St Mary's

Dear Friends, one of the reasons I come to this community is because of its capacity to welcome and enfold everyone including the unclean spirit, whatever that is. There seems to be a lot of fear in today’s readings, which is apt because fear and love is the subject of my homily. Before beginning, however, I would like to set today’s gospel reading against another reading, which seems to be saying something different. It’s from the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.” And this is the word of God.

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius, in an attempt to make conversation with the troubled prince, asks Hamlet what he is reading. “Words, words, words,” replies the prince.

Even the great wordsmith, Shakespeare, it seems understood the limitation of words. Words fail. Invariably, despite their utility and their capacity to convey emotion and meaning, make us laugh and cry, give us pause to think and reflect, words, at best, can only ever offer us an approximation of our felt experience, never the experience itself. And as much as words have the power to free the troubled soul they can also imprison the fearful and ignorant.

Fanatics of any kind are just such imprisoned souls. They are imprisoned by the certitude of their own beliefs. There is no room for doubt or difference, no room for communion or community.

There are a lot of fanatics about, from the boulevards of Baghdad to the boardrooms of the Free Market elites. Clearly, the man who has fanatically pursued the gathering of evidence in order to destroy (and there is no other word for it) this community is afraid. He is probably also unwell and needs our compassion rather than our scorn. The British Booker Prize winning author, art critic and commentator, John Berger, says: “Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma”.

The dogma of the Catholic Church is set out in the catechism, which is akin to a set of club rules. There are literally thousands of them. Here’s one: Rule No 1577:  “(Quote) Only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination. The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. … The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible. (unquote)”

From this rule we learn something about the institution. It’s a men’s club where women are at best auxiliaries to male frameworks and male power fantasies. It is a mild version of the same fantasy that in its full terrifying extension leads to a woman in Kisamayo, in 2008, being buried up to her neck and stoned to death by fifty men because of someone’s adultery.

Just over 30 years ago in Queensland women were not allowed into public bars. Those opposed to the idea of women having equal rights with men in what was an exclusive male domain prophesied all manner of catastrophe. “It’ll be the end of pubs!” some said.  Well, women began to chain themselves to the bars and eventually the bastion was broken. No one died and the beer kept flowing. For good or for ill, it didn’t lead to the end of pubs, but to their revival.

I don’t suggest, by the way, that the people of St. Mary’s chain themselves to the altar. As I said to Terry once, it would be a little ironic to chain ourselves to the altar after we’ve spent all these years trying to get away from it.

Of course there are other club rules that leave a lot to be desired. Those that exclude particular types of loving relationships, for example; and those that condemn anyone who does not seek their spiritual salvation through Jesus to eternal hell and damnation. Without wishing to disabuse those who hold these beliefs to be literally true, for my part, I think many of them are just plain silly. I can’t find another word for it. But words fail.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines communion as “the sharing of intimate thoughts and feelings”. It has the same root word as community and communication. There’s a view that because in general the South Brisbane community disagrees with some of the rules we are not in communion with the Catholic Church. I think the exact opposite is true. The views of this community about what it perceives as inappropriate rules are deeply felt, in good conscience. Because a large proportion of St Mary’s community object to some rules does not mean it disagrees with the community of the church, it just means it disagrees with the rules. If communion were truly in play there would be deep ongoing (and if necessary, endless) discussion, not exclusion. The vast majority of people attending these masses, and many who don’t attend, believe this community is in communion with the Catholic Church. This being so, is it possible then than it is a defensive and fearful male leadership that is no longer in communion with much of its own flock?

But enough of fear; let us turn to fear’s opposite, to love – the love of a priest, for example, for his flock. When Father Peter Kennedy was recently asked in a interview what made him get up in the morning, tears welled in the old priest’s eyes, his voice cracked, “the community,” he replied, and the tears flowed.

I saw him cry a month earlier than this. Father Peter was talking about his growing up and his father’s outbursts against his mother.  He began to repeat words his father used, but he couldn’t get the words out; his lips trembled, his voice broke, some well deep inside of him ruptured, and he cried. So did I. I know that well. I know that feeling.

It’s not so apparent today, but I have a mental condition: Infantile and Childhood Post-Traumatic Stress induced by life-threatening childhood trauma and abuse. Now let me say at the outset, these are just descriptive words, and words can trap us as much as they can free us. These days I choose freedom so we can forget the pity. I’m not looking for it. The naming of the condition, the acceptance rather than the denial of the events that led to it, and an awareness of the emotional impact the trauma has had in my life, this is the foundation upon which my freedom today is based. The truth sets us free. I raise it because I want to relate to you two stories. Each involves a broken man (the broken man was me) and each story appears to be about love but only one is.

Despite building a highly successful career in my field, at the very point when, ostensibly, everything a person with my background would ever want was right in front of me I emotionally self-destructed. During the last eight months of this period, which lasted many years, I was homeless. It was, if you like, my desert experience.

