In Sources of the Self, philosopher Charles Taylor traces the Western sense of the self as it evolved from Plato to Augustine and on to today. Taylor’s chapter on Augustine moved me deeply; I read it three times.
For Plato, the centre for moral growth is attention. Taylor writes: “Facing the right field is what is decisive. We may have to struggle to rise to this, but the struggle is over the direction of our gaze.” For Augustine, growth occurs through love: “Everyone becomes like what s/he loves.” For both Plato and Augustine, the direction of our attention and love is very important. For Augustine, however, “it is love and not attention which is the ultimately deciding factor.”
In a significant development for Western thought, Augustine connects Plato’s light metaphors with John’s Gospel. “The light of God is not just ‘out there’, illuminating the order of being, as it is for Plato; it is also an ‘inner’ light. It is the light ‘which gives light to everyone that comes into the world’ (John 1:9).” This inner light is in being present to oneself, where we discover the freedom to experience and love. In this inner light we meet God who is truth. Taylor’s humour proves helpful: “We don’t have to jostle each other to get a good look or shove people aside to touch it, truth can be enjoyed by all together.”
According to Taylor, Augustine makes “the language of inwardness” compelling. Inwardness is the primary site of relationship between human beings and God. “In [our] inner self-presence, self-love … and self-affirmation” we reveal ourselves as the image of God. Augustine’s doctrine on “the intimacy of self-presence” as hallowed has “far-reaching consequences for the whole of Western culture.”
We are healed from self-centredness when we acknowledge our dependence on God the creator “in the intimacy of our own presence to ourselves.” Augustine writes: “Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward [human] dwells truth.” Taylor notes that “the stress on … the inward path, is not only for the benefit of intellectuals trying to prove the existence of God; the very essence of Christian piety is to sense this dependence of my inmost being on God … Augustine is always calling us within [because] inward lies the road to God.”
Reading Charles Taylor on Augustine on the self, I pause to reflect. Throughout my life in the Christian, Catholic and Ignatian traditions, we have often stressed seeking God in others. Indeed, at our most other-focused, Christian people have promoted a “forget about self, think of others” attitude. This approach can carve out a smaller place for our personal agency. It can confine our freedom as persons.
The “turn to the self” pursued by Augustine demonstrates a “radical reflexivity” in Taylor’s view. We go to the roots of human life when we meet our very self and reflect. Understanding personal feelings, reactions, motives and actions opens an encounter with this self as deep, present and active. In seeking the truths within, we encounter God.
In reflecting on all this, our first task becomes clear: to meet, reverence and love God’s presence within oneself. As Jesus announces, “the kingdom of God is within/among you” (Luke 17:21). Within me, within you, among us.
Next, we can love God, other persons and the entire creation. Taylor editorialises on Augustine’s invitation: “When it comes to God, the right measure is to love without measure …”
The sun shines bright for everyone, people who notice and people who imitate: being a light for loved ones, bringing a candle to a friend’s darkened room, holding out a torch for strangers.
Walking barefoot on the sunlit beach, we who notice prepare to join others in the project of re-making co-creating loving this spectacular spacious wounded home for grace and doubt—our world—while swimming in the surf between the flags and among the participants of daily life who, conscious of it or not, renew and restore with all their being and effort, and sometimes miss the mark.
While we swim near one another, each one’s name sealed upon their heart, we may do well to turn and say hello, or not, and cover our eyes with goggles and dive under the next breaker. This ordinary ritual—ocean swimming—prepares us to swim the more extraordinary channels of suffering and helpless fear angst worry and illness which one day will come our way.
Meanwhile, teams of lifesavers—sitting on the sand and walking the beachside breakers—watch on, ready to intervene if necessary, poised to save a person struggling in the water, hands bouncing above head with distress and terror.
When this very situation unfolds, coffee-drinkers at the seaside cafe notice a commotion down on the water, and the quick ripple-effect of human solidarity and protection fills the sky with clouds of concern. The man, in his 30s, is saved from drowning, and splutters up water when reaching the shore. CPR is not necessary, but they will check on him in the hospital, just to be sure.
