St Mary's

CALLED TO SAY YES TO THE EMPTINESS

This week many of us from St Mary’s had the good fortune of being part of the 50 lives 50 homes campaign. An Australian first. Karyn Walsh and members of Micah went to United States last year and came home with the idea of launching this program. It was a comprehensive survey of Brisbane’s homeless. It asked homeless people to put their names and detailed information about their circumstances on a register. This register which would then be used to determine their level of need and vulnerability with an attempt to house and support Brisbane’s 50 most vulnerable homeless people.

We visited the streets and shelters of Brisbane at 4am armed only with surveys and clip boards and a 5 dollar food voucher as added incentive. As we met for our initial training in All Hallows School in down town Brisbane, (The staff, parents and students of the school were marvellous offering meals and support.) I immediately spied an opportunity of waking a little later when we were being placed into our various groups. Those who were visiting the shelters and food vans didn’t have to rise until 5am (u-hoooo) compared with the ridiculous 3am (boo-hoo) rise for the people surveying the people living on the street. This was an opportunity not to be missed for an anxious late riser like myself.

On entering the Oz care shelter many memories came flooding back of visiting the shelter over the 16 years when we lived and worked next to it during our time at St Marys church. Within no time we were interviewing guys who had been in and out of shelters for years interspersed with times on the streets. Many of these guys  had and were still struggling with mental heath problems, addiction and a range of psychical health problems. People like all of us here, but who have lacked the support and care we may have received in times of crises to see us through.

The great part of the campaign was that at the end of it we had compiled and sorted all the information into understandable data. This was thanks to the assistance of many volunteers many from St Marys.  And thanks to them we were able to put a face on homelessness quite literally, because many of the homeless had agreed to have their photos taken so they could be found and indentified by future workers trying to house and home them.

We surveyed 250 men, women and children without a home, more than half of whom were sleeping rough, and 83 we identified, using the index, as having a high mortality risk. Among those most vulnerable, the average length of homelessness was seven and half years, the longest period overall was 40 years and the oldest person surveyed was 79. More than half of these surveyed had been diagnosed with a mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction while 104 had reported intravenous drug use. It was estimated that those surveyed had made a combined total of 1184 visits to hospital emergency departments for treatment in the past 12 months.

A coalition of agencies will now begin work to find housing, health care and other support services for the 50 identified as most vulnerable, before starting on the next 50 on the list. The experience of listening to these guys was profoundly enriching. Hearing a glimpse of their story and struggle and often their calm and equinomous embracing of their humble and meagre lot was an inspiration to me.

One guy I interviewed had just come off the streets where he had spent the last few nights sleeping in the drafty Dutton Park Railway station. He was hungry and yearning just for a simple feed and a shower. All he owned in the world was in a plastic bag. Wow I thought that is certainly living out today’s gospel. Jesus said, “That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and how you are to clothe it. Surely life means more than food, and the body more than clothing.”(Matt; 6; 25)

When so many of us have so much more than what can fit into a plastic bag, and spend so much time acquiring things far and beyond what we need to survive, it is confronting to find someone who all he has in the world, and a basic serenity about it as well, is in a small plastic bag.

Most of us are mesmerized by the world of form, the material world, and we are fooled into thinking that this is the real world, this is what really counts. We can think that the world beyond form is an illusion, when the opposite is true. The world of form is an illusion, and the world beyond is what is REAL. This is what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel when he says, “So do not worry or say what are we to eat and what are we to drink, how are we to be clothed. It is the Godless who set their hearts on all these things. Set your hearts on Gods presence first and all these other things will be given you as well.”(Matt 6; 33)

It would seem what is most rewarding and sustaining and meaningful for us is living in this state of Gods presence. It would seem that the journey of living a life of the spirit is a journey of letting go of all that is unimportant and embracing that which is of most importance. Living a life embracing the Big presence. Moving beyond the pre-occupation of the small ego self to being emersed in the Big egoless self.

The invitation to move deeper and deeper into living more aware. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest known to many of you, tells the story of three men.

“Three men stood by the ocean, looking at the same sunset. One man saw the immense physical beauty and enjoyed the event in itself. This man was the ‘sensate’ type who, like 80 percent of the world, deals with what he can see, feel, touch move, and fix. This was enough reality for him, for he had little interest in larger ideas, intuitions, or the grand scheme of things. He saw with his first eye, which was good. A second man saw the sunset. He enjoyed all the beauty that the first man did. Like all lovers of coherent thought, technology, and science, he also enjoyed his power to make sense of the universe and explain what he discovered. He thought about the cyclical rotations of the planets and stars. Through imagination, intuition, and reason, he saw with his second eye, which was even better.

The third man saw the sunset, knowing and enjoying all that the first and the second men did. But in his ability to progress from seeing to explaining to “tasting”, he also remained in awe before an underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connected him with everything else. He used his third eye, which is the full goal of all seeing and all knowing. This was the best.

Third-eye seeing is the way the mystics see. They do not reject the first eye: the senses matter to them, but they know there is more. Nor do they reject the second eye; but they know not to confuse knowledge with depth or mere correct information with the transformation of consciousness itself. The mystical gaze builds upon the first two eyes—and yet goes further. It happens whenever, by some wondrous “coincidence,” our heart space, our mind space, and our body awareness are all simultaneously open and non-resistant. We like to call it presence. It is experienced as a moment of deep inner connection, and it always pulls us, intensely satisfied, into the naked and undefended now, which can involve both profound joy and profound sadness. At that point, we either want to write poetry, pray, or be utterly silent.”

Writing poetry is what Jan Novotka did when she wrote the song I want to introduce you to in a moment. It is a song which sums up a lot of what I am trying to communicate in this homily today.

I was at a workshop run by Jan about two months ago here in Brisbane. Jan would be known to most of you by the songs we sing at the acclamation time and during the Holy Holy. The words of the song are as follows,

“Called by a presence with no name.

Called to walk an unknown road.

Called to say yes to the emptiness and to leave all behind.

Called by a presence with no name.”

Called to say YES to the emptiness.

It doesn’t make sense.

Outside the experience

Of being in this presence.

A presence we cannot name

A mysterious

Nameless, boundless, presence.

As Jesus says “set your hearts on this presence first

And all these other things will be given you as well.”