People of the Holy Name

ADDRESS GIVEN BY BISHOP GARRY WEATHERILL, WARDEN OF CHNin the Community House Chapel on Holy Name Day, 7.8.13.

Come, Holy Spirit, giver of life and love, grant us for our hallowing thoughts that pass into prayer, prayer that passes into love and love that passes into life with you forever.

In 1974 I was one of 600 students who enrolled in Anthropology 1 at the University of Adelaide.  The topic had never been offered at the university before.  It was the sort of thing that every trendy young 1970’s person wanted to do: to understand about humanity and to look at foreign cultures and to try and understand a bit more about ourselves.  And so with six hundred others I crammed into a small lecture theatre – if you didn’t get there at least twenty minutes early, you didn’t get a seat.  We sat all over the steps, and stood at the back, and listened to amazing lectures about the Trobrian Islanders and witchcraft among the Azandi in Africa and reading chickens’ entrails in Nigeria.  It was marvellous!  I loved it!  I went to every tutorial, and the Tutor was a man called Anthony.  He was a New Zealander, and he insisted on calling me Peter.  For some reason he thought that, in the class list, I was Peter White and Garry Weatherill was another person.  So he would write on my tutorial papers, “Well done, Peter. An excellent effort.” - even though it said Garry on the front.  About half way through the year I got a letter from the university saying that as I hadn’t submitted any work or attended any tutorials, I was precluded from sitting the exam!  So I raced up and said to Anthony, “I’m actually not Peter.  I’m Garry.”  He said, “Oh, aren’t you Peter?”  I said, “No, I’m not.”  So that was cleared up (but I didn’t do very well in the end of year examination). 

About twenty years before that, I learnt about my own name, Garry.   I found it very hard to say as a baby, and apparently I used to call myself Gug; so in the family I was known as Gug.  My father insisted on calling me Gug everywhere – “Come on, Gug,” he’d say – until I was about seven, when I said, “For heaven’s sake, Dad, my name’s Garry!  Get it right!”

The university story is about recognition and understanding.  The story about my dad is really about recognition and personhood, about maturity and recognising who I really was.  I was no longer a baby who couldn’t say his name.  I was somebody called Garry.  I might’ve only been seven, but I was trying to understand who I was and how I fitted in the world.  An important part of that was knowing my name was Garry.

These days, of course, anybody called Garry is recognisably from about 1952 to 1965.  There are not many modern Garrys.  I guess it was the influence of Garry Cooper on a generation of parents.  But that’s what I’ve got, and so I’m a Bishop Garry – sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? – I should be Bishop Simon or Bishop Charles or Bishop Roland.  Not Garry!  But it’s the name my parents gave me, and it’s bound up with my identity as a human being, and about my maturity as a human being.  This is who I am.       

Today we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus:  Joshua – God saves; Jesus, the Son of God, the one who is at the heart of everything we do and are as Christian people; the Name that means so much to us, and the Name that’s all about our identity and our maturity as well as about the identity and maturity of the Lord himself.  I think we don’t need to worry too much about his maturity.  I think it can be assumed.  But as we seek to be his disciples, those people who are marked as belonging to Jesus, people of the Holy Name, Paul gives us some deeply uncomfortable reflections, doesn’t he?

In that wonderful passage to the Colossians which is normally read at weddings (that’s where you hear it most) he talks about the characteristics of the people who carry the Holy Name.  Listen to those characteristics again: “Forgive each other; clothe yourselves with love which binds everything together in perfect harmony; take on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.”  I’ve been around the Community of the Holy Name long enough to know that sometimes you see compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience; sometimes you don’t.  I’ve belonged to enough communities - my own family and other communities – to know how hard it is, in the rough and tumble of everyday life, to be patient with the people who drive you crazy, to be meek when you know that you’re right, to be humble when you should be celebrating your many gifts, to be kind when you’re just exhausted, to be compassionate yet again when you’d rather just give up.  Above all, Paul says, put on that hard thing, forgiveness, which is at the heart of every Christian relationship. 