Our eyes play witness as ocean, land and air overflow with compassion and leaves flutter in the breeze. Several lifesavers are off to a barbecue, murmuring to each other as the sun retreats, expressing wonder at all that had happened in the light.
Maroubra Beach from Arthur Byrne Reserve, July 2018 (picture by author).
Swimming Maroubra Beach aged 12, I walk out through the chilly waters near a breaking wave and the thrill of life fills me at the point of decision: to rise over the precipice and stretch my neck high, or dive under the body of water and feel the tide roll over my back … I take a moment to taste the salty water and sense the warmth when I stand; I spy my sister Claire out beyond the breakers, a capable swimmer enjoying the surf, now dad’s on his way, prescription goggles tight, diving under each wave and slapping his arms on water, coming up for air, that thick broad glorious smile spreading wide across his face, a lifetime of joy on his home beach.
My grandfather Pop called this his swimming pool, provided just for him: a place to move and discover oneself on the edge of a capacious ocean, riding the waves and wading through troughs, ever watchful of rips.
Back on the beach, towels unfurled and glistening wet backs in the sun, we feel a satisfying sense of achievement and breathe out awe. At the arrival of fish and chips we tuck in and relish each bite.
The individual who killed 51 people at prayer in Christchurch Mosques on Friday 15 March 2019 is Australian. As Shakira Hussein wrote in The Saturday Paper on 12 December last year:
For me, and for many other Muslims living in Australia, the Christchurch attack has always felt like an Australian crime that happened to take place in Aotearoa…
There needs to be a moment of reckoning that the man behind the Christchurch massacre is an Australian. He was born here, and it was in this country that his hatred and racism developed at a young age.
Christchurch massacre: an Australian crime, The Saturday Paper, 12 December 2020
Hussein was reflecting on the crime soon after the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019delivered a report to the New Zealand Governor General entitled Ko tō tātou kāinga tēnei: This is our home. In their end note the commissioners write “Out of the terrible events of the 15 March 2019 terrorist attack has come the responsibility to reflect and learn.” We in Australia must take time to reflect on the report’s findings, which deserve solemn and sober reading.
The terrorist was formed by life in Australia
Throughout their report, the commissioners describe the Australian terrorist as “the individual”. In a section entitled Part 4: The Terrorist, they outline the individual’s life trajectory “from childhood in Australia through to the terrorist attack in New Zealand.” The Report Summary observes:
The individual is a white Australian male who was 28 years old in March 2019. He displayed racist behaviour from a young age. His life experiences appear to have fuelled resentment and he became radicalised, forming extreme right-wing views about people he considered a threat. Eventually, he mobilised to violence.
The individual arrived in New Zealand on 17 August 2017. As an Australian, he was entitled to live in New Zealand. Within a few days of arrival, he moved to Dunedin and from this time, his life was largely devoted to planning and preparing for the terrorist attack.
The report tells a story of relevant aspects of the individual’s life and formation in Australia.
The individual … was twice dealt with by one of his high school teachers, who was also the Anti-Racism Contact Officer, in respect of anti-Semitism. This teacher described the individual as disengaged in class to the point of quiet arrogance, but also well-read and knowledgeable, particularly on certain topics such as the Second World War …
The individual told us that he began to think politically when he was about 12 and that his primary concerns have been about immigration, particularly by Muslim migrants into Western countries. In his manifesto he said that he had no complaints with ethnic people, if they remained in their places of birth. Those on the far right, particularly ethno-nationalists (as described in Part 2, chapter 5), sometimes assert similar views while disingenuously denying being racist. Aspects of the individual’s life are consistent with his description of his views.
Part 4 The Terrorist: Chapter 2 The individual’s upbringing in Australia
From far-right radicalisation to violence
The commissioners observe “the individual’s political thinking was far right in nature and showed many of the signs of ethno-nationalism”. Describing the process whereby a person moves from ‘radicalisation to violence’, they write:
Most people with extreme right-wing views do not act on these views through violence. The process through which people develop commitment to a particular extremist ideology is called radicalisation. The process through which an individual comes to see violence as a feasible tool to address their grievances is called radicalisation to violence ...
