A poem remembering a spiritual experience I had while on an overseas trip in early 2008:
On a tropical afternoon more than a decade ago I remember feeling a warmth rise within my chest, a fire burning. This experience consumed me with a sense of call. I woke with a new consciousness of being loved, and began walking with a profound sense of direction.
Malaysia, 2008
But I wanted more of that warmth, with its tender, blessed light. I sought its return, and, sometimes felt the heat moving deep in my heart. And following such persistent efforts, the experience was released— the fire had become smoke.
In the years that followed, I found new images for a vocabulary of encounter: water tumbling over rocks, mustard seeds, and fertile soil in which to grow. I was invited to rolling fields of conversation. In naming my experiences, I began to behold the embrace of the giver who kept sending sought and unsought gifts.
Sitting on my balcony one morning, sun hidden behind great Winter clouds, I felt fresh warmth resting within my lungs. I paused gently in stillness, breathing in all these memories breathing out appreciation rising to now write it all down.
Catholic Education Melbourne Eastern Region Beginning Teachers Network keynote address, Aquinas College, 11 May 2018:
In March 2018, I wrote the article Teaching Public Issues in Catholic Schools in Eureka Street magazine. I was interested in naming the fear which I saw present in my colleagues studying the “Transition into the Profession” unit at Australian Catholic University that February in Sydney. They were afraid to teach in Catholic schools because they might “say the wrong thing” on controversial issues of the moment. Their fear surprised me and woke me up to my desire that Catholic education be a privileged place of encounter where we seek a way to truth together.
Every day, every class, every conversation … in schools we are helping to form consciences. Conscience formation is a fundamental building block for Catholic education. An informed conscience will lead to freedom from fear. It will support the growth of moral imaginations. It will encourage faith.
True education models and facilitates important conversations. For Catholic education, church teaching offers something special when it is raised in a context of dialogue. When the church’s teaching dominates a delicate conversation there is a degree of alienation. It is a living teaching to be encountered at different levels. So a classroom which encourages a conscientious reaching for truth will necessarily go deeper than superficial catch phrases. Today we will spend time wondering about how to have important conversations.
Why dialogue?
Ever since the dawn of language, learning has been caught up in dialogue. Today, learning occurs in constant conversations between students and teachers, students and parents, parents and teachers, and of course teachers and teachers like those occuring between us today. More fundamentally, learning occurs as a dialogue in the most intimate rooms of the self. And the most inner room of the self is a privileged place where God seeks our company. Catholic schools facilitate classroom dialogue as a sacred encounter – in the meeting of minds we find self and others and God.
In these dialogues I can come to encounter what matters. I can come to realise what I believe to be important. I can meet people who have positions which build on different value systems to my own. I can wonder about why we may differ and what we hold in common. I can learn how to listen at depth to what others are saying.
When there is a common understanding that together we seek a way to truth, then we can understand another’s position at a rather deep level. This can lead to privileged moments of encounter. There we uncover meaning, we come face to face with insight, we find light for our thinking and we discover cause for wonder.
Why be a Catholic educator today?
As part of my own response to this question I would like to offer a passage from Jesus’ mission statement in Luke’s Gospel – chapter 4, verses 16-21:
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:16-21
In Catholic schools all that we do has a disposition of reverence because we find God’s presence among us – most especially within our students. As teachers, we are learners anointed with a mission to share what we have with those in our classrooms. Jesus’ mission statement in Luke is a mission statement which could just as readily apply to the mission of teachers in a Catholic school.
We can be good news for the poor among us – we can bring hope to those who struggle with learning, who struggle with life. We can release people from captivity – from prisons of the mind – and we can be released too. Learning can give sight to teacher and student alike – in our encounters we all learn to see with new eyes. Learning can free students from oppressive strictures of social injustice and personal doubt. Learning can be a special place where we all experience a year of the Lord’s favour.
To wax theological, we are invited to engagement in the world God loves; to grow in our attentiveness to God’s people before us in our classrooms and staffrooms; to engage in important conversations with our fellow teachers, students, and society because we know that the way to truth is walked together. In the encounter we meet God – who we reverence in the other.
How we have conversation on important public issues, controversies and debates has impact on our schools and larger communities. When we value the different perspectives enough on their own terms then we can begin to hear with new ears the church’s teaching too. We can have conversations “in good faith” where each voice is heard and valued.
