Terry Fitzpatrick Homilist July 9-10 2011
A saying used widely in the East, in particular in Eastern spirituality and a saying that should never be quoted before a homily is “Those who know do not say; those who say do not know.”
If I had any sense I should sit down now, for if I continue you now know that I do not know. At the risk of displaying my foolishness, I will continue. I do not know how each of you will come to discover what St Paul describes as “the peace that transcends all understanding” (Phil 47)
No one can bring you to this, no one can give you this, as the Buddha states, you must walk the path to it yourself. As the many sacred scriptures describe, it transcends all understanding, it is beyond the conceptual mind.
The great Thomas Aquinas toward the end of his life, wouldn’t write, wouldn’t talk. “He had seen.”
Most of us have believed that he kept his silence for only a couple of months, but it went on for years. In his prologue of his Summa Theologica, which is the summary of all his theology, he says “About God, we cannot say what God is but rather what God is not.” The highest form of talking about God is to know that one does not know. Maybe he should have stopped there.
We would have saved a lot of paper and trees if we had taken this to heart, we would have had a lot less wars, witch hunts, stretching on racks, boiling in oil and basically suffering across the board.
When Michael Leunig was in town recently for the showing of our documentary, I had the good fortune of sharing some precious moments with him. He related that one of the most profound things that happened to him early in his career was a time he was explaining a cartoon to a newspaper editor and in his attempt to explain it he was struck dumb. He was unable to speak, which distressed him immensely, so he rushed into the toilet where he faced a mirror and tried to speak but was unable. He excused himself from the office and rushed down to his car where he sat bewildered and distressed at what was happening to him. He thought he may be having a stroke. He sat in his car wondering what to do. He turned the radio on at one stage to listen to people speaking in the vain hope that if he memorized them he would remember how to peak; this only frustrated him more so he turned it off and sat in silence. After some time in silence, he remembered very clearly a moment of letting go and allowing for the fact that he could not speak.
He got in touch with his breath, his body, his senses, and he simply relaxed into that. Some hours later in this state of dumbness, this stillness, this empty space, came his voice. He said that this experience had a profound effect on his life and work. To not be afraid of the empty space inside of him, the dumb space, to make a friend of it, to visit it regularly.
I believe that it is this space that Michael has learned to access is where the creative genius resides. It is where religious people have known and spoken of it, as the word of God resides.
This WORD OF GOD which the prophet Isaiah speaks of in our first reading isn’t some scripture verse or external authority or reading but this wisdom, this knowing, this creativity, which emerges out of the silence. We all can remember times of sitting silence where that knowing, that wisdom from deep within bubbles to the surface.
As the prophet relates, this deep knowing, this word does not return to the heavens without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth, so this word, this deep knowing nourishes and feeds our soul and gives yield in the way we live our lives with deeper compassion and connection.
In this NAIDOC weeks it is good to recall the words of Miriam Rose Ungunmerr from Daly River in the Northern Territory, who was in Brisbane last year at the Australian Catholic University. She speaks of getting in touch with this inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness of Dadirri. She relates that, “Dadirri recognizes the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us.
When I experience Dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the river bank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need of words. A big part of Dadirri is listening. There is no need to reflect too much and to do am lot of thinking. It is just being aware.” She continues. “Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and to wait. We do not try to hurry things up. We let them follow their natural course – like the seasons.
We watch the moon in each of its phases. We wait for the rain to fill our rivers and water the thirsty earth. We are river people. We cannot hurry the river. We have to move with its current and understand its ways. There are deep springs within each of us. And within this deep spring, is a sound – the sound of deep calling to deep.”
13/07/2011 at 8:05 am Permalink
Reassuring to read this homily. Miriam says it all, ‘no need to reflect too much and do a lot of thinking. It is just being aware’. Also comforting to hear from Terry that we really only know what God is not. So the goodness of humanity is so much within our hands if we allow ourselves to reside in this awareness.
I have only visited St Mary’s once as I live too far away. I could feel the bonds of this wonderful community just sitting with you.
Something that is born out of loving kindness and searching for what God is not.
14/07/2011 at 1:04 pm Permalink
Hello Christians,
Terry says lovely things but he speaks of the destination not the journey. And we haven’t got there yet. Maybe when we speak of where we think we are going to get we are only speaking delusion, maybe we don’t know what we are talking about. We can say lovely things about any fantasy we please. Just look at the Vaticanites; they say lovely things about nonsense.
Back in the 70’s, in the early days of the Great Walk Out, I became involved in a “crisis centre” in St Kilda. In those days St Kilda was real not it is fantasy. For non Melbourne people St Kilda was our version of King’s Cross (I do not know Brisbane and it’s version). Many of the young people at the “crisis centre” were, like me, people who had taken the first heroic steps to freedom. Although we did not know that, we saw ourselves as having walked out on life suffocating Catholicism. The charismatic street people – the drug pushers, users and sex works used the centre. But it was not their theatre which captured my imagination. Rather, it was the homeless people with “mental illness” who had been “de-institutionalised” back into the community who stole my thoughts. At the time I was an arrogant know all young man. They taught me something different: that I didn’t know anything. I came to realise that whatever views I had about life whether from religion, psychology, sociology or whatever, simply did not fit. When confronted with the difficult life these humble people were enduring I found myself being helpless to the point that the best I could do was be kind to them. If there is such a thing as the “spiritual journey” it was they who were on it. And if there are “spiritual teachers” it was they. The rest of us were only talking smoke.
I became interested in St Mary’s journey when I heard Peter on television talk about his experience in visiting prisons. I thought it had a parallel with the St Kilda “crisis centre”.
Love Fosco
15/07/2011 at 7:46 am Permalink
I am a person who lives far away from you in the middle of the coast of NSW but every week I read your bulletion and read the homilys on line as they pop up in my emails.. They are a great source of delight to me. My story is probably so much like so many Catholics – I go to church and feel that the message and the way it is power structured is not what it is meant to be but I love my little community and I love the Eucharist so I hang in there after years of trying to change things from within I have learned to let go and to be quiet and to wait. I am one of the lucky one as I have also been blessed to find an amazing spiritual teacher who teaches so much from the East and West embodies all faiths so I can feel safe and loved with the divine in a community that is supportive and loving outside of my local church also …However when I read something as beautiful as this homily I can not just click off and go back to work ….I must say thank you. It is exactly what I needed to be remined of on this rainy day in the middle of a frosty winter. Terry your light shines warm and bright. Thankyou!
09/09/2011 at 10:11 pm Permalink
Hi Terry,
I see that you post sometimes on Cathnews. Your homily above reminds me of St Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13 verse 12: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” It also reminds me of what Thomas Aquinas himself reportedly said in 1273 after what some believed to be a vision of Christ, of which he never spoke or wrote, “all that I have written seems like straw to me.”
Peace,
Frank