St Mary's



“This is not a snap of Robert Perrier.

It is a photograph of Robert’s favourite creature friend, Atticus. The only thing Atticus and Robert share in common is the naturally occurring curly hair. Generally, Atticus’s disposition and serenity is something to which Robert and his ilk can only aspire.”



A Place I Have Always Known

Recently I looked after the home of some friends who were overseas. Whilst they were away, the council removed their old road and replaced it with a new one. I emailed them:

By the time you return there will be a new road outside your house. The new road will be in the same spot as the old road, but, without any doubt whatsoever, it will be a new road. Why there will be a new road is a little beyond me since the old road seemed to me to be a perfectly good road. It was neither an unused road nor a well-worn road. And although it was a long and winding road, it was also a humble and useful road. I liked the old road, partly, because the old road did not seem so old and, partly, because it oozed character and hidden knowledge. Now all the old road’s familiar lines and markings which told a thousand stories of a community becoming, the dips, the plateauings, the arrivings, the goings, the first kisses, the secret flings, the disasters averted and the million other things: gone, all gone, but for this little ode left by the old road:

Life is sad
Life is grand
Life is bold
Life is bland
Life is compost
Life is clover
Sadly though
My life is over

Goodbye.

PS: Life is a bitch (umen)

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I arrived at St Mary’s sometime in 2005, I think. I say I think, because, unlike a social club or a political party, no evidence exists that might tell me the exact day, month, or year of my arrival. I didn’t have to register or sign anything, I didn’t have to subscribe to a particular sets of beliefs, nothing was asked of me. I was not encouraged by anyone to return but I nevertheless wanted to return.

Whist I don’t remember the exact time of my arrival, I remember the exact feeling of it. I felt as if I had come to a place I had always known. This feeling was no more profound than in the ritual of the Eucharist. Just before coming to St Mary’s I attended a seminar by Fr Frank Anderson (MSC) on the Eucharist. He made the point that the Eucharist is “in a deeply mysterious but nonetheless true sense the holy and living sacrifice of ourselves”[1]. In other words, we are the body, we are the bread, and when the bread is eaten we each receive the nourishment of the whole. “The primary issue of the Eucharist,” says Anderson, “is not whether – or how – Jesus might be present but whether we are truly present”[2].

So the feeling I had when I first arrived is somehow linked to the mystery implicit in a caring community nourishing its own and, in so doing, giving each the reinforcement to carry on with the work of loving others and being loved.

On that first arrival, St Mary’s was modestly full. But between October 2008 and Easter 2009 when its future was threatened, a tsunami of people came to defend her. This told me that the people of St Mary’s were both a visible and less visible community, greater than the sum of its regular clientele. So what exactly were all these people defending? Because whatever we were defending then, than surely it is still worth defending now. I can only speak for myself so let me begin by making clear what I wasn’t defending.

I wasn’t defending a specific dogma, doctrine, or religion. In the old St Mary’s, I sat next to a Christian Brother, a true believer, whereas I have only ever described myself as agnostic. But him being a believer and me a non-believer didn’t set up barriers or stop us from sharing the nourishment of the community bread. I have no knowledge of God because I have no understanding of God. As a friend of mine once said to me: if I understood God, I would be God. And I’m quite happy to leave my spirituality there, in the realm of mystery; a mystery which has not come to me primarily through religious beliefs but, incongruously, through science. I have no need to create a fantasy in order to live fully in the mystery. It is not through the fanciful but through the real that science is constantly reminding us of the mystery of life. Has anyone noticed how the more scientific discoveries there are, the more madly mysterious everything becomes?

What I was defending was the right of a community of people genuinely committed to social justice to continue to exist (even as an irritant) within the framework of an institution that espouses social justice but who’s many rules and, in some cases, practices, denies it, even to its own. My defence of St Mary’s was itself an act of social justice.

For social justice to exist there must first be injustice. And in the face of injustice, the social justice person has no option but to do whatever can be done to correct or relieve the injustice, which is not necessarily about storming the ramparts; sometimes it may simply be sitting with somebody for a while who needs to be sat with. The spiritual power of just being present for someone in need, I’ve never felt more deeply than when I’ve visited a friend of mine who is a volunteer at the Campbell Club. There is absolutely no room for ambition, grand plans, or corporate strategies at the Campbell Club. Members of the Campbell Club are very real, and very present, as are their needs. There, there is only the space and time for compassion.

Social justice says: If someone is hungry you feed them. If someone is homeless you give them shelter. If someone is physically, psychologically, or emotionally oppressed or abused you give them the assistance they need to become more whole and more free. Or if someone dribbles, like some often do at the Club, you wipe it from their face. Social justice exists in the present and acts out of the real.