Radicalisation is almost universally acknowledged as a group phenomenon in which social relations and networks play a key role in preparing people to commit extremist violence.A person may come into contact with extremists in a multitude of ways, such as through existing networks of friends and family, public outreach by those involved in these groups or, increasingly, online engagement. When someone with generalised grievances comes into contact with individuals or groups who are able to provide a wider framework through which they can understand their grievances, extremist worldviews can be reinforced …
Participation in a group enables a range of processes that may facilitate the use of violence, including a solidifying of dehumanising thinking, an increased perception of crisis and belief in the use of violence as a legitimate tool.
Part 2 Context Chapter 5.4 Radicalisation to violence
From Part 2 Context Chapter 5 Harmful behaviours, right wing extremism and radicalisation
On 30 August 2020, a spokesperson for Australia’s domestic spy agency ASIO said “extreme right wing groups and individuals represent a serious, increasing and evolving threat to security” and the Christchurch attack was a “stark example of this”:
Unfortunately, extreme right wing groups are more organised, sophisticated and security conscious than before. These groups are becoming increasingly ideological; more aware of and committed to specific dogmas, philosophies and views, many of which support or glorify violence. They draw from a diverse variety of ideas and they are attracting a younger membership who display few overt signs of their extremist ideology.
Far-right radicalisation via the internet
In September 2020, ASIO Deputy Director-General Heather Cook “confirmed right-wing violent extremism now accounted for between 30 and 40 per cent of its current caseload in counter-terrorism work. This compared to between 10 and 15 per cent prior to 2016.” A report in the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Cook ‘saying the way in which extreme right-wing extremists were using the internet to recruit the “young and vulnerable” was similar to the methods deployed by Islamic State at its peak, adding the strategy was being used “to good effect”.’
Now one month after the violent insurrection at the United States Capitol, governments and media platforms are renewing their conversations about curtailing far-right extremism on the internet. The social media app “Parler” which hosted extremist views and conversations has been removed from Google, Apple and Amazon platforms.
In part 2 chapter 5.3, the commissioners observe the ways the internet has incubated far-right thinking:
One of the most notable changes in the right-wing extremist movement has been its movement from the streets to the internet. In previous decades, the extreme right-wing mostly organised on the streets in gangs or protest movements. Today, extremism has substantially, although not completely, moved from physical meetings and street activism to the internet and social media.
Part 2 Context Chapter 5.3 The nationalist far right, the radical right and the extreme right-wing
Social cohesion and safety for all
Violent far-right extremism is a volatile phenomenon which requires a whole-of-community response. The Royal Commission meditated at length on social cohesion as a factor which may protect against similar terrorist attacks in the future.
For the commissioners, social cohesion is “where people feel part of society, family and personal relationships are strong, differences among people are respected and people feel safe and supported by others.”
The commissioners found that social cohesion actively discourages far-right violence:
Social cohesion can contribute to preventing or countering extremism. This is because cohesive and resilient communities are better placed to resist and counter the risk of radicalisation and mobilisation to violent extremism and terrorism. Tolerant, and ideally inclusive, societies are more able to address and prevent the polarisation and disenfranchisement that can contribute to a rise in extremism.
Part 9 Social cohesion and embracing diversity Chapter 1 Introduction
The commissioners invite the New Zealand public to conversation about social cohesion as a way to build a more robust democratic society where residents readily respect each and every community. Such a society guards against extremist violence.
These reflections have implications for all Australian governments, communities and residents. Australia certainly has a way to go before we may more universally hold together peacefully the values of diversity and democracy.
Here are some of the commission’s recommendations which should be read closely in Australia.
