Liturgies

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/stmarys/ingerid-meagher-remembering[/soundcloud]

Let me tell you a story by Mulla Nasruddin a 13th cent visionary Sufi and mystic jester from Akshehir in Turkey. His teaching stories reveal the paradoxes of conditioned living with humor.

THE ROYAL PIGEON
Mulla Nasruddin became prime minister to the king. Once while he wandered through the palace, he saw a royal falcon. Now Nasruddin had never seen this kind of a pigeon before. So he got out a pair of scissors and trimmed the claws, the wings and the beak of the falcon.

"Now you look like a decent bird," he said. "Your keeper had evidently been neglecting you. "You're different so there's something wrong with you!"

And so it was for John, my husband of 26 years. John was homosexual, but because of the paradoxes of conditioned living, he lived his 62 years imprisoned by his "secret". That is not to say that family and friends were not aware of his homosexuality! I seemed to be the only one who was oblivious to the truth about his sexual orientation. John's secret killed him in the end.

John's story came of age a few weeks ago on the 15th of May 2013, the day of his death of AIDS related illness in 1992, twenty-one years ago. He was cremated on the 19th of May. And finally on the 23rd of Jan 2000 John's ashes were strewn, with a flourish, into Sydney Harbor, by our son James, from the ramp that leads to the lighthouse at Cremorne Point.

As John's sister quipped during the simple ceremony attended by our small family group: "John always loved surfing!"

John and I were married in 1965 after a brief courtship. We were both smitten, very much in love. I met John that year on the 1st of January, he proposed on the 14th of February, Valentine's Day, and we were married on the 10th of April in the Crypt of St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, a sacred space that was devoid of imagery except for the beautiful pink, green and yellow granite Celtic Cross that covers most of the length of the centre isle. It has the six days of creation depicted in five large medallions, at the head, foot, centre, left and right of the cross.

The lack of statues was one condition my thoroughly protestant father insisted on if he was going to agree to attend the wedding. That would have been a tall order for a suburban Catholic church. And a Catholic wedding it had to be, despite the fact that John called himself agnostic and his parents no longer attended church either! But John had an aunt in the Carmelite order in Ireland as well as three other aunts who were very devout Catholics. John felt it would grieve these aunts if we did not marry in the RC Church. They feared they would never meet him again in the hereafter.

John had an endearing personality. He was an eternal optimist and an extrovert, funny, charming, gracious and dignified. He had a great sense of duty and loyalty. His conscientiousness showed in the garden, at work and with his family. A great role model. He was supportive and quick with a compliment about achievements. He would do anything to see a talent flourish. His social engagement was on everybody's terms and he never said a bad thing about anyone. John was interested in people of all walks of life. He loved rural living and spent 13 years in country NSW as a jackaroo, a shearer's cook and wool classer before finally embarking on law at the age of 28 and finishing his degree aged 35.

Lastly, John possessed amazing self-discipline - he could suck a lolly for hours until there was just a sliver left in his mouth.

Is it any surprise that I, still a rather naïve starry eyed 21 year old, fell for the charms of this unique man, thirteen years my senior, who on top of all these fabulous qualities also shared my love of classical music.

John's parental home was in Sydney but he spent his upper primary and high school years boarding at St Stanislaus, Bathurst. Those were the war years and being away from the coast was considered a safer option. Also John's mother was quite unstable, suffering serious bouts of depression and self-harm. The environment of boarding school offered John stability.

I learned in the latter years of our marriage of a few significant events in John's life. Around the age of eight, Angela, his mother told him he was going to be like Uncle Bernie, who was quite out about being gay. What John must have made of this statement at that age remains to be seen.

Although, I have learned from a collection of writings by gay men that they knew from a very early age that they were different.

Around the time when puberty hit John was sent to the family doctor to learn about the facts of life. Clearly his parents were uncomfortable dealing with the subject of sex, perhaps because they sensed John may have needed a different approach to the subject.

During those school years at Bathurst, John dreaded contact sports simply because it might have revealed a feared undesirable sexual reaction.

It was not until 1970 that I sensed there was something amiss. There was an incident that John was uncharacteristically untruthful about. I did not probe too deep and left the matter to gentle enquiry every now and then, feeling that John had a right to privacy. I pushed the incident to the back of my mind until 1980 when again it was the family GP in Sydney who was the intermediary and who informed me, at the hand of a letter that John wrote to him, about John's sexual orientation. By this time we had been living in Adelaide for ten years.

John's self-discipline failed him in the end. Coming out to that GP in Sydney and in turn me, may have taken the brakes of his need to explore who he really was. John may have sero-converted* in 1983 but was not aware of his HIV status until Sept 1990. We separated briefly around Oct 1989. But when John was diagnosed in Sept 1990 we took up where we left off and spent the next 18 months together until John's death in May 1992.

(* Seroconversion is the development of detectable specific antibodies to microorganisms in the blood serum as a result of infection or immunization.)

Our three children loved John greatly and they have been very supportive of him. It is so very sad he missed out on seeing his children, except our eldest, married and settle in jobs and homes. And of course he never experienced the joy of grandchildren, eight in all.

However, essentially this is a positive story because unimaginably good things have come out of this. None of us would be where we are now if not for John.

I made a connection with the AIDS Council of SA after John's death and was matched as a CARA (Gaelic for beloved friend) with a few people living with HIV/AIDS. John never had the benefit of what the AIDS Council had to offer by way of friendship, alternative therapies or counseling because he was secretive about his sexual orientation especially as a married man.

I only made that connection with ACSA after John died because I was angry and curious about why they did not keep their promise made over the phone to visit John.

It proved to be the beginning of a significant time in my life!

It has been an incredibly enriching experience and has opened up a deeper and wider understanding and appreciation of life and its diversity.