When I eventually sought the help I needed, my childhood trauma, the very thing I’d spent my entire life manically running away from, came flooding back. Having listened to some of the stories of my growing up and especially stories of my father, a brutal man who terrorised his family, a counsellor suggested that I might benefit by speaking to a particular minister of religion. I went to the priest. I began to tell him about my father. But I felt disconnected from him as if his mind was somewhere else. The priest interrupted me at one point and said he wanted to show me something. He took me to the chapel and there we stood in front of a life-sized reprint of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. The priest put his hand on my shoulder and he said: “It’s OK Robert; your real father loves you.” I was sick to the stomach with anger and felt abused all over again. When a child is starving you give the child food, without intent. When a woman needs shelter and protection you give her a safe harbour, without intent. When a broken man needs love, you listen deeply, without intent. I don’t wish to denigrate the priest. In his heart he was and he remains a good man and I’m absolutely certain he meant no harm. But I don’t think he was remotely aware of what it means to love. The priest’s attachment to his own spiritual ambitions and desires, his inability to put aside his particular way of thinking and frames of reference, even temporarily, meant that he had no facility, let alone capacity, to open himself up to or be opened up to the broken man before him. That is a tragedy. Not for the broken man – but for the priest.

One of the things I love about the social justice work of Saint Mary’s and Micah is the total absence of any form of proselytising. Micah doesn’t talk the talk. I’m not sure it even walks the talk. Talk is cheap. As far as I can tell, Micah seems to walk the walk, as best any of us can.

Now let me tell you the second story. When I was homeless I lived in an open garage that belonged to a chemist. I’d wait for him to shut up shop and leave. From nearby bushes, I’d unwrap my sleeping bag from plastic bags; I’d lay out newspapers and cartons on the asphalt floor, and there I would lie in the bed I’d made for myself. Before light I’d get up, put everything away, and leave well before the chemist arrived for work in the morning. One day it was raining and I decided to risk leaving the cardboard and newspapers in a neat stack against the garage wall. They were still there when I returned that night and they remained there every night after that.

A month or so before Christmas I packed everything away and left the garage as I had every other day, except this time I didn’t come back. That day I found the help I desperately needed. Just after Christmas however I returned to retrieve an original painting I’d left wrapped in plastic bags in the bushes. After all that time and in all that heat, the painting was still there intact. But this was not the only thing that surprised me. Before leaving, I went up to the garage to have one last look at my old abode. There, on top of the cardboard cartons was a plum pudding with a Christmas card. Happy Christmas is all it said. It was hand written..

Remembering St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, I went across the road and bought a card on which I wrote: “Thank you for your generosity, thank you for your kindness, thank you for not judging. Thank you for your faith and hope. Especially thank you for your love. The pudding has given me a sustenance you could not have dreamt of.” I put the card in an envelope, on which I wrote: “to whom it may concern” and I stuck the envelope with the card to the garage wall. Then I gathered up the cartons and newspapers and respectfully and gratefully put that chapter of my life in a rubbish bin.

I come to this community of St Mary’s and its loving arms like Micah because more than any other community I know of, you understand that love can sometimes be as simple as an anonymous plum pudding, without intent. And to return to the words of that holy secular man William Shakespeare: “Blessing on his heart that gives it me! For ‘tis a sign of love; and love … is a strange brooch in this all hating world.”

The plum pudding is just over seven years old now. It’s a little mouldy and shrivelled, but sometimes that’s how love is.

I don’t know what is going to happen to St Mary’s. There are some who don’t hold out much hope. For my part I hope and pray that with the terrible pressure the Archbishop must be under that His Grace hasn’t lost his sense of humour. Indeed, I have a fantasy image in which the Arch and his cohorts frock-up in full regalia and dance down the aisle of the cathedral singing “How do you solve a problem like St Mary’s?”

I don’t have any solutions for you I’m afraid, but I do have a feeling. I feel deeply that should the axe fall we shouldn’t take it lying down and that for a period at least we should challenge the certitude on which such a decision could only ever be made, not as an act of defiance or anger, but as an act of love for the community to which we rightly belong.

I’d like to finish with a song. It’s a love song – to a woman. But beyond its specific focus, it is also a song about resistance – the resistance to love. So, it could be addressed to anyone, to Jesus, to an old priest with a courageously beautiful heart, or, for that matter, to a community. This is whom I choose to sing it to today. To you, my community, my safe harbour, my refuge, my love.

If I can’t be you’re lover

Will you be my muse?

I don’t think there will be another

And I’m just too scared to choose

Your smile is like breath to me

Your eyes are a fathomless sea

Your hair’s like weeping willow

On the shore of your joie de vive

And a river is just an ocean

Finding a way back home

Along the path of least resistance

Around weed, and beast, and stone

So, if you take me with you

Be unguarded, and be strong

Be serious, and playful

Truthful, and prolonged

A heart is just one beat away

And who knows the mighty sea?

Who can say what’s around the corner?

Could be you, could be me.

‘Cause a river’s just an ocean

Finding a way back home

And here is where the waters meet

On this riverbed of stone