We are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

This is the way Gods universe is made.

This is the way it is structured.                                Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Second reading “One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.”  Jean Vanier

Hi Everyone, I’m Carolyn.

A few months ago I had spoken to get a group together to promote St. Mary’s on Peters suggestion. Since then a few of us have been meeting fortnightly and today I will be sharing with you all a representation of where we are at. All the fun we’ve been having!

Our two readings today speak of the importance of our interconnectedness with each other and therefore the importance of community. The homily today suggests how we can harness the existing love within our community to organically and sustainably promotes ourselves.

I’ll start off by saying that as a group, we prefer to use the term “sharing our gifts” rather than promote St. Mary’s, as it seems more appropriate for what most of us experience here.

It truly is a gift to me.

I’d also like to indemnify us as a group by saying that this is just a perception, so please treat it as just that.  Peter, I know, would like to call it an illusion. And the suggestions we have come up with are just that too. Suggestions… so if you all would listen with an open heart that would be really good… because it’s coming from one…. Thanks.

I’ve broken this homily down into three parts.

Firstly… What is it that we have here at St. Mary’s? What are our gifts?

Secondly…. Why do we want to or need to share it with the outer community?

And thirdly…. How do we go about it?

So what do we have here at St. Mary’s?………….

Basically we have 2 aspects to St. Mary’s. One is our ever-evolving liturgy, which allows us all the freedom to explore what it means to be spiritual from a base of love and not fear. And because it is love based, it is therefore also a sustainable way, which is why we still exist here 3 years later without the umbrella of an institutional Church. This freedom to explore is precious beyond words.

The second aspect of St. Mary’s is this supportive community; these support networks, which most of us have the privilege to experience. So in a nutshell we have a sustainable liturgy and we have a supportive community. These are our gifts we have to offer; the keywords being “sustainable” and “community”.

So moving onto the second part. Why do we want to or need to share our gifts with the outer community? This part I would like to share via my own experiences and perception.

When Peter first suggested we get a group together to promote St. Mary’s, without even thinking about it, I very spontaneously said “yes “to him. I did not for 1 second even consider what might be involved or what skills I may need. I personally have no experience in the marketing or advertising fields. And so my very spontaneous “yes”, came from a deep sense of gratitude for what St. Mary’s has been for me.

I came to St. Mary’s 2.5 yrs ago. I had recently separated from my husband and due to the nature of my relationship; I had inadvertently let myself get isolated for a long time. So when I finally separated from my husband, I suddenly realized that I did not have the support I was going to need to be able to cope with my upcoming challenges. I realized I was not superwoman anymore. I made a conscious decision at the time to get the support I so desperately needed.  My cousin who is a community member of St. Mary’s suggested to me to come along to St. Mary’s. She said  “come along… they have a meditation service on Saturdays and you will meet likeminded people there”. So one evening I came along with her.

I remember thinking how different it was to the church I went to as a teenager in India. By the way, I stopped going to church when I was 14. I used to go down to the local park and have a cigarette with a girlfriend and come home 1 hr later. Lucky my mum never asked me what the homily was about!! I only look sweet!

Back to St. Mary’s, I loved the whole experience of coming around the table, holding of hands, bread instead of host, beautiful words in the liturgy. Everything seemed so human like and real and of course I was looking out for where the priests were hiding because I could not see anyone in those frocks!! And there was just this amazing feeling in the room. On about the 3^rd or 4^th time I met Brian and Angela, on one of those…. now turn around and say hello to the person next to you. I was behind them. After the service, they followed up and engaged in a conversation with me. I honestly cannot remember clearly what was spoken; however I remember feeling safe with them. From there on we started to meet regularly every Friday at my place. I could honestly say I felt like I was a part of their family. They have been and continue to be my guardian angels. In fact I used to say to Angela, if you take the “a” off Angela it becomes angel. This is what St. Mary’s has been for me. Truly loving support when I so needed it.

The other reason I want to share our gifts, which are… as… if not. More important than gratitude is the crisis situation we all face on our planet today on so many fronts. I believe our gifts can contribute to the healing of our planet and our species.

So if we think about our crisis and if we keep asking the question “why”, we will arrive at the root cause being “fear”. Fear of something or the other has caused us humans to make the unconscious choices we have made, which has caused our current global crisis. Einstein said that a problem cannot be solved at the same level at which it was created, so if fear has caused our crisis, then Love must be the cure.

So what has this got to do with St. Mary’s? Well for the last 2 yrs Peter and Terry have been speaking of connecting with our essence, that love that resides within every one of us. When we connect with our essence, which is Love, we start to act from this place of love. Our choices become love based. We can start to heal our world.

Every one of us counts. It is everyone’s responsibility.

My own life experiences forced me to go down this path. I learnt that when I was connected to my essence I was able to cope much better. Connecting with our essence is really easy. All I do is just breathe. I stop… and I breathe…that’s it… I breathe from here

I’ve connected with the love inside of me…. Our breath is our life force. It’s just that we have taken it for granted. When we connect to our essence, we act from a place of love, our relationship with ourselves, with our loved ones, our community, our workplaces and our environment all change as well.

And then there is our other gift of “community”.

Well again my personal experiences has proven to me that I can’t make it alone, I need community, I need to be interdependent on others. I grew up thinking I had to be independent, I have learnt now that it is more important to teach my children interdependence.

Every indigenous culture has sustainability and community as their core concepts.

St. Mary’s offers two avenues, a sustainable liturgy and a supportive community to go inwards and connect with our spirituality, our essence, the love that we all are, which when we start to act from that place will cause us to make more conscious choices, which will in turn eventually heal our world.