If we are truly to reflect the nature of Christ and are to come to the full stature, to maturity in Christ, we need to be experts at forgiveness when we fail in those other characteristics – and how hard it is to forgive people when we are truly hurt.  It’s easy to forgive little hurts.  But at those times when we feel deeply rejected by the ones whom we ought to be able to trust, when we feel that our love is not returned, when we feel that we are taken for granted, it’s hard to forgive.  And yet those of us who seek to be followers of the Lord Jesus need to take these invitations very seriously indeed:  kindness, compassion, humility, meekness, patience and that hard thing, forgiveness.  Yes, we can sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and do all sorts of things in the name of the Lord, but unless in our everyday relationships, in the rough and tumble of going down the street, or in parish communities, unless it’s in those ordinary, everyday relationships, that we see real Christian maturity, we will never reflect the true nature of Christ.

Over this last weekend the Diocese of Ballarat has had three consultations, with over a hundred people participating, as we looked at the possibility of ordaining women to the Priesthood.  And I’ve been deeply encouraged by the kindness and the meekness and the humility and the compassion that people have shown to others with whom they disagree.  Twenty-five years ago a Ballarat priest said on National Television, “You might as well ordain a meat pie as ordain a woman.”  That sort of rudeness and pain and deliberate damage to other Christians ought never to be part of our common life.  I was deeply encouraged over the last three days by the real sense of Christian maturity that people who have deeply differing opinions about this important matter showed to each other in their careful and respectful conversations.  I don’t know what the outcome is going to be – I know what I want it to be.  But we don’t always get what we want – not straight away, anyway.  But I know that in that time together the people in my Diocese who participated in those conversations were actually living the life of the Lord, in their giving way to each other, in listening carefully and respectfully to each other, in praying with each other, and in not reacting with flash or with pain when difficult things were said.  And I have great hope that we might actually move towards some common ground in the Diocese of Ballarat.

Now that’s no different from every other Christian community.  All of us from time to time flash unkindly at others.  Yet if we are truly to be people of the Holy Name we need to reflect the nature of Christ and the maturity of Christ, and live lives that are thankful, and based on that hard thing, forgiveness.  If we do know how to base our lives around giving way to each other, it might actually just be possible for us to “do everything we do in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ”, and so come to the measure of the full stature of Christ, to true maturity as his sons and daughters, as his brothers and sisters, as his friends.       

Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times

Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times: Anglican Present and Future

by L.William Countryman

Reviewed by Carol O'Connor

It is good to read a book concerning the identity of contemporary Anglicanism in a time when the Communion is struggling to hold itself together. William Countryman has written a work that speaks to each group within the Anglican Church, and reminds us that the spirit works through us all. He advocates a vision of the church that is not self-referential, claiming 'any kind of certainty or perfection for ourselves.' It is a vision about not creating or maintaining boundaries. Our goal needs to be working 'toward a community in which we can praise one another, accepting one another's gifts with joy and generosity.'

The way we work towards this community is by listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit. It is with the spirit that we can find 'new possibility and hope for religious conflicts and internal disputes.’ And the sharing of the gifts given to each of us by the Holy Spirit, in love, is ‘our highest calls as Anglicans.’ However, the 'Spirit doesn't always play nice'; she can be both a builder as well as a wrecker. Sometimes the spirit works in our lives with a 'wrecker's bar' to break down our false idols. These are the times when our images of God have to be broken in order to save us from grave misunderstanding.

Many of the things William Countryman says in the book are not new - the importance of focusing on Jesus, belonging to a communion of saints, the need for humility, the tensions between Liberal, Evangelical and Catholic groups of Anglicans. However, it's how he talks about these foundations of the Anglican faith, and the unique perspective that he brings to bear in this discussion, that makes this work of just over a hundred pages such a refreshing and engaging read.

As always, poet that he is, Countryman links us into the world of many poets from our tradition. The words and prayers of Christina Rossetti feature prominently. Countryman says that she lived in times similar to our own, 'when the church seemed threatened by indifference from without and conflict within.' Her poetry and her prayers have much to teach us.