How might Catholic Social Teaching offer something for dialogue on important issues?
I would like to propose that when we have the big conversations Catholic Social Teaching has a voice which speaks eloquently of what matters. It has something to say in dialogue on important issues and debates, not when it is imposed or it closes down conversations. But when it is welcomed as part of a broad conversation. Its key principles include:
– Human dignity – each person is made in the image and likeness of God. In the words of the Prophet Isaiah, each person is precious, honoured, and loved (Isaiah 43:4). In the words of Sandie Cornish, “each [person] has a transcendent dignity that can never be taken away, even if it is not always respected.”
– Common good – we have a responsibility to care for each other. The invitation is to work together to create social relationships which uphold the needs of all and help all to fulfil their potential. When we take special concern for the poor and excluded, their good will be good for all.
– Solidarity is about building the kind of community which identifies itself with those most in need such that we care for them – the dying, sick, widowed, refugee, unemployed, lonely, abandoned, abused, mentally ill.
Conclusion
So let’s have the conversations. Let’s model free and wide ranging dialogue. Let’s cast out all fear. Because if we are to be good news as teachers … HOW we facilitate conversations is just as important as WHAT we propose or WHY we propose it. We need to trust ourselves and one another such that we might seek truth together.
Recently I compiled a list-poem of true north dispositions. These are prompts for me to remember the qualities I want to try to embed within my life:
Be kind — you don’t now what a person is facing;
Be patient — all things pass, new things emerge;
Be loving — grace follows;
Be forgiving — it heals relationships;
Be well-rested — it’s very important;
Be attentive to experience — how else will you learn?
Be active — your body needs it;
Be yourself — you’re the only one we’ve got like you.
“Making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding”
Proverbs 2:2
What you focus on spreads its way across
the terrain of your heart. New fields
grow where your attention rests; great trees
reach for the sky there; and fresh grass
seedlings rise from the soil you water regularly.
So it is that wisdom grows in your flower beds
and insight suspends itself to your vines.
An opening emerges near your succulents and
bits of understanding take hold by your peace lily.
This much is true—pain fertilises growth. And when
fresh springs emerge from rock
your mouth opens at the surprise.
Photo mid-poem: my peace lily Featured image in heading by Khara Woods on Unsplash
All days start similarly: sun rising in the East light stretching westward.
Humanly speaking, though, there’s variation: some days carry cause for thanksgiving; other days unfurl banners of lament; one hour can release a crisis; a single minute can hold space for a beautiful joy.
All the while that rich soil beneath our feet carries on its work of renewal, providing the space for roots to spread the home for microbes to get busy a fertile haven for worms to squirm together so that underneath the thanks, lamenting, crises and joy this earth moves on in its project of re-creation, enjoying its work, its art, its music with that deep satisfaction of a new lamb feeding from its mother of a gliding albatross as she soars of a young child reading for enjoyment.
The earth, satisfied late in the day, lets the sun go down in the West … remaining happy, as it were, to do it all again.
Re-reading this poem’s third stanza made me think with gratitude for my sisterAnne and her thesis work on soil, microbes, and ethical relationships to such. Anne has recently published an article in Environmental Humanities, “Ethical Acknowledgment of Soil Ecosystem Integrity amid Agricultural Production in Australia” which she describes as ‘focusing on a type of farming called “Pasture Cropping” and how it respects the forms and capabilities of soil.’ See the open access article here https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article/12/1/267/165259/Ethical-Acknowledgment-of-Soil-Ecosystem-Integrity
I delivered this speech as part of the ACU public speaking competition in 2016.These are photos of the national final held in Sydney during October that year.
Mercy is the quality which animates such a vision. Mercy leads the way across deserts of despair into territories of hope. Mercy creates broadening circles of relationship until no one is excluded.
Today I will consider first what it feels like to receive mercy in Australia. Second I will shed light on the darkness experienced when mercy is withheld. Third I will consider the responsibility we all share to ensure mercy is the principle at the heart of our public institutions. In conclusion I will offer an account of what starts to happen when we give and receive mercy, how our vision changes and the world is at once more friendly, inviting, and warm.