This is the main reason; I would like to share our gifts. This is why I come here to support St. Mary’s.

So everything we have and are learning here is integral to the survival of our global crisis.

Our gifts are very timely and precious beyond words. We need to share them.

So now finally, how can we then share these   gifts with the outer community? What sustainable avenues can we use? “Sustainable”… being a key word again.

As a group we felt that some appropriate forms of media would definitely get us more exposure out there. None of our current attending group members have any experience in this area though. We also felt that equally important would be that as a community, it would be our responsibility to make sure that when new people come here they experience what we do. As far as our liturgy goes, they would definitely experience that, like we all do. Our liturgy group actively and consciously meet every week to evolve and create better and more enriching experiences for us all.

What about our community? …. Stay in that heart space…

Do we actively and consciously work on being a better community?

Do we actively and consciously reach out to other community members or do we sometimes take for granted that everyone feels supported, included, loved accepted etc?

What about when new people come along. Have we got a culture in place where it comes absolutely naturally to us to engage with them, maybe even offer a smile, just a warm welcome?

What about existing community members that we don’t know as yet, do we venture outside our comfort zones to meet new members of our community?

I have been coming here for 2.5 yrs now. I have only ventured out to meet   a few of you because I am comfortable now. I come here almost every week, I always sit in that same spot there, right next to Brian and Angela. And after the service, I generally have a chat with the same people and then I’m off until next week. Sometimes I might meet someone new. However I don’t make a conscious effort to do so because I am happy and comfortable with those I know. Could there be some community members that are not as outgoing as some of us who even though they are coming here for many years, still feel a bit isolated?

In a nutshell, just as our liturgy group is always working on our liturgy, could we as a community also be working on how we interact with each other, so that we are ever evolving our ways?

Could we just by the way we start to interact with each other in more meaningful ways actually act as walking testimonials for St. Mary’s and thereby organically attract people here. This to us as a group seemed like a sustainable way to go about sharing our gifts. We all know that word of mouth is the most authentic, sustainable and of course cost effective method of advertising.

Here are just a few of the suggestions that came up.

Firstly how can we get to know more of our community? How can we learn to interact in more meaningful ways? We are all very grateful to our connections group for the events they organize to achieve just this. However often not everyone stays back for morning tea and usually it is the same lot of people that go down to Gloria jeans for coffee; so here some suggestions that came up.

Change the spot you sit in, for starters you get a different view and you get to meet someone new too.

Make a conscious effort to engage with someone new if you have the confidence too. The more people we get to know within our community, the better support network we can be for each other.

Maybe have 2 or 3 community members welcoming people in the foyer. We currently only have Mary and June on a Sunday morning. And of course we always have our dear Ted come hail or shine downstairs. We don’t have anyone for sat and sun evenings. Could we consider ourselves as one big family and if this is our family home, then typically when family members come home, we warmly welcome them into our home and if they are coming for the first time, we show them around a bit, maybe introduce them to other family members so they feel comfortable in our home.

Could we have a yearly or 6 monthly community event that everyone takes part in. E.g. there is a concept called “Pay it forward”. It is about doing random acts of kindness for people we don’t know and asking them to pay it forward. Acts of kindness can be as big or as small as we want them to be. This could be our community signature event maybe. Even the kids could be involved. This would really foster community spirit.

Could we have cluster groups around similar interests perhaps? Currently our cluster groups are area specific. People don’t mind travelling to meet like-minded people. We currently have a meditation group and I’ve recently found out that we now have a ukulele group. If you have a certain interest, you could perhaps start one of your own.

So basically, could we be an active and conscious ever evolving community and thereby organically and sustainably share our gifts, alongside the appropriate media exposure we choose.

I’d like to share a short poem by Rumi.

AWAKE!

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill, where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don’t go back to sleep

That’s all.

Thank you for listening.

Namaste.

y

http://www.orgcode.com/2012/05/01/theres-a-difference-between-wanting-to-end-homelessness-and-committing-to-end-homelessness/

If you work in the homeless service sector you should have a very simple career goal – to put yourself out of a job.

I have this belief that homeless and housing support services exist to end homelessness. They don’t exist to make people in human services feel good about themselves. They don’t exist to cleanse the consciousness of corporations through their philanthropy. They don’t exist to keep government bureaucracies humming along.

There is a difference between wanting to end homelessness and committing to end homelessness.

If you want to do something, you may or may not achieve it, and likely only under certain favorable conditions.

If you commit to do something you will have steadfast fixity of purpose. When the conditions are unfavorable you will be the catalyst to actively change those conditions, remaining solution-focused all the while instead of accepting barriers as immovable, intractable problems that get in the way of ending homelessness.

Am I so naïve to think we will never need homeless shelters again? Heck no. But we will have a lot less of them and they will return to their original use – short term, infrequent stays to meet emergency needs. They will no longer be de facto housing. They will no longer be places that we load in program incentives that actually make it difficult to leave. I like to think of homeless shelters in the same way that I think of fire stations – I hope I never need the fire department, but I sure am glad they are around when there is an emergency.

When I make a commitment to end homelessness, I am talking about the entire spectrum of homeless people. Statistically speaking, most people who use alcohol or other drugs are housed – including people with addictions – and therefore I see no reason for homeless people to have to be clean and sober unless that is there choice to be so. My commitment to end homelessness includes people who are actively using…like millions of other people around the world who actively use and have housing.

Statistically speaking, most people with compromised mental wellness – including people who don’t take their meds or see their psychiatrist – never experience homelessness, so I see no reason for homeless people to see psychiatrists or take their meds unless that is there choice to be so. My commitment to end homelessness includes people who are unwell and “non-compliant”…like millions of other people around the world who are in similar circumstances and have housing.