I have got to know absolute "heroes and …………..heroes"!!  They have my greatest respect.

How much John had felt imprisoned by his "secret" can finally be ascertained from the poem he left and which turned up after his funeral:

I come with joy to say farewell forgiven, loved, now free. In awe and wonder I recalled My life laid down for thee. And thus in peace I part this realm My presence will be near The love that was us, makes us one And able to endure. And all I ask is sweet repose For those I left behind.

Sweet repose, indeed! If only he could have known about the agonies and ecstasies of embracing the future, the challenge of living with the legacy of the past, denial of which is just not a reality. O, the incongruity of those last two lines of that poem!

In the last year of his life John decided HIV/AIDS was just like any other terminal illness. That was unrealistic as far as other people with the virus are concerned. But John was protected, cherished and safely tucked away at home. He was hardly exposed to tactlessness or discrimination.

There was no need for him to interact with anyone other than those who were familiar with his condition and understood and accepted his health status and sexual orientation.

This social isolation was a sad but safe aspect of his condition. I remember making the mistake of telling the neighbor on one side that John had cancer and on the other side he had a heart condition. Such lies can catch up with you in the end. These days it is no longer important.

So now, once again, twenty one years hence, we remember you, John, for your steadfast devotion, self-denial, eternal optimism, good humor, love of beauty, of craftsmanship, of the land, of gardens, of finding unexpected treasures, of music and particularly of voice and the art of song.

We, your family, would have been the poorer if we had not been able to share these with you.
As for what the future brought? It opened me up to encounter and to developing skills later in life. It catapulted me into a meaningful career and work.

Finally, there is no need for forgiveness. John was who he was. There is much to remember and treasure and to be grateful for.

I am deeply sorry for the grave injustices that have been and still are perpetuated on people of sexual minority.

The last couple of months the media has been flowing over with reports of turmoil around the world and at home in relation to the vilification, torture, bashing and killing of gay people.

The unjust exclusion of gay people from organizations such as the Boy Scout movement in the States and domestic violence safety legislation in Lithuania because the Church leaders figure it gives legitimacy to homosexuality.

And then there were the brave people that stood up to be heard on the issue of human rights in relation to GLBTIQ people - South African Justice Edwin Cameron, an openly gay and HIV positive judge, Sporting celebrities who campaign for the cutting out of homophobic language on the football field.

Australian sporting star Jason Ball wishes for not just tolerance, but full equality, fair treatment, of being part of the family, and being allowed to be a role model, unafraid, and to be judged on character and performance not sexual orientation.

There was Kevin Rudd who has declared his support of gay marriage. It was a dramatic reversal of his long held public position. On June the 6th parliament was to vote on Adam Brandt's marriage equality bill. Sadly it will not happen now as there has not been sufficient debate on the issue.

But I trust it will not be long before Australia joins the growing ranks of countries that have legislated for gay marriage, equal rights and dignity for GLBT people.

Andrew Hamilton, consulting editor of Eureka Street writes in his article about the apology to the Stolen generation by Kevin Rudd and how he spoke powerfully of the sufferings inflicted on people by a wrong policy, and of the continuing effects of those policies.

Ironically, there is a strong similarity between the policies that adversely affected the Aboriginal Community and the policies that came into being some three thousand years ago and that found their way into Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

Justice Michael Kirby mentions in his introduction to a little book published in 2011 called "Five Uneasy Pieces", five essays written by five eminent scholars:

"…..the tradition of the English law that we learnt was one that generally demanded a literal and verbal interpretation of binding texts. So unrealistic were the outcomes often produced by that approach (especially in the interpretation of enduring documents like national constitutions) that, in the intervening years, a new doctrine began to emerge. It has demanded attention not only to the text of words; but also to the context in which those words appear; and the purpose or policy which the words appear to reveal. Increasingly, in the law, we have come to realize that interpretation is an art, not a science. That values are inevitably important considerations for ascertaining meaning. How much more true must this be of Holy Scripture, as of the words of man?"

Laws instituted and found in passages in Hebrew Scripture in the Book of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Leviticus and the Letters of Paul to the Romans and to Timothy in the Christian Scriptures provide the textual foundations for the worldwide animosity and even hatred towards sexual minorities. Many of these passages are about property rights or hospitality or abuse of power or worshipping other gods. It often was about procreation, survival of the family, the tribes, the nation and not per se about sexuality or the sexual act.

Deuteronomy states many rules about who can and who cannot enter into the congregation: i.e. a hunchback, a dwarf, or someone who has an eye defect, or festering or running sores or damaged testicles, no one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants to the tenth generation. Notoriously eunuchs were excluded from entering the congregation. The thought behind such exclusion was - the influence that such defects had on the minds of the afflicted.

And Jesus' answer on the contrary is: there are no conditions of who can belong and who can't. It is only by faith and in seeking to walk the Way.

In this day and age hermeneutics and the law is hardly the issue. It is about the reality science presents us- we all have an un-chosen nature. We all have aspects of our nature we were born with. Science today requires us to rethink the past Christian position. What you can honor then transforms.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.

• " Faith and hope that the time will come that the scriptural sources that are said to stand in the way of a kinder and more inclusive view about sexual variation will no longer have the power they have had over the past 3000 years.
• " Hope that one day we will no longer talk in terms of sexual differences but simply that we are gendered people who all have a need for loving and supporting human relationships. Surely, if everyone in society is granted the right to live in a relationship that means harmony, peace, love and security, then all of society will benefit.
• " But above all - the greatest of these is Love. Love that breaks down barriers.

I pray the day will come when no-one's nails, beaks, or wings have to be clipped to fit into an acceptable box. That everyone can be who they are and find companionship and love with who-ever they choose. Loving companionship that finds expression in whatever way people choose and are comfortable with.