We acknowledge the traditional owners of this land where we are now gathered and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them. We salute them – guardians of the earth and all that grows, of the seas, streams and rivers and of all living things.
We thank them for passing this heritage on to every people since the dreamtime.
Tago n binay marrumba yari (Altogether hear the good message)
Candidates for First Communion and Confirmation 2010 for Sunday Aug 8 at the 9am mass (click image to enlarge)
One particular person cannot speak on behalf of everybody’s personal spiritual creed. Once we try and draw a box around ourselves and state “That is what St Mary’s in Exile believes!” we run the very real risk of excluding new insights and new ways to experience our shared journey.
David Cantwell
My name is David Cantwell and I have been a member of this community since 1987.
I feel I have come full circle given my first real encounter with Peter Kennedy was at our rented flat in the late 80’s. We had invited him over for dinner as Trish and I had become engaged and in true Catholic tradition, we invited the priest over for dinner.
Reverend Ken Howell conducts the 9am Mass at St Mary's Church, South Brisbane, on Sunday July 11. Photo: Michelle Smith
KATE DENNEHY July 19, 2010 – 10:37AM
The pictures tell the story of attendance at the two St Mary’s Catholic churches at South Brisbane with the rebel congregation substantially outnumbering the traditionalists last week.
Fairfax Media’s Sun-Herald dropped in unannounced at the 9am services on a recent Sunday to check on parishioner numbers following last year’s very public split.
This book ‘The Future of Faith” by Harvey Cox was given to me recently in Melbourne by the Progressive Christian Network. It is a book which I believe can help us to understand what happened to this community and why it happened and what our future might look like. I found it easy to read and indeed compelling. I want to look only at Chapter 1 entitled “ An Age of the Spirit” – “The Sacred in the Secular?”
Cox begins with a question “ What does the future hold for religion and for Christianity in particular?” I believe the clue to a correct answer is
“The realm of God is very near to you, for in God we live and move and have our being”.
Indigenous peoples were very aware of this. God was everywhere.
The sacred infused all of life; this is reflected in this Native American Navajo chant.
“The mountains, I become part of it…
The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it.
The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering waters, I become part of it.
The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen…
I become part of it.”
Our collective sense of being a part of nature, our world, our environment was lost somewhere in our move to go indoors, building bigger and more elaborate buildings – filling them with more and more things – Symbolically, removing ourselves from nature, from Mother Earth, from the source of our life. The rhythm of life, the movements of nature, the cycles of the moon, the rise and fall of the tides, the gathering of clouds, the direction of the wind, become insignificant, unimportant, along with so much which connected us to our fragile planet.
The removal of Indigenous peoples from their land, their mother, their source – and we were seemingly oblivious to what damage such severing would cause. Land was a commodity to be owned, bought and sold, fenced, dug up, damaged and destroyed at a whim.