I commit to ending homelessness for people who believe in Jesus as well as those that don’t. If people want to be baptized or join a faith group and begin to worship, so be it. But Christianity – or any other religious belief – is not a requirement to be successfully housed. There are millions of other people around the world who are atheists, agnostics, infidels or skeptics and have housing.

I commit to ending homelessness for people who have experienced conflict with the law, including those people that have done awful things to other human beings young and old. For one, I believe that time served is time served; that the sentence does not continue post-release. For another, and entirely pragmatically, if the evidence is clear that re-offending goes down if people have secure housing, isn’t that in my best interest? There are millions of people around the world that have been incarcerated and gone on to be successfully housed.

So you got a plan to end homelessness? Is that something you want to do or is that something you are committed to doing? The way you go about implementing the plan takes on completely different characteristics depending on which one you believe. And it usually points to particular biases in avoiding service of particular populations, whether it is explicit or not.

So your organization delivers services to people that are homeless? How about putting up on the wall somewhere for everyone to see that your ambition is to solve people’s homelessness so that your organization is no longer required? That you are working for the day where you can close the doors of your drop-in center, sell your outreach vans, give away the beds you no longer need in the shelter, etc.?

I can tell commitment when I see it, and I suspect you can too.

Commitment results in some organizations losing their money because they only wanted to serve homeless people (not end their homelessness) and reinvested in organizations that are committed to ending people’s homelessness.

Commitment results in using data to drive program change and improvements, to reflect on practice and make tough decisions, not as something that is nice to have in annual reports or collected only because some funder asked for it.

Commitment results in recruiting highly skilled people that have a passion for professional development and see their work as professional, not well-intentioned people who have neither the experience nor expertise.

Commitment results in doing your homework to see what else is working, not assuming that you are automatically doing the best work or, heaven forbid, trying to “create a best practice”.

Commitment results in having external folks – other professionals, senior managers from other agencies, funder staff – review and provide helpful commentary on how to make your work even better, not shielding away from criticism or doing nothing with information when it is provided by highly qualified people.

Commitment changes the way we talk about the issues and what we are going to do about it. No longer do we say people “aren’t housing ready” or “service resistant” or any other such phrase. No, committed folks turn that around and instead of blaming the consumer of services instead ask themselves what other types of housing or other types of services do I need to offer to be inclusive of all homeless people?

Want is an inclination. It is a desire. It can be directed to a specific need. But there is no obligation to address wants.

Commitment is a pledge. It is a promise. It means that you are going to do it. It has integrity. It is not just a dream. It is not lip service. It is putting the promise into action. Once you commit – truly commit – you are obligated to make it happen.

Many times I have seen drafts of 10 Year Plans expurgate those sections that speak of commitment or making tough choices, thinking, I suppose, that cleaning out those sections – with the obscene suggestion that we have to do things differently – will make the document more inclusive and readily accepted. Great, so a wide-range of service providers are happy, but what about the people that are supposed to be served by those providers?

I don’t accept homelessness. I am committed to end it. I will speak truth to power in the process. I hope you will too.

About Iain De Jong

Iain has held senior management and professional positions in government, non-profits and the private sector. He has also been a high school teacher in Oakland, California; a community-development worker in St. Lucia; a chaplain in a mental health facility in Toronto; and, a community-organizer in various communities throughout Canada and the United States. Iain joined John at the helm of OrgCode late in 2009. In addition to his work with OrgCode, Iain holds a part-time faculty position in the Graduate Urban Planning Programme at York University, and the emphasis of his teaching and research pertains to housing, homelessness, community development, public participation, social determinants of health, urban and community planning, and, applied social policy.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0501/1224315407633.html

We are witnessing the cruel humiliation of a generation of clergy that deserves better.

THERE’S A column I would have written a few years ago, but can’t be bothered to write now. It was a reliable old standby about the latest abuse of power by the institutional Catholic Church. It would be fuelled by anger and by expectation – rage at the hierarchy’s latest folly but an implicit hope that the innate decency of Irish Catholicism would some day be allowed to blossom. There was something real at stake in this argument – the church’s hold on Irish public culture was so strong that everything it did mattered.

I thought about writing one of those columns in response to the Vatican’s censuring of five priests – Brian D’Arcy, Tony Flannery, Gerard Moloney, Seán Fagan and Owen O’Sullivan – simply for saying what most Catholics actually think about celibacy, women priests and homosexuality. But I couldn’t find either anger or hope.

All that’s left is a double dose of sadness – for a generation of idealists; for a society in need of moral leadership that is being given just one more, all too familiar dose of the most abject cynicism.

What we’re seeing now is the sadistic humiliation of a generation of clergy that deserves better. At a simple human level, there’s something genuinely tragic in the fate of these priests: not just those who have been silenced but all their like-minded colleagues. These were once young men and women, mostly in rural Ireland, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. They were infused with the energy of reform and renewal. The priesthood still had glamour, and it was still tied up with familial snobbery, social prestige and institutional arrogance.

But there was also a promise of something more: that the institution to which they were drawn was changing, opening up, moving away from cult-like obedience to obsessive sexual doctrines. It was engaging with deep questions about power and poverty. And it was reasonable to think that this process was sure to continue, to imagine that by 2012 the church would long since have made its peace with democracy.

These young men and women may have been naive, but they were not contemptible. Their families and communities invested in them their often meagre resources of pride and hope and idealism. They returned that investment, in many cases, by expanding the narrow horizons of the world from which they had come. Especially those who worked in developing countries brought back experiences and ideas that made Ireland a richer, more complex place. The relative success with which new migrants were integrated in the last decade, for example, owes much to their influence.