Firstly let us ask a key question: what does receiving mercy feel like? Imagine a social worker assisting you, an asylum seeker, as you negotiate the minefield of living on an Australian government temporary protection visa, and notice how their mercy-ing gives you a glimmer of hope. Imagine a high school teacher is magnanimous towards you, a misbehaving yet suffering student, seeking to understand rather than punish, and see how their mercy-ing heals. Imagine a friend listening to you as your life seems to be in free fall, and consider the ways their mercy-ing brings you the beginnings of consolation.
Secondly let us shine light on those spaces darkened by choices which make mercy absent. When the Australian government locks you up for years on end after you are forced to flee war and persecution in your country of origin, you experience the horror of mercy withheld. When a bank extorts you by charging exorbitant interest on a personal loan, tipping you into homelessness, you feel the chill of mercy withheld. When powerful institutions obstruct your claim for just compensation, a victim of abuse when you were meant to be in their care, you suffer the alienation of mercy withheld.
Now ultimately we have a responsibility as the Australian people. We are yet to creatively engage in the mercy-ing which broadens the circle to include those whose dignity is stripped by the brutality of the market and the indifference of government. We are yet to adequately pressure the governments formed in our name to follow a principle of mercy for the vulnerable in our midst. We are yet to join the dots between our private acts of mercy-ing and our public culture of vitriol.
As Tim Winton declared with the stark anger of a prophet, “I fear we have devalued the currency of mercy. Children have asked for bread and we gave them stones.” Here he is remembering the children in the offshore camps neglected and abused, growing up behind bars. Unfortunately we have to expand the list. Think of the 2016 Australian Council of Social Services report revealing the 730,000 children living below the poverty line, going without breakfast before school and that’s just the start of it. Then there are the horrific images none of us will forget of the children at the Don Dale juvenile detention centre, subjected to torment and torture by those who are employed to have the kind of care and concern of parents or guardians, the guards. These examples of cruelty to children demonstrate the systemic injustice and personal meanness which mercy comes to transform.
So therein likes our mission: to live the mercy-ing which counteracts inhumane systems of cruelty and interpersonal violence. To begin, we must creatively engage in the mercy-ing which broadens the circle to include those whose dignity is stripped by the brutality of the market and the indifference of government. Our challenge is to adequately pressure the governments formed in our name to follow a principle of merciful policies for the vulnerable in our midst. To get there we must join the dots between our private acts of mercy-ing and our public culture of vitriol.
As we reflect on where to from here, let us remember that the road towards greater life in abundance stops regularly along the way for refuelling and mercy is the best fuel available. It is free and freeing all at once.
Indeed, when we are mercy-ing we are watering seeds of trust in an age of anxiety. When we are mercy-ing we are kindling fires of love for one another when we so easily go cold. And when we are receiving mercy we are surprised by hope just as despair is becoming an option.
So as we engage in the shared experience we today call mercy-ing we start to notice the places it’s made real, and the choices which actively withhold its transforming power. Australian society boasts many individuals and communities who live by a principle of mercy. We also have a record of institutionalising cruelty in ways which too often go unchallenged. Now aware of these two realities, let us make our own contribution to embodying that tenderness which looks upon the world and each person we meet with what Shakespeare called ‘the quality of mercy.’
The delegates to the CLC Asia Pacific Assembly, held in Seoul, Korea from 17 to 20 October, 2019, experienced a movement of the Holy Spirit as we communally discerned our response to the theme ‘Living Faith in the Crowd’.
Brought together as 36 delegates from 13 national communities in the region (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Vietnam), we felt a sense of family and communion as we prayed, discerned and dreamed together.
The new CLC Asia Pacific Animating Team of Agnes Shin (Korea), Gregorius Tjaidjadi (Indonesia), Jeraldine Ching (Philippines), Cosmas Tsao (Taiwan) and James O’Brien (Australia) with Fr Jeong Ho An SJ (Korea) and Fr Jun Nakai SJ (Japan).
CLC Korea offered attentive hospitality and the Asia Pacific Animating Team (of which Australian Michael Walker was a member) led the Assembly.
Christian Life Community
Christian Life Community is a world community of ordinary people who live out Ignatian spirituality and who thus act as close collaborators with the Society of Jesus. CLC is grateful for the support and friendship of the Jesuits in Australia and throughout the region.
In our Australian presentation our delegation was able to share with the delegates that within Australia the key CLC-Jesuit collaboration over the past 25 years has been the Jesuit Tertians-CLC retreats in rural and more isolated parts of the country. In recent years these have been First Spiritual Exercises retreats, through which many people have experienced significant graces for their lives.