Australia-relevant report recommendations
Recommendation 4
We recommend that the Government:
Develop and implement a public facing strategy that addresses extremism and preventing, detecting and responding to current and emerging threats of violent extremism and terrorism …
Recommendation 15
We recommend that the Government:
Create opportunities to improve public understanding of extremism and preventing, detecting and responding to current and emerging threats of violent extremism and terrorism in New Zealand …
Recommendation 36
We recommend that the Government:
Invest in opportunities for young New Zealanders to learn about their role, rights and responsibilities and on the value of ethnic and religious diversity, inclusivity, conflict resolution, civic literacy and self-regulation.
Recommendation 40
We recommend that the Government:
Repeal section 131 of the Human Rights Act 1993 and insert a provision in the Crimes Act 1961 for an offence of inciting racial or religious disharmony, based on an intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred, through threatening, abusive or insulting communication with protected characteristics that include religious affiliation.
In the explainer prefiguring recommendation 40 from ‘Part 9 Chapter 4 Hate crime and hate speech’ a new offence was drafted: Every person commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years who:
with intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred against any group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins or religion of that group of persons; and
says or otherwise publishes or communicates any words or material that explicitly or implicitly calls for violence against or is otherwise, threatening, abusive, or insulting to such group of persons.
Conclusion
The findings and recommendations of the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 should give us pause. I encourage Australians reading this post to read the report. As the neighbouring nation whose communities shaped this terrorist, we must be willing to read, learn, and be changed by what we learn.
We who are seek to build peace do well to reflect carefully on the causes of violence, and consider what happened in this case. After reading the parts of the report I was drawn to, I am engaged in the following questions:
Are our communities capable of stopping persons who are radicalising before they turn to violence?
What strategies do we have to redirect such persons and their energies?
Do our cities, schools, workplaces, sporting clubs and communities truly value diversity and difference?
What will we do to build a more robust democracy which is confidently pluralist in nature?
We can all contribute to building communities which embrace difference, nourish respect, encourage mutuality, and build solidarity among all. Our responsibility to the common good demands no less.
The bright blue expanse of day is set against a hill of native grasses. Each plant’s leaf sheaths and spikelets shimmer like white gold. Motionless waves of flowering stalks stand upright and tall, awns curved out and away to absorb the sunlight.
A small family of trees rises over the crisp coastline of blue and gold. These brave trees reach out as neighbours to the thick hillside of grass. They reach up as sailors, ready to push out onto that glorious still calm ocean of sky.
In the cool of evening, the sky takes on a cooler blue. Native grasses move to a quiet breeze. The leaf sheaths and spikelets are a darker gold in the nighttime sun, this entire hillside a great fortune of grass. Long may the lawnmowers fall silent.
Four confident trees rise above the sun-soaked tussock. Branches of bold green leaves reach up towards light, drawn by the promise of sky.
Meanwhile the affectionate dog at my feet is filled with joy.
In this reflection, I write a memory from today through one of my senses: eyesight.
Walking through the Belconnen shops, I was looking for a cafe that would serve breakfast early. I “checked in” to one and met the waitstaff’s smile. We exchanged a few words and soon she returned with a feast set for a weary traveller, colours and textures all before me. This host was attentive and helpful and kind. I paid for the meal and exchanged greetings. I left and walked into “a lovely day”.
I went searching for noodles
At the fruit shop, aisles laden with produce, meat out the back, I went searching for noodles. My ALDI trolley conspicuous, my mind conscious of the load I carried, I nearly left, but something about the array of vegetables, the rich welcome of the delicacies, the chance my list could be filled, kept me there. The noodles, rice ones, were in a stand at the back, pointed out by a staff member in the black nondescript clothes of the store. A minister of service, this perfect stranger showed me warmth and psillium husk and orange juice “99% oranges”.
It is helpful to take a historical view to contextualise the global COVID19 pandemic. Without this history, our public imagination cannot place this crisis within our sense of how the world was, is, or could be. The 1918-20 pandemic (with its 50 million deaths) is well before ‘living memory’. When we do try to remember this ‘Spanish Flu’ of one century ago, we use that very phrase: a racist name which by using the word ‘flu’ also minimises the deadly nature of that pandemic.
So let’s be honest: our public imagination is centred in contemporary times. Our public memory, or popular sense of history, goes back into the 20th century.