These people don’t deserve to be called to heel like errant lapdogs. It is easy to say that they should refuse to follow orders or just walk away from an abusive institution. But that would be to walk away from the only adult life they’ve known. It would be to write off decades of work and sacrifice – to accept that the most profound decision of one’s life was based on a delusion.

It’s desperately sad that what should have been a noble story in Irish life should end so cruelly. But there’s also a sadness for Ireland itself. Our society hardly needs yet more hypocrisy, another layer of self-serving cynicism. The institutional church disgraced itself by systematically covering up child abuse. It is almost beyond belief that its final conclusion from that trauma – the real outcome of all those apologies and visitations – is that the true problem is some mildly liberal articles in Reality or the Sunday World.

This is the institution that told us that it was unable to control child rapists in its ranks because it couldn’t just issue orders. Remember Cardinal Cahal Daly writing to the parents of a victim of the hideous abuser Brendan Smyth: “There have been complaints about this priest before, and once I had to speak to the superior about him. It would seem that there has been no improvement. I shall speak with the superior again.” Remember the stuff about how bishops were lords in their own dioceses and religious orders were their own kingdoms?

When priests were raping children, the institutional hierarchy was wringing its hands and pleading “what can we do?” The Vatican was very busy and very far away. But when a priest makes some mild suggestions that women might be entitled to equality, the church is suddenly an efficient police state that can whip that priest into line. The Vatican, which apparently couldn’t read any of the published material pointing to horrific abuse in church-run institutions, can pore over the Sunday World with a magnifying glass, looking for the minutest speck of heresy.

An institution so stupid that it thinks its Irish faithful is more scandalised by Brian D’Arcy than by Brendan Smyth is not worth anyone’s anger. It is doing a far better job of destroying itself than its worst enemies could dream of.

All we can do is mourn the passing of a strain of decency and hope in a society so inured to hypocrisy that one more example is neither here nor there.

That reminds me of the story: A disciple comes before the Master (his meditation teacher) and asks “is it okay to use email?” “Of course” said the teacher, “as long as there are no attachments!”

Recently on my way to the office I had the good fortune of listening to Richard Fidler Conversation with Paul Keating recorded before a live audience at the Brisbane Powerhouse last year. Paul Keating, the former Federal Treasurer and Prime Minister between 1991 and 1996, spoke freely, as only Paul Keating can, about his life and his timid views (not) about the state of play in Australian politics.

There were many fascinating and interesting things he spoke of, but one that lifted my spirits was the place of music in his life (especially Mahler).

He spoke of its power to expand the mind, to inspire creativity and make one want to do the big things and attempt the seemingly impossible. To risk everything, to take on the world he often used the saying: “off we go, down the slope, one ski, no poles.”

And, after listening to a moving orchestral performance the night before, he said, coming into work the next day made the next Cabinet minute of the day seem like the dust between the floorboards.

Music, like all good art, poetry, dance and story has the power to move us out of our rational, linear, judging, small minds, into the larger mind, as Paul Keating says the place of the Big Ideas where nothing seems impossible.

Good art is the language of the spirit for it defies description and definition; it cannot be boxed and captured which religion at its worst always attempts.

This type of religion loves to capture and control interpretation, it takes ownership of metaphors, literalizing them, trade-marking them for its own private, exclusive use of its members. Or as the famous Buddhist saying goes: It mistakes the finger pointing at the moon, as the moon itself.

It’s the trap we can all make for every opinion or belief we form, we can mistake it for the object to which it points. But that to which it ultimately points transcends description and definition.

Holding lightly our opinions and beliefs can be a scary thing to do if we are not anchored into the deeper place of our being. The one being, the beloved that holds us and us, the beloved.

When we become divorced of this deep connection with the one, we move into the world of separation, us and them, me and you, and we cling to our opinions and beliefs as the TRUTH furthering the division and separation.

When we move from this deeper space as the writer of the first letter of St John, “we shall be like God, because we shall see God as God really is”       (1John 3²)

The great mystics throughout the ages knew this in the core of their beings.

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), a Dominican priest, wrote of this, seeing as God sees, being like God, and it was why he was before the Inquisition when he died, a church inquisition that condemned and suppressed his work until this day.

His writings are like the music Paul Keating speaks of in his interview with Richard Fidler. They take us to that larger place, where all is one, nothing is impossible, that place of no separation, where all else in comparison is like the dust between the floorboards.

WHEN I WAS THE FOREST by Meister Eckhardt

“When I was the stream, when I was the forest, when I was still the field, when I was every hoof, foot, fin and wing, when I was the sky itself,

No one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever wondered was there anything I might need, for there was nothing I could not love.

It was when I left all we once were that the agony began, the fear and questions came, and I wept, I wept. And tears I had never known before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again, I begged – I begged to wed every object and creature,

And when they accepted, God was ever present in my arms.

And he did not say, “Where have you been?”

For then I knew my soul- every soul – has always held Him.”

Remember how uncomplicated Catholic belief once was, before the Church got “sophisticated”?  Catholics generally accepted without question not only that Christ is present in the Sacrament, but also that Noah really built his ark, Jonah actually spent three days inside of that whale, and the Red Sea did, in fact, close in on Pharaoh’s chariots and charioteers, wiping out his army and thus delivering the Israelites from destruction. 

