corridors of power, but Lee Rhiannon's focus is the green spaces she glimpses through the windows.

The Greens senator from NSW still reads botany books in bed and keeps a list of the species of birds she spots from within the walls of Parliament House (she's just reached double figures).

For her, the fascination with the natural world has a spiritual dimension.

Rhiannon is a firm atheist her parents were atheists and told her school she wouldn't be going to religious classes.

But she says she has a strong sense of wonder at nature and believes in "non-god-centred spirituality".

"I really want to use the word 'spirituality' carefully, because for a lot of people it does mean spirits, like things out there," she says.

"I don't see the world at all like that.

"I find it hard to find the right language but particularly for my love of the environment, my fascination with people, you do feel a deep connection, you do feel these extraordinary bonds."

But she says she learnt to respect other people's beliefs from her parents.

"I grew up in what I suppose these days might be an activist household."

Senator Rhiannon and her parents would discuss the state of the world around the dinner table.

Even years later, when her father was suffering Alzheimer's, her complaints about the local pool brought him a moment of clarity.

"All of a sudden he said to us, clear as a bell, 'And what are you doing about it?'," she says.

"It was sad in one way, but it made me laugh as well because it was like all his brain cells or whatever goes on in your mind all lined up.

"And that was like how I grew up."

Rhiannon's parents campaigned on issues such as Aboriginal rights, the Vietnam War, anti-Apartheid and women's rights.

But during her political career, the focus has often been on the fact they were Communists.

She says it reminds her of McCarthyism.

"Some of the things that go on these days do actually remind me of the Cold War that I grew up in, where people throw around names, throw around slogans, and they don't actually look at what people did," she says.

"I've seen my parents vilified, but that doesn't mean they did bad things."

Senator Rhiannon travelled to Russia with her then-partner in the 1970s and studied political economy, philosophy and Marxist philosophy.

She said it was an enlightening time experiencing life under Brezhnev.

"We were in the middle of the Cold War, remember," she says.

"And this is a country that's been invaded so many times and that rigidity, in terms of how they interact with their own people and the world, I think is explained by that.

"It was a rigidity I found I could understand, but I was pleased I lived in Australia."

She says she's learnt over time not to be too trusting of the media.

One example of that was the reporting over the years on the reasons for her chosen surname.

She decided on "Rhiannon" with the help of friends, as an alternative to returning to her maiden name.

But somewhere along the line various reports emerged it was based on the Fleetwood Mac song, or styled after a Celtic goddess of wetlands.

"None of them are true," she says.

"My friends were very helpful and I wanted to change my name."

Despite the frustrations, she says politics has brought a "richness" to her life and a sense of hope.

"When I was growing up, I never thought the Vietnam War would end, I never thought Apartheid would end," she says.

"When I talk to people these days who often feel quite hopeless about whatever their campaign is, I give those examples.

"You never know you do your little bit in life and you can have a breakthrough."

Topics: government-and-politics, parliament-house-2600, nsw

First posted May 03, 2017 06:02:38

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Keeping the faith: Lee Rhiannon on balancing atheism and spirituality - ABC Online