Generations alive today have witnessed the 1981-current HIV/AIDS epidemic (35 million deaths); the 2009 Swine Flu (200,000 deaths); and the 2014 Ebola epidemic (11,000 deaths). Each infectious disease has been transnational in spread and devastating in effects.
Our focus blurs when looking prior to 1900. In addition, histories of infectious disease have to a certain extent been the concern of specialists within the medical community and the academy.
COVID19 as modern ‘plague’
Earlier in 2020 Australian writer Arnold Zable began referring to the COVID19 pandemic as ‘plague’ in his extraordinary ongoing Facebook series ‘What We Do In the Time of the Plague’. There, Zable shared observations from life in Melbourne in 2020 and now 2021. The second time I heard the word used was in a piece on Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague.
The fact is that the millions of people who died in “the great mortality” were human beings who were sick … and they were suffering from something they didn’t understand, and they were trying to overcome it.
Elizabeth Bruenig on the Bubonic Plague
Bruenig’s podcast affirms what’s right before our eyes: that the COVID19 pandemic is the latest in a long history of plagues and pandemics recurring throughout the centuries.
Thanks to the graphic below, here are four deadly pandemics which occurred prior to 1900:
the Plague of Justinian (541-542 CE: 30 to 50 million deaths);
the Bubonic Plague or “Black Death” (1347-1352 CE: 75 to 200 million deaths);
New World smallpox (1520 CE: 25 to 55million deaths);
“Third Plague” (1885: 12 million deaths).
The current (3 January, 2021) Johns Hopkins figure for global deaths due to COVID19 stands at 1,844,518 with over 85 million confirmed cases.
It is important for us to become more conscious of the dynamic history of plagues and pandemics, and the human stories of those who lived through them. Reading this history helps us achieve a more clear-eyed view on what kind of event we are now living through. Reflecting on this history will prepare us to find the strength, courage and resilience to carry on without being in denial of how hard things are.
What follows are accounts of three plagues, one for each of the last three millennia. I then conclude with an observation about how the current pandemic has centred us on what matters.
The Plague of Athens (432 BCE)
“In 430 BC, a plague struck the city of Athens, which was then under siege by Sparta during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). In the next 3 years, most of the population was infected, and perhaps as many as 75,000 to 100,000 people, 25% of the city’s population, died.”
Robert J Littman, 2009, The plague of Athens: epidemiology and paleopathology
Neither were the physicians at first of any service, ignorant as they were of the proper way to treat it, but they died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often …
People in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent fevers in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough …
By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when any one felt himself sickening, for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance …
It was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience, and had now no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice-never at least fatally.
Thucydides on the Plague of Athens
With “death raging within the city and devastation without….Such was the history of the plague.”
The Yellow Plague (664 CE)
In 731 CE, the English monk-historian Bede The Venerable recalled ‘The Yellow Plague’ of 664. Medical historians now describe this disease as ‘Smallpox’. It was understood to be spread by air and close contact, with the Plague Lit site reporting that “one Welsh source described it as a veil of rain sweeping through the countryside”. Sounds familiar!
Bede wrote:
In the same year of our Lord 664, there happened an eclipse of the sun, on the…[first] day of May…In the same year, a sudden pestilence depopulated first the southern parts of Britain, and afterwards attacking the province of the Northumbrians, ravaged the country far and near, and destroyed a great multitude of men [people]…
The Venerable Bede on The Yellow Plague
The Bubonic Plague (c. 1347-1352)
In her podcast, Elizabeth Bruenig quotes from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron written in 1350. In this work, the Italian poet and scholar reports direct from the Bubonic Plague, when in 1348 “the mortal pestilence then arrived in the excellent city of Florence … Sick persons were forbidden entrance, and many laws were passed for the safeguarding of health… almost at the beginning of the Spring of that year, the plague horribly began to reveal, in astounding fashion, its painful effects.”