Even the Biblical account of Creation presented few obstacles for believers: God created the universe out of nothing.  He saw that it was good and desired to share it. So He created Adam in His Own image and likeness.  He gave our first parents every gift, and then tested their fidelity to Him.  They failed the test and fell from grace, and all of nature fell with them.  Sin, sickness and death entered the world as the Serpent slithered out of the Garden of Eden.

Even children understood that God’s design had been utterly upended by Man’s free choice to disobey Him. Toddlers could see that God didn’t create sickness, suffering and death, but that these were the result of Man’s disobedience and the horrors of sin—in this case a sin committed by a man who had actually walked with God and was in possession of preternatural gifts. In other words, he knew what he was doing.  Adam’s fall brought an end to the paradise of God’s design.

Catholics used to accept this for what it is. So, for example, when a child was struck and killed by an automobile after chasing her ball into the street, her father didn’t clench his fists at the heavens and blame God for “killing” her. No, the child had simply forgotten to look both ways and was struck by a 2-ton vehicle. Her death occurred in the natural order. This is why parents taught their children safety rules in the first place, because it is quite possible for people—even children—to suffer and die before their time.   Suicide drives this point home. God does not will that the man should jump from the bridge onto the rocks below. But He allows it, just as he allows the suffering of the man’s children that results from his terrible decision to take his own life.  God didn’t “kill” the man on the bridge any more than He “killed” the little girl chasing her ball into the street.

So, far from blaming God for the existence of suffering in the world, Catholics prayed to Him for protection in the event of a bad choice on their part or if nature should rise up against them in the form of a flood or an earthquake or a car accident.

There’s no great mystery here. We pray for the intercession of God’s Saints and Angels every day—not so that God might change His mind and decide not to kill us that day, for that would be absurd; but rather so that He will in His providence intervene on our behalf against an often brutal Mother Nature. Those heavenly interventions are what we call miracles. And those miracles offer further proof that we are not alone in this world; that God is with us; that He did not give up on us after our first sin, but rather promised a redeemer Who would make all things new again. And to show us that no one can be spared the suffering Adam’s sin had brought into the world, He Himself hung from a Cross and died, thus offering men the ultimate sermon on redemptive suffering.

Everything about salvation and the history of the world must be seen through the prism of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Original Sin, suffering, death, the Incarnation, the Immaculate Conception, all the Sacraments (especially Baptism), the Resurrection, the Catholic Church—it all came about because Lucifer would not serve and Adam did not obey. Remove Adam and Eve from history and Christianity is rendered as pointless as a God who would create suffering just for kicks. All of Christendom knew this to be true—the Fathers, Doctors, Saints, and Martyrs down through the ages…until now.

I don’t have words to describe the sadness I felt in my heart this week as I watched Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney, Australia—a man rumored to be on the short list at the next conclave, and “conservative” extraordinaire—hem and haw and then go right ahead and deny that Adam and Eve are anything more than mythical constructs in a religious story told for religious purposes.  This took place during a debate between Cardinal Pell and atheist Richard Dawkins on the popular Australian television program Q&A.  (See www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD1QHO_AVZA)

Of course, His Eminence admitted that somewhere along the evolutionary scale there must have been a “first man” but, yes, that first man did indeed evolve from apes.

“Did humans evolve from apes?” asked an incredulous Tony Jones, host of the Q&A debate.

“Yes, probably,” Pell replied “probably—well from Neanderthals.”

“But you accept that humans evolved from non-humans, so at what point did the soul come about?” Jones asked.

Cardinal Pell: “The Soul is the principle of life. Whenever the soul was able to communicate then we had the first human.  But if there are humans, there must be a first one.”

Jones: “Are you suggesting a sort of Garden of Eden scenario with an actual Adam and Eve?”

“Well Adam and Eve are terms that mean ‘life’ and ‘earth’. Like an Everyman. It’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account. It’s not science.  But it’s there to tell us two or three things.  First of all that God created the world and universe. Secondly that the key to the whole universe is humans. And thirdly it’s a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and the suffering in the world….It’s a religious story told for religious purposes.”

Whenever these anamorphous, modernist chestnuts are rolled out of the fire by one of our progressive churchmen, I find myself first wincing and then hoping the atheist fellow sitting across the table somehow failed to grasp the ramifications. Dawkins did not: “Ah, well, I’m curious to know,” replied the atheist, “if Adam and Eve never existed where did Original Sin come from?”

Exactly, Mr. Dawkins! It’s so simple even an atheist gets it.  Our Church teaches that every child born into this world enters in the state of sin—Original Sin.  Our Church teaches that Original Sin must be wiped clean from the child’s soul so that he can become a child of God and an heir to heaven.  Our Church teaches that the only way to remove Original Sin is through Baptism, arguably the most important of all the seven Sacraments since without it we cannot receive grace, can receive no other sacraments, and cannot enter heaven.

So Dawkins is quite right: Why in God’s name would Baptism be all that important if Adam and Eve—our first parents, who committed that original sin for which purpose Christ instituted Baptism—didn’t even exist?  I’m sure the Cardinal could offer a very “progressive” answer to this question but, for whatever reason, he didn’t.  So a few million viewers of the Pell-Dawkins debate walked away wondering since when have Catholics become so eager to debunk their own Scriptures and discard their own theology. Outright enemies of the Catholic Faith couldn’t invent more expedient ways to baffle (and thus alienate) non-believers than those the Modernist leaders of the Catholic Church have come up with all on their own.

The poor Cardinal either believes the Genesis narrative to be ‘mythical’ as a whole, or he’s so embarrassed by it that he feels compelled to pretend it is in order to impress a dolt like Dawkins. Either way the Cardinal’s position flies in the face not only of Pius XII’s teaching from 1950 in Humani Generis, #37 (‘original sin. . . proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam’), but also of the latest official Catholic teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which repeatedly speaks of a real Adam (and Eve): cf. ##374-375, 387, 377, 390, 399, 402-406, 416-417.

