St Mary’s Matters Magazine

We are into our thirteenth year in exile so it seems appropriate that our final hard copy edition of St Mary Matters will be reflection on this transition period. We are a gifted community and an inclusive one. We are grateful to all who work hard to keep out community functioning at such a high level.

The cover of this magazine is meant to be a little enigmatic. What is that hand holding? Maybe a globe of the earth (we hold the future of the earth in our hands) maybe a crystal ball (can anyone predict our future) maybe a simple glass ball reflecting his world (reminding him how beautiful and fragile it is) or maybe something else. What do you think?

We have been introduced to a new vocabulary - physical distancing, flatten the curve and familiar terms such as isolation, quarantine, uncertain times, have new meanings. We have seen and been part of a new way to live our lives. The title for this magazine ‘In Uncertain Times’ reflects the real sense that we have that no-one really knows how this will all end up.

It seems very appropriate as we move into a new decade that we include in this edition of our magazine some of those wonderful homilies (adapted a little for this genre) that we heard last year. Each one could be found helpful as we begin a new era in our lives because they suggest new ways of looking at our lives and the world.

A special edition of St. Mary's Matters celebrating 10 years in exile. Foreword by Karyn Walsh (CEO of Micah Projects).

The new look for St. Mary’s In Exile might have come as a surprise to some people when it was first unveiled earlier this year but the visual language of this community has been evolving in its own way since it split from the Roman Catholic Church in 2009...

I was pondering this and remembering what I once read in Awareness by Anthony De Mello where he encouraged the reader to more or less move outside of the body and watch ourselves in motion…

However we interpret this topic, one thing is clear. We need to take responsibility for the bit of the cosmos that lies at our door...

For years I’d had problems with my image of God that I’d developed in childhood because he seemed such a nasty piece of work. I was told to love him (always him) and ask him to help me when I needed him to. Well, my experience told me this help never eventuated. He seldom came up with the answer to...

There is silence that is deeper than deep. It is silence beyond silence. It is beyond the sounds of the earth, the birds, the bugs and even the trees. It is the very heartbeat of life...

When considering the idea of ‘identity’ one can ask any number of people for their thoughts and get very different replies. There are those who insist that we are predestined to be the way we are by our genetic make up, those who will say it is our experiences in life that shape who we are. And then to complicate the matter further there are those who suggest we have no individual identity, that our beliefs of individuality are an illusion, and that we are all one, along with everything else in the universe...

The focus for this edition of the magazine is on connectedness. As a community we place a good deal of emphasis on inclusiveness and welcome. I see many people actively working on helping to ensure that people in the community do feel they are a part of it - and connected in some way...

It took courage to walk to leave that beautiful, welcoming place of white stone, ancient icons and enchanting echoes to leave that sense of security and belonging that connectedness to a bigger story and to our past and to walk away from it all down the hill to an empty room to an unfamiliar place and begin to give birth to something new. It was a big step to walk...

While listening to Terry’s homily on Falling Upwards, with its emphasis on the second half of life, I could see parallels in relation to the development of our community...

The subject of what is real and what is illusory fascinates me as it clearly has a number of our SMX writers. It has also inspired some beautiful poetry. I hope you enjoy this variety of responses to the theme of Reality or Illusion...

When we were in the old church and growing as a congregation it seemed to some of us that we needed to work deliberately on strategies to help us become more of a community. We came from all over the city and were...

What a remarkably successful experience it was to spend time together as a group of SMX people who started as colleagues and finished as friends...

For this edition I suggested that our readers might like to reflect on the idea in Peter Kennedy’s TedX address that what we do is more important than what we believe. This may seem a simple proposition to people such as those in our community who have been acting on this aphorism for years. After all we were tossed out of the Catholic Church, not for what we did (our social activism was accepted as good) but for what we didn’t believe…

I was listening to the homily given by a young man who had been a student at Milperra. He spoke of his gratitude to Adele Rice the principal and the other people at the school who so encouraged him when he first came to Australia as a young refugee. His story moved me to tears, with his affection for Adele so apparent. This prompted me to think about the way ordinary people can make an extra-ordinary difference to people’s lives....

The rather beautiful image on the cover suggested itself to me when I saw it, as a symbol of where we are as a community now. We were weary from the emotional effort of the move from the church and we were happy to construct a nice safe cocoon for ourselves at the TLC. We have become comfortable there. But like that beautiful emergent butterfly the time has come for us to use our wings and take off into the world around us...

There is an air of expectancy about in the community. Peter gave a great homily after Christmas which expressed this feeling so well. We have a future, a wonder filled future, and we need to share it. It is time for us to take wings and fly. We have so much to offer, and from what we read, there are many out there who would just love to share what we have...

I find non-dualism is easy to understand but impossible to turn into anything more than momentary reality for me. This edition of the magazine has a variety of responses to the questions ‘Who am I? Who are you?…

I was reading a book recently about the pursuit of happiness, which detailed research into what makes us happy. To me, a surprising find was that generally we are bad at knowing what would make us feel really good. Most of the things we yearn for, when realised, give at best fleeting happiness....

This edition of our magazine has a focus on a quote of Mary Mackillop ‘We are but travellers here’…

I was first attracted to St Mary’s because the priest treated us like intelligent human beings and gave thought provoking homilies. I then became part of a community that is now a big part of my life...