Liturgies

When I was first ordained (not so long ago, at least in my mind) I was sent to the small town of Goondiwindi on the border of Queensland and New South Wales, about a 4 ½ hour drive south west of Brisbane.

For many years it was a town famous for sheep and wheat and a champion racehorse called Gunsynd (the Goondiwindi Grey in the song by Slim Dusty) When I had arrived in town a new champion had captured the heart and soul of the town, Cotton (not Fine Cotton – that’s another horse and another story. Its snow-like fluffy presence lined the highways into Gundi and the streets of the town.

After my first six months I remember being at the Local Hospital standing at the nurses station in the middle of the ward reading the patient list. I was making the observation, based on my years of training as a Registered Nurse and I noted out loud the incredible number of people in the hospital with respiratory related illnesses, and that we were also in the middle of the cotton spraying season.

I remember being challenged quite savagely by the mother of a small boy who was in for an asthmatic episode that had almost claimed his life. She questioned me “are you saying Fr Terry that this has got something to do with the cotton spraying?” I was a little taken aback that she would be defending the cotton industry. I tried to clarify my observation only to be further castigated by some nurses listening in at the nurse’s station. I walked away amazed at such hostility and defence of something almost indefensible.

I later discovered the mother was in a family of the largest cotton growers in the area and that the hospital was heavily  sponsored by the cotton industry. But not only the hospital, almost everything in town that performed a public function had been bought off by the cotton industry – schools, sporting clubs, service organizations, Rotary and Lions; this fact made it very difficult to speak out or criticize the cotton industry in any way. A resigned benign silence enveloped the town and the cotton people did what they liked to the environment, in particular to the water and air quality.

I sometimes wonder if what had happened in Goondiwindi is happening for many parts of Australia today being bought off by the mining industry.

But first let me return to the Gospel:

I would like to speak about the prophetic role Jesus undertook and which ultimately led to his death, and in today’s gospel a near death experience. As followers of Jesus, each of us are called to this prophetic stance. At each baptism we say “we anoint you with the oil of Chrism, may this oil remind you and all of us that you now share in the prophetic role of Christ.”

A role which saw Jesus challenge the religious and political authorities of the time openly and defiantly at every opportunity.

A role which can take us into some interesting and challenging spaces as Jesuit priest and prophetic voice during the Vietnam War in the USA, Phillip Berrigan said:

“The poor tell us who we are; the prophets tell us who we could be.

So we hide the poor and kill the prophets.”

In Phillip’s case it meant imprisonment and belittlement and misunderstanding by an angry and divided society for his stance during the Vietnam War.

Towards the end of last year I undertook a morning workshop led by Paul Cleary, a senior writer for the Australian newspaper and a researcher in public policy at the Australian National University. I believe Paul’s voice in this country is a prophetic one. One that is hard for many to hear, particularly those in the mining industry or those with power and leadership positions within our country.

Paul, in the words of independent member for New England Tony Windsor, says he provides a warts and all, no holds barred view of Australia’s mining industry. Tony says Paul’s book, Mine-field, is a must-read for anyone making an informed judgment on where our nation is going.

This summer in Australia we have witnessed again the effects of extreme weather conditions, the extremely dry conditions in the south of the country in Tasmania and Victoria and New South Wales, resulting in out of control fires destroying many homes, livestock, fauna and flora.

In Queensland and Northern New South Wales, only two years since our last major flooding, we have experienced it once again.

Even the many climate change skeptics have given ground admitting to the climate changing, but adding that humans have little or no impact on the change. Still this belief is maintained even when 97% of climate change scientists tell us that the weather is warming due to the higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere largely as a result of human activity. Sill people choose to discount humanities role in climate change or if they do accept this fact they act as if it doesn’t matter.

Australians can no longer wipe their hands and say “what can we do?” we play such a small part in this CO₂ pollution of our atmosphere. Guy Pearse from the Global Change Institute states “Projected export data as of December 2011 estimate coal exports from Australia to triple by 2020 with the addition of Coal Seam Gas Australia will be exporting twice as much CO₂  as Saudi Arabia does today in its oil exports”.

We are digging up and exporting our mineral wealth like there is no tomorrow. Paul Cleary says “In less than a decade, the frenzied pace of Australian resource development has witnessed mining dominating our society, our economy and even our political system. The revenue earned by mining companies has tripled in a decade, where they have been able to dictate terms to compliant state and federal governments.

Mining has erased small communities and towns and occupied vast tracts of prime farmland – In the news this week in the Hunter Valley, the Obeid family saga dominated the news. We saw images of the Hunter valley transformed from pristine farmland to an ugly quarry. Mining has constructed ports and liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, diverted entire rivers; built on top of 30000 year-old sacred aboriginal sites and even helped remove an elected Prime Minister. Paul asks “if this is what the industry can do now, how much more power will it wield if it rises to one-fifth or even one quarter of the national income?”

A bit like the people in Goondiwindi – I wonder if some of the silence around the rising hegemony of the mining companies is that many feel bought off by the mining industry. We reconcile ourselves by thinking maybe all these dreadful things that result from mining is a small price to pay for the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.

There is a wonderful documentary which I hope to make available to those who are interested called “Bimblebox” made last year. The Bimblebox Nature Refuge lies in the path of what might become one of the earth’s largest coal mines. This documentary isn’t just about the Bimblebox Refuge- it’s about landholders all over Queensland and New South Wales who are using all of their efforts to stem the tide of the coal mining and coal seam gas industries.

One scene in the documentary stands out in my memory of a farmer on the Darling Downs speaking to fellow farmers and protestors with huge mining machinery about to move onto his land and police ready to arrest any who resist the mining trucks. He speaks passionately to the point of tears. In the end he says there are many of his mates who could not make it today or just too afraid to be here, so I asked them for one of their hats to place in the ring in this ceremony to represent their presence and protest and their willingness to fight. He places their hats down and within moments the huge mining trucks were rolling over and crushing the hats symbolic of the Big Mining Companies crushing the little voiceless farmers.

A powerful and moving scene.

The question we have to ask ourselves who were baptized and anointed with the oil of Chrism to remind us that we share the prophetic role of Christ –“What small action or actions can we undertake to share this prophetic role of Christ, to live the lives of all we could be?”

For in the words of a poster I saw recently:

“I AM NO LONGER ACCEPTING THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE< I AM CHANGING THE THINGS I CANNOT ACCEPT.”