So what, exactly, was the Cardinal’s point? Who did he imagine his waffling was going to impress? The atheist immediately recognized the theological gaff in his take on Genesis; the true Catholic was scandalized yet again; and the Muslim must have walked away jubilant, having witnessed yet another Catholic leader squandering what’s left of Catholic identity. After all, even Christian scriptures are evidently a collection of symbolic bunk!

But the Cardinal wasn’t done. When asked whether atheists can get to heaven he waffled again, saying “yes, if they’re good and sincere and seeking the truth.” But when the moderator asked him again, before going on to the next question, “So you’re saying atheists can in fact get to heaven?”  Pell’s final word was emphatic: “Absolutely. Absolutely.”   (Yes, he repeated that word!)

Pell has evidently embraced Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Christian” theory.  Few if any members of the audience or among the one million viewers of the program could have received any impression other than that, according to one of the most “conservative” Roman Catholic leaders in the world, one doesn’t have to believe in anything at all to be saved – that is, that faith is not necessary to salvation! One can only imagine what counter-testimony to the Church and the Gospel that would be for vast numbers of devout Protestants, who still stress the role of faith for salvation almost as much as pre-Vatican II Catholics once did.

But the Cardinal still wasn’t finished. When asked about Hell, he adopted Han Urs von Balthasar’s notorious hope for an “empty Hell”. He said there is a judgment after death, and hinted that perhaps someone like Hitler might go there. But again, his bottom line was liberal: Pell “hopes” that nobody is in fact eternally damned. And the Cardinal is not insane—he would hardly hope for that which is impossible. If we can hope for something then maybe it’s true.  But then what happens to Our Lord’s assurances that on Judgment Day many will seek to enter and will not be able to?  And what happens to the Council of Trent’s de fide teaching that the supernatural gift of faith is the sine qua non for justification? And what about that vision of a hell filled with souls of the damned that Our Lady showed to the children of Fatima?  Pre-Vatican II mythological poppycock, I presume. Again, if Catholics don’t even believe anyone actually goes to hell anymore, then, forgive me, but what the hell is the point of the Catholic Church!

Is everyone saved?  Apparently so, for when asked about gay “marriage” Cardinal Pell issued the usual bromides against hating homosexuals but then continued on with this whopper: “We believe that marriage is between a man and a woman; that it’s for the continuity of the human race.  We believe that men and women are made for one another spiritually, psychologically, physically…But for a homosexual couple to have a union?  Well and good and there’s no reason they shouldn’t.”

One wonders if the Cardinal simply stumbled into all this and really needs to stop accepting invites to appear on TV, or if his intention was actually to water-down the teachings of the Catholic Church to such an extent as to make the insufferable Richard Dawkins come off as a man of vision and insight by comparison.  Dawkins’ team would likely have paid a six-figure payoff for such ecclesial sellout on their behalf.

In sum, according to Cardinal Pell: Man certainly did evolve from monkeys, Adam and Eve were not actual people, Genesis is a myth, atheists certainly go to heaven, and homosexuals, far from living a sinful lifestyle, are perfectly free to have unions (whatever that means!).

With friends like these running His Church why would God need enemies?

Meanwhile Bishop Bernard Fellay stands at the gates of the Vatican, hat in hand, ready to sign an oath of orthodoxy before being allowed to enter. His “heresies”? Well, he believes God created our first parents, Adam and Eve were actual people, Genesis is not mythological, atheists and other people who hate the very idea of God are hardly on the fast-track to heaven, and homosexuals are as guilty of reproach and divine judgment as any other sinners—be they homosexual or heterosexual—who engage in  unrepentant immoral conduct.

I close this lamentation with the first comment posted on YouTube beneath the video of the Pell-Dawkins debate—viewed, by the way, 76,776 times so far, which is to say nothing of the millions of viewers who saw it live:

It baffles me how the Catholic hierarchy can concede most of the bible stories are myths, but continue to teach it as fact in Sunday school, religious schools and in church. The only part of the bible the Catholic church stands by is the death and resurrection of Christ. If the most senior Catholics don’t believe 99% of the bible why should anyone else?

Indeed! Welcome to the springtime of Vatican II.

Robert Crotty joined a monastic order when he was 17, but left the priesthood after a stint in Jerusalem changed his mind about the Bible.

Click here to listen to interview (.mp3)

Professor Robert Crotty was brought up in the Catholic church and his imagination was inflamed by the stories of miracles and visions in the Bible.

But as he began to look back into where the books of the Bible actually came from, Robert questioned what was true, and what was a beautiful fiction.

He was charged with heresy by the Catholic Church, and although he was acquitted he decided to leave the priesthood. Robert is now the Director of the South Australian Ethics Centre. Three Revolutions: Three Drastic Changes in Interpreting the Bible published ATF Press.

Click here to listen to this interview (.mp3)

Yesterday we buried Scott McKenzie, Barbara’s husband and close friend to St Mary’s. Barbara suggested that we begin the Liturgy of farewell with some words from Michael Morwood reminding us of our deep connection to the Universe.

At the beginning of the Liturgy we lit a candle to remind us of our great birth at the beginning of time – that great explosion of light we call the big bang, from which we gradually emerged over billions of years.

With Scott’s body in the coffin before us all, I read:

“Do you know?