Deadly swellings known commonly as ‘plague-boils’ would appear on infected persons. “Neither the advice of a doctor nor the power of any medicine appeared to help and to do any good … Not only did very few recover, but almost everyone died within the third day from the appearance of these symptoms, some sooner.” The pestilence spread “as fire does” with “the clothing or other things touched or used by the sick” bringing the disease.
Boccaccio’s account describes people prioritising their own health over all else: “Almost all were inclined … to shun and to flee the sick and their belongings. By so behaving, each believed that he would gain safety for himself … Many men and women abandoned their own city, their houses and homes, their relatives and belongings in search of their own country places or those of others” because they felt safer outside the major cities.
In an extraordinary passage, Boccaccio explains the effect of the plague on human relations:
We have said enough of these facts: that one townsman shuns another; that almost no one cares for his neighbour; that relatives rarely or never exchange visits, and never do they get too close. The calamity had instilled such terror in the hearts of men and women that brother abandoned brother, uncle nephew, brother sister, and often wives left their husbands. Even more extraordinary, unbelievable even, fathers and mothers shunned their children, neither visiting them nor helping them, as though they were not their very own.
Giovanni Boccaccio on the Bubonic Plague in Florence
Trenches were dug as burial grounds, and “in the scattered villages … and across the fields, the wretched and impoverished peasants and their families died without any medical aid or help from servants.”
The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c 1562-1563
Elizabeth Bruenig also quotes from Agnolo di Tura’s The Plague in Siena: An Italian Chronicle. Di Tura reported that “The mortality began in Siena in May (1348). It was a cruel and horrible thing… in many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night … I buried my five children with my own hands.”
Bruenig reflects that in these times “a certain kind of nihilism began to spread in some quarters, with a grim ‘seize the day’ mentality gaining purchase. Eat, drink, be merry … tomorrow you may die.”
“We’re going to make it somehow”
Perhaps we avoid the histories of plagues and pandemics because we sense the suffering, trauma, loss, grief and lamentation involved. Great creativity emerges in times of plague too, however, helping us to find cause for reliable hope. For example, the Plague Lit site observes that Martin Rinkart may have composed the hymn Now Thank We All Our God during the plague of 1636:
Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices …
The anonymous scribe comments “seen in light of the plague, the hymn is less a triumphant proclamation of gratitude, and more a poignant statement of simple faith in a time of crisis.”
Every pandemic or plague brings death to many and upheaval to all. In Elizabeth Bruenig’s words, people left behind at the end of the Bubonic Plague “looked at the wreckage of society around them, and said, we’re going to make it somehow.”
In a similar way, the COVID19 pandemic is connecting us with what matters. We can more readily perceive life as gift because we are that much more conscious of mortality. And we can remember the wisdom of all ages: that light shines brightest in time of darkness.
In these days marking the start of a new year, we all become more aware of time as a precious and limited resource. In 2020, our sense of time has been a little warped. Friends have said that February feels a lifetime away, whereas March feels like yesterday. So much has changed for all of us. And yet each person wants to experience our life’s time with a sense of agency and purpose.
Time is an invitation
Time is an invitation:
to feel the gift of the present;
to rise to the new with enthusiasm;
to climb to the heights of experience;
to dive into the depths of our desires;
to choose freely the more loving and generous path;
to make companions for the road;
to enlist one’s own heart in the challenge;
to walk tall and hopeful, embracing each scene;
to speak words of peace;
to listen with a compassionate heart;
to dance to the rhythm of music;
to sing from the diaphragm;
to love, to heal, to renew, to build;
to support one another in times of trial;
to attend to the inspiration of each day.
Illustration by Maggie Power
Each second, minute, day, week, month, year, decade and lifetime carries within it potential for growth and liveliness. Indeed, every moment calls us to embrace the invitation of our lives. With magnanimous and open hearts, hands poised and ready, and our feet firmly planted on the ground, we will be ready to walk the next steps toward life in fullness for all.
May our memories resound with gratitude. and our present awaken a new sense of freedom. May our new year 2021 bring forth hope and generosity.
The people of Melbourne in 2020 know a lot about preparing. We lived through a long Winter of preparation for the days we can now enjoy. Today we are living in a time of greater freedom – and we prepared for this over many hours, days, weeks and months.