Take everything else away, and, however it came about, and for whatever reason, St Mary’s is primarily a faith community. But it’s faith is not borne out a romantic belief that justice will prevail eventually in some mythical kingdom. Rather, its faith is reignited and reinvigorated every time a refugee is given safe harbour, a water well in Ethiopia begins to function, or when dribble is wiped from a face.

Has anything really changed because the community is no longer the oppositional irritant within the institution? I don’t think so. Whilst it might have been useful, I don’t think being oppositional was ever the purpose of St Mary’s. Rather, I think it was an assumed position that St Mary’s found herself in because her faith was borne out of practice rather than out of rigid laws and superstitious beliefs. Indeed, one of the reasons this community grew is because of the courage it found to face residual institutionalised cultural fears and discard the rules and superstitions that protected them.

We should think very deeply about this before we go down the path of making our own rigid rules. For it is the history of all institutions that with rules also come internal struggles for wealth, prestige and power.

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In 1939, one hundred alcoholics who had “recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body”[3] wrote down precisely the method they used to recover. They called the book Alcoholics Anonymous and this became the name of the spiritual movement that had already existed for half a decade without a name. Today, countless millions of copies of that book have been sold, there are AA groups in every corner of the world, and many other fellowships based on the AA method. There is even one called Anonymous Anonymous for those who are addicted to twelve step fellowships.

In AA the journey to individual recovery is from an extreme form of self-centreness to some form of God consciousness. This God consciousness is not imposed. It is of the individual’s understanding, not the group’s. But whatever the understanding is, embodied in it is the idea that “faith without works is dead”. In order to keep what they have, the recovered alcoholic must freely pass on to another alcoholic the path to freedom that was freely given to them.

But the road to group cohesion in AA was not easy. In the beginning they were beset by quarrels over membership, leadership, and money and there were schisms on every front. In their own words their early experience was “frightening” and “disrupting”[4].  But just as these men and women discovered the principles by which the individual alcoholic could live then so too did they evolve spiritual traditions by which the community could survive and function. This process took eleven years. And every single principle is counter intuitive.

For a start, there are literally no rules. No individual member or group can tell another what to do. The individual decides if they are a member. They come and go as they wish. They do the program or not. Everything is a suggestion.  But because those suggestions come out of the experience of the whole they carry a lot of depth and weight. It’s like the parachute instructor and the first time jumper. As they jump out of the plane  the instructor says to the first timer: “I suggest you pull the rip cord, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Not all of the AA traditions are relevant to St Mary’s but some may be. The first is the most important and the one from which all of the others stem. “The common welfare comes first; personal recovery depends on group unity”. For AA’s, the body is the most important thing and the traditions encourage individuals to quell their egos so as to avoid any action that may bring the community unnecessary harm.

The second tradition addresses authority. The only authority is a loving God as she may express herself in the collective conscience. Leaders do not make rules or govern. They serve. But they are also “trusted” by the body to serve. For example, at St Mary’s I trust all of our leaders (the visible and the less visible) to identify the texts, people, and activities which are the spiritual ingredients of the bread we break and eat to nourish us in our daily works.

The St Mary’s community has always demonstrated an uncanny ability to find its collective voice in the face of challenges and threats. This is what happened in 2008/9. That experience demonstrates to me that our collective conscience, by whatever mysterious means it is arrived at, is powerful enough to counter anything or anyone who tries to impose his or her will about doctrine or belief, or rule with impunity.

In considering the future, I think we should think twice before ripping up the old and replacing it with the new. I think the most important question we can ask is: What are the spiritual principles which, to use the words of Frank Anderson, “in a deeply mysterious but nonetheless true sense” have always sustained us. Then, let’s uncover the administrative principles by which the spiritual body can be honoured. If we are respectful, patient, humble, non-threatening, and open, I don’t think the process needs to take eleven years. But what if it does? So what?

I’m very fond of the slow old St Mary’s road: with its twists and turns, its uncertainties and doubts, its silent resting places, its surprising and sometimes awesome views. Mostly though, I’m fond of it because it appears to be without destination. And it seems to go on forever – into the present.

***********

refrain:

The old road weeps for one or many

Each tear that falls another heavenly penny

It maybe wide

It maybe slender

This old road’s

For every race and gender

refrain

Not too proud

Mostly humble

The old road waits

For all who stumble

refrain

By foot, by wheel

By car, by rail

The safe way home’s

The beaten trail

refrain

It ain’t no highway

Sometimes there’s jams

But it don’t need

No Master plan

refrain

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[1] Eucharist – Participating in the Mystery, Fr Frank Anderson MSC (John Garratt Publishing, 1998), p. 88

[2] Ibid, p 55

[3] Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book,  xiii

[4] Ibid, xix