That every atom in my body

Here before you,

Was manufactured in a massive explosion

In a star

Billions of years ago?
WOW

What a thought to contemplate any time. The miracle, that there is even life on this planet, and the absolute minute chance, of this ever happening. Carbon, the essential element to form life formed in the heart of a dying supernova, a dying star in temperatures of up to 10 billion degrees Celsius.

That so much energy was required for this remarkable element to be formed, and the only element in the universe capable of folding back on itself so that life could even contemplate its existence. Here we glimpse the death, rebirth motif for the first time, that motif that gets repeated time and time again in this remarkable universe.

Jesus refers to this motif prior to his death in John’s Gospel when he refers to the grain of wheat that must die in order to yield a rich harvest.

He is inviting us to ‘not a physical death’, but the death of the ego-centred self, the small self. That small self, which we see dethroned in the initiation rites of many indigenous peoples, that self which can be a threat to the survival of a tribe reliant on its deep connection and understanding to the earth.

Important in these rituals, to remind the initiate, that there is something more than themselves, if they and the tribe are to survive. A deep reliance on a something mysterious beyond them, and the elders who have gone before them – a reliance on the collective communal self.

A living for the Common Good.

John has made from the Symbols we have journeyed with over Lent into a Tomb from whence the light of the world emerges at Easter.

On this Good Friday we have placed before us the Central Symbol of Christianity, the Cross, to be a reminder not so much of Jesus’ death, but a reminder to the death we must undertake every day.

A death to the separate self. And it is from this death that is the waking up St Paul speaks of over and over. “Wake up sleeper;” – asleep to the knowledge that I am really part of the great I AM. I am not separate.

Paul continues “Rise from the dead”, because you are really dead if you believe that this material world and your form are all there is. Let the Christ enlighten you. Let the deep knowing that you are part of the great universal consciousness that gave birth to those first atoms and the birth of the universe.

Immersed in this you become enlightened, folded in light. You have come into the light. The Lenten journey has brought you to this – the stripping back of all the inessentials to be embraced by that universal Light, who you truly are.

If you wish, there is now an opportunity to come forward to venerate and acknowledge the Cross, and the need for the death and moving into the tomb with the separate self so necessary in order to merge with the Light, and with St Paul to say “It is no longer I that live, but Christ (universal consciousness), now lives in me.

The Light of the World -William Holman Hunt 1854

We have arrived at Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, which ends with Easter. Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, into the life of a community that is seeking salvation, seeking the light of illumination.

Last night, March 31, people across the world turned off their lights for one hour from 8.30 – 9.30pm. United they supported the largest environmental event in history, Earth Hour. In that short space of darkness they sought some illumination! The theme for this year’s Lent is, ‘Towards the Light’, the light of illumination.

Each year we as a community seek to enter into this time of Lent/Easter and to express it through many forms. Last year 40 canvases depicted the great void; the vastness that surrounds us, the spiritual desert. The year before, a community centred cross filled with life. Prior to that, a thicket cross, made of accumulated wood, and it was this expression that accompanied our transition from our past to this present.

Light for early Christians was referred to in baptism as ‘illumination’, symbolic of humanity’s quest to seek true life, reconciliation and resounding peace; the clear resonating sound of a bell being an audible form or expression of continuing peace.

St Teresa tells us, ‘Light baptizes life wherever it falls, and every religion and all upon this earth is a shadow’.

Broadly speaking we can refer to light at this time of Lent in three ways.

The first is the light within of all of creation. Light is a powerful force in our world. The sun’s light provides energy for life. Each day we are reminded of the absence of light, when stars and moon foretell of a new and rising brilliance; our nearest star, the Sun.

As inhabitants of this planet we orbit around the Sun, contrary to past beliefs and thanks to the enlightenment of Copernicus and Galileo. Creation also includes the many forms of light which we as a species have developed; fire, candles, kerosene lanterns, incandescent lights- fluorescent lights, halogen lights, light emitting diodes and on and on the list glows! Possibly the most powerful of these lights is that light emitted from the television and computer screen; social media that drives society. This creation of light has had an enormous effect on our lives, livelihoods and the ability or inability to be part of this world; as witnessed by Earth Hour.

The second form of light is the light of Jesus’s teachings and the Jewish faith tradition of Jesus’s background and from which we as a faith community have emerged. By contemplating the Word we are able to bring light into our lives and our world.

With inspiration from the book of Revelation (3:20) and its passage, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”, the Pre-Raphaelite mid-nineteenth century artist, William Holman Hunt’s painted, The Light of the World. This is the image that accompanied this week’s e-bulletin. The painting depicts a barefooted, crowned, gowned, royally robed and brightly haloed Jesus standing with a lantern in the darkness outside an overgrown ivy and weed infested door; the door is without a handle. Jesus is knocking on the door; a door to someone’s life and he is waiting to be invited in. The absence of the door handle implies that the door must open from within. A regal God with a personal touch but still however an outside God and as a child when viewing this image I was curious as to why Jesus needed a lantern when his glowing head provided ample light.

We have the freedom of choice; a strong tenement of Catholicism but as for the choice, the Church has a clear mandate as to what is the right choice!

Light can be giving but it can also be blinding, like that of a hunter’s spotlight halting a kangaroo’s nightly movement or the halting a prisoner’s attempt to escape, resulting in submissiveness; a blinding authoritarian light that can only exist to separate itself from darkness, to isolate and dominate. Do false and blinding lights exist in our lives? The light emitted by authoritarian powers?

Contrary to this is the light referred to by Meister Eckhart

The awakened heart is like a luminous sphere- just giving without thought to any who may come close or gaze at it.