The heart of the Christian Life Community is the local small community which meets regularly throughout the year. As a world community, however, there are global, Asia Pacific, Australian, and state-based dimensions to membership of CLC. It is experiences such as this Asia Pacific Assembly which reaffirm that we are in fact one community living out our spirituality on mission throughout the world.
Communal Discernment
‘Communal discernment’ was an important theme in the Assembly, both in response to socio-political situations and the needs of the universal Church. We desire to make this contribution to the needs of the world and the Church that labours for its good. In this we recognised that personal discernment needs to occur alongside communal discernment.
In our Ignatian spirituality we attend to the Holy Spirit bringing light to our experience. Through our Awareness Examen at the end of each day, we became more and more conscious of the Assembly as a Spirit-led experience.
Throughout the Assembly there were ‘open spaces’ for communal discernment bubbling up from among the delegates based on the needs we find in our national communities and local situations. We noticed that we desire to continue to serve among young people.
A Community of Collaboration
One common work for the CLC Asia Pacific community in recent years was contributing to the 2017 Asian Youth Day in Indonesia. An important grace we received from that experience is that we desire to encourage deeper and more regular collaboration and communication across and between CLC local and national communities. In both formal and organic ways, we want to work together.
On the final evening we celebrated each culture through songs and presentations from each national community. The Australian delegation of Michael Walker, Gaby Grimaldo, Ana Rita S. and I sang ‘I am, You Are, We Are Australian’. As we came to the end, the screen above us revealed that we had changed the final line to ‘I am, You Are, We Are CLC’.
This was an appropriate ending sung with joy by the entire crowd of Assembly delegates and participants of the accompanying Immersion Program’ for CLC members in the region.
New Animating Team elected
At the end of the Assembly, a new Animating Team was elected to serve the regional community for the next five years. The members of this team are Agnes Shin (Korea), Cosmas Tsao (Taiwan), Jeraldine Ching (Philippines), Gregorius Tjaidjadi (Indonesia) and James O’Brien (Australia). We invite your prayers for the new Animating Team.
‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ So begins Emily Wilson’s luminous translation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.
As I quickened my way into reading this poem, I felt consumed by and drawn into its ocean-world of light and dark. Odysseus is a bold adventurer, a passionate and courageous warrior of the seas. Now far from home, he yearns to return and so to be with his loved ones. Many obstacles come his way. The route is curcuitous and takes him to the edge of death. His every misfortune calls him to lean on the hospitality of strangers and to seek the favour of the intervening gods and goddesses.
Odysseus is a ‘big’ and complex character. He will succumb to his own weakness, even when forewarned. He can say outrageous things. But within a context of his bravado and ‘heroism’, the world of the text seems to welcome (and then challenge) his ego. The gods care deeply about his journey, wondering what to do with him. Their various interventions often come disguised (Athena’s especially). His ship’s crew are skilled on the high seas and independently-minded on land. I often wanted to hear more from them.
Much had been said in reviews about Wilson’s skilful and sensitive rendering of the scene when Odysseus hears ‘the otherworldly Sirens’ singing to him from their island. Having anticipated this part of the text so much, when I read these lines I gasped in appreciation. Much of the text was like this, moving me to pause to savour and lather in the word pictures crafted by Wilson’s translation.
Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey sings on every page.
A prompt for self-reflection
Significantly, Odysseus’ journey took me deep into reflecting on my own. The poem’s language, image and metaphor speak to some of my experience. I too have crossed unknown seas to strange shores. There have been times I have felt far from home and longingly sought return. Looking back, I recognise that I have experienced the restorative power of providential journeying, cast forward by a grace I can only attribute to divinity. I have also experienced the upheaval brought about by spirits of unease and distress here attributed to lesser gods.
The experience of reading this poem gave me a generous feast for the senses, a magnificent meal for the imagination. I often paused to appreciate the beauty of the translation which sings like a top choir hitting all the notes of their renaissance polyphony. This is a gorgeous, big-hearted, uplifting, and transformative experience of Homer’s epic. I felt invited to enter a larger world.
'The night is darkest just before the dawn'
so the proverb goes, but we are only entering
the long night; its early hours are still to come,
and we must stay alert and watchful …
As the darkness deepens let’s keep
an eye on the moon, and remember the satisfying
day still to come when this
trial is behind us.