We prepared through our daily sacrifices, social distancing and staying home; through our checking in on each other by phone, text and video; through our precious one hour’s walk a day, going in pairs; through our wearing a mask, a visible sign of our community’s shared efforts; through our tenderness with each other, our comforting and building each other up.
As we live with a renewed sense of freedom, we can choose to remember this year from a perspective of gratitude, tracing a ‘graced history’. There were traces of light even through the most terrible weeks of darkness, when a heaviness enveloped the land. We learnt much about our resilience in the face of adversity; we found new coping strategies in months of trial; we achieved something great and beautiful together. The people of Melbourne can now celebrate these achievements.
We have also learnt much about ourselves. We now see community where before we saw separate individuals living separate lives. We have found that we belong to and matter to each other. May our new awareness encourage us to reach out to each other more than we did in the past. May we live out a refreshed humanity.
Advent: a season of preparation for Christians
These days of greater freedom coincide with the Advent season of preparation, when Christians are invited to let God renew their lives. It’s a season for noticing the divine presence in people and experiences; for spreading peace, joy and hope among neighbourhoods, unit-blocks, communities, friends and families; for becoming aware of one’s own desires to nourish, shape and care for our world.
Soon, Christians will join the holy family in their joy at the new-born Jesus. For the people of Melbourne, joy is among us already.
Church of St James North Richmond, Melbourne. 6 December 2020. 33rd baptism anniversary.
The celebrated Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton died 10 December 1968. Merton has been a touchstone for me throughout my adult life. I believe his life and writings paved a way into living out a faith engaged with the world, waging peace and justice credibly in the midst of war and injustice, and relating deeply with others through friendship across difference.
A deep faith grounded in God’s presence
Merton had become a monk to seek union with God. Blessed with an impressive literary background and extraordinary writing ability, in his early years at Gethsemani he served God (and God’s people) by writing with insight into the spiritual life. His 1948 Autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain was a phenomenon among people craving an authentic spiritual experience of their own.
Merton’s faith centred on personal and communal experiences of God’s presence. He found life through the traditions of the church: the scriptures, the Rule of St Benedict, the early church fathers, the saints, the sacraments. Through his communal prayer (monks pray the psalms in common several times a day and night) and personal contemplation, Merton came to see God’s abiding presence animating all that exists.
Merton found strength and peace in God’s embrace. He could comfortably engage with matters of faith and prayer in his writings, talks and conferences. As a monk of considerable insight, he knew his own self well. He wrote and taught with a deep understanding of human frailty and God’s goodness.
Merton was impacted profoundly by an experience he had in downtown Louisville on 18 March 1958:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
A life open to friendship and solidarity
This experience coincided with an opening up of his heart towards the wider world behind the walls of his rural Kentucky monastery. For the next ten years, until his death aged 53, Merton turned his eyes and pen more and more to matters of war and injustice, poverty, racism, and inter-religious dialogue. Merton was curious and open-minded about how he might offer his solidarity to a hurting world. Merton’s interest in eastern religious and spiritual traditions grew, and he took part in exchanges of conversation and shared experience.
Centred in his own commitments, Merton felt at ease in relating with others. He had a gift for friendship with people of varied walks of life. Merton kept up with all sorts of people: from peace activist Daniel Berrigan SJ to poet Denise Levertov, Dorothy Day (founder of TheCatholic Worker newspaper/houses), and college friend and fellow poet Robert Lax. He was often in contact with writers, Buddhists, peace-activists, and leaders of world and church alike.
Thomas Merton, right, poses with writer Wendell Berry, left and the poet Denise Levertov.
This singular monk joined the monastery only to be even more committed to the world beyond. His writing – best captured in New Seeds of Contemplation – demonstrated great love for that world and its people.
Merton’s journey into solitude led him back out into the noise; his contemplation gave him something to say to people of action; his friendships with others opened new doors into grace and peace. Merton had walked a path to life in fullness. I am very grateful to have met him through his words.