The third and final light is within all living things; the light of life. Our previous homilists this Lent- Penny, Phil, Karyn, Sam and Terry, or could I say our Leading Lenten Lantern homilists spoke of an inner light; a light that is fueled by meditation, contemplation and being present in the moment. Seeking truth and just actions as ways to nurture this inner light.

Our expression of Lent 2012 is progressing towards a form that will be present at the time of Good Friday and Easter. Following Ash Wednesday you were invited to mark these canvases with ashes, then taking the line ‘Untangle the knots within, so that we can mend our hearts’ simple ties to each other’ from the Aramaic prayer used in the Eucharistic Liturgy, we knotted string and then we unknotted the string and connected it. The most recent canvases is of palm fronds and ivy.

To conclude, I wish to share the words from a person with a Jewish past, Leon Cohen. His song ‘Anthem’ captures much of this year’s Lenten theme ‘Towards the Light’.

The birds they sang at the break of day,

Start again I heard them say,

Don’t dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will be fought again,

The holy dove,

She will be caught again,

bought and sold and bought again,

the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in.

Recently I watched a deeply moving South African film called “Life Above All”. It had won Best International Film at the Sydney and Canberra Film Festivals in2010 and 2011. Its focus is a 12 year old girl Chandra, a hardworking, promising young student with a bright future, but her life changes dramatically when her baby sister unexpectedly dies. Heartbroken Chandra’s mother, Lillian, in turn becomes severely ill, leaving the young girl to take care of her two smaller siblings. When the small community of which they are a part irrationally turns on her and her family, Chandra sets out to face the deeply ingrained misunderstanding and prejudices surrounding AIDS.

Despite being ostracized by the community, Chandra stands her ground and continues doing what she believes is the right thing to do. That is caring for her 2 siblings and her mother with AIDS in the midst of a community which wants her mother as far away as possible. Her only other friend is another who is ostracized by the community because of becoming a child prostitute in order to survive after the death from AIDS of her 2 parents. This further alienates Chandra from the community.

Chandra is the Jesus figure throughout this powerfully moving and evocative film. She moves and acts from a place of deep wisdom and compassion despite enormous pressures to do otherwise. Although this is only a movie, it reflects the stories of so many thrust by life’s circumstances into impossible situations and forced to respond. No external law or commandment is there to force them to act, but something much bigger and expansive, inspires their every move. It is captured in the words of the prophet Jeremiah in the first reading. “For deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts.” In this deep place within each of us is a quiet wisdom that comes from being connected to the quiet stillness which is the great I AM, Breath of Life Yah-Weh, the name not to be named.

Hardships, Crises, Sickness, Marginalization, Isolation and having to stand alone as in the case of Chandra, can force us to the place of the Heart where deep wisdom resides. There are many ways to this place of the heart. For the prophets of the Old Testament, they were drawn to the desert, the wilderness place, where God could speak to their hearts, away from the distractions of life, and at the beginning of Lent we hear from the prophet Hosea, “That is why I am going to lure you and lead you out into the wilderness and speak to your heart.” (Hos 2¹⁴)

We heard in the commentaries in the election results last night of how Labor has been exiled into the wilderness, in its massive defeat at the hands of the LNP. Maybe this will be an opportunity for Labor to reconnect with its heart to rediscover its deepest core values and visions. The heart, the very core of our being, where we are one with all, where there is no separation. It is the place of no ego. The place Jesus invites us to in today’s Gospel where the grain of wheat that must die in order to yield a rich harvest, the place of no self.

For many of us it is in the quiet space, the desert space that we connect on this deeper level of heart. Throughout Lent we have tried to emphasize and invite people to a quiet place, an empty place everyday, the place where the still small voice within can be heard.

Some of us have had the good fortune of making a day of silent retreating. A day to get out of our heads, our thinking, judging, planning mind into our lives, or as Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh says “Life is available only in the present moment. If you are distracted, if your mind is not there with your body, then you miss your appointment with life.”

Recently I have had the opportunity to go into Milperra School for refugees where the principal is Adele Rice. Adele invited me to teach some interested students how to meditate. There are about 10 students; most of them are Hazaran refugees from Afghanistan. Wonderful people, but one problem for me and the task set, was the barrier of language and communication.

Most of them have never meditated or even know much about it. The first two sessions I have struggled mainly because they didn’t understand why one would want to learn to meditate.

In my last session I was fortunate to have Abdul, a community worker in the school, who was able to translate for me. Now we have had the conversation around why we meditate, a new eagerness and enthusiasm is present among them, eager to learn and know more. A lot of it has to do with them not wanting to miss their appointment with life and eager to embrace life in that alert, awake state which a practice of meditation and mindfulness can generate.

I would like to finish with a story which speaks of acting from that deep heart space which can inspire our every action.

A wood carver called Ching had just finished work on a bell frame. Everyone who saw it marveled for it seemed to be the work of the spirits. When the emperor saw it, he asked, what sort of genius is yours that you could make such a thing? The woodcarver replied: “Sire, I am only a simple workman. I am not a genius… But there is one thing. When I am going to make a bell frame I meditate for 3 days to calm my mind.  When I have meditated for 3 days I think no more about rewards or recognition. When I have meditated for 5 days I no longer think of praise or blame, skillfulness or awkwardness. When I have meditated for 7 days I suddenly forget my limbs, my body: no I forget my very self. I lose consciousness of the court and my surroundings. Only my skill remains .In that state I walk into the forest and examine each tree until I find one in which I see the bell-frame in all its perfection. Then my hands go to the task. Having set myself aside, nature meets nature in the work that is performed through me. This is no doubt the reason why everyone says that the finished product is the work of the spirits.”