With Rosetti as his exemplar, Countryman emphasizes that the Anglican Church as a whole should recognise the importance of the role of the Holy Spirit, rather than only scripture or reason, to assist us through these turbulent times. The spirit was present with the disciples at the very beginning, Countryman explains, involved and present to their confusion and uncertainty. And it is by means of the Incarnation that we truly come to know the spirit. We are 'caught by it; outrageous as it is, the Incarnation of Jesus turns out to be revelatory.' Amongst the many images of Jesus that Countryman lists, the two that he is most interested in here are Jesus as Priest and Jesus as Lover.

Countryman has a great ability to speak with a voice that is accessible, imaginative and direct. When Jesus is imaged as Priest, he becomes that person who can help you to 'stand in the presence of God and understand something about what you experience there.' Jesus is the Priest who stands at our side; he or she reveals 'God is love - more yet, that God is in love with you.' Throughout this work Countryman encourages the reader to deepen into the God of love. So Jesus is imaged as our truest friend, our lover, one beside whom we 'feel desire' (even if it is not sexual) to be in his company. This is because we find ourselves there to be more truly ourselves. It is a relationship where there is both a certain deep quality of desire and a fulfilment found. And by accepting this love we are drawn into a 'circle of lovers’ which inspires us to create and share, not just consume.

Countryman often addresses the reader directly, which has the quirky effect of personally involving you in what he is saying. His style invites dialogue. It also models a way of addressing the way we approach the current divisions inside the Anglican church - through dialogue and listening engagement, rather than by issuing pronouncements or lecturing. His approach is gentle and non-threatening. It also attempts to be transparent. Countryman readily concedes to feel, at present, more in tune with the Catholic group of Anglicans, although he has an ongoing ‘love affair’ with all three of these ‘internal sects.’

Though the work is short, it is carefully structured. Having looked at the importance of the spirit and the images of Jesus, having posed the hairy question (Is it really vital that the Anglican church survive?) Countryman goes on to explain that he believes the world would be poorer without it. God is not limited to any single Christian tradition, but the Anglican one holds a breadth and diversity, a 'broad-spectrum God' who communicates to us through sacrament and scripture, which comes together in public worship. After a discussion on ‘the collected writings we call the Bible’, its transmission into our tradition, and its failure on its own to complete our understanding of or relationship with God, Countryman reflects on the importance of and our communion with the saints.

The saints are not just those 'officially' whom we have considered have led role-modeling lives and now passed on. They are all those who have lived and worked among each one of us, helping shape our lives in God. They are signs of God's grace and transformation amongst us, present now, and part of a continuity of the Anglican tradition. It is at this point in his work that Countryman calls on that particular grace, humility. Real humility is 'a deep awareness that we are not God, not even when we are speaking of God, teaching about God, celebrating God.’ He warns that groups within the Communion profess to being custodians of God, but ‘the only kind of God that has custodians is an idol.'

And it is in this context that he begins to speak about each of the three major current divisions within the Anglican Church, each with it's own 'impulse to sectarianism': Liberal, Evangelical and Catholic. Each of these groups has a tendency to over-represent one aspect of the 'three legged stool' of Anglicanism: reason, tradition, scripture. Countryman carefully reflects on the valuable aspects of each group, as well as their more damaging tendencies. He is cautionary about the Liberal tendency to over-emphasise the ‘cerebral intellectual approach to faith’ as though complete in itself. Evangelicals can have the tendency to bind themselves only to scripture, refusing to recognise complexity or even inherent textual contradictions, let alone affirm historical context. Though currently feeling closest to the Catholic tradition, Countryman is cautionary about its tendency to believe in 'entitlement'. In other words, as the proprietors of tradition this group tends to see itself as the arbiters of authentic Anglicanism. Wisely and humbly, he reflects on his own ongoing spiritual journey with this group of Anglicans:

Over time, I began to realize that I had given far too much credence to a definition of tradition that overstated its clarity and unchangingness. I had assumed that the tradition had a clear answer for everything. I had not entirely left the Spirit out of the equation, but I had given her pretty firm directions that she should confine herself to channeling grace through the sacraments and leave orthodoxy to the theologians.

Countryman is passionate about humility and dialogue. Each of these strands of Anglicanism has shown him, at various stages of his life, the face of Jesus and deepened his love and knowledge of God. But each has it's own tendency to commit ‘idolatry.’ And it is at this point that Countryman reveals the seed out of which this book is written:

So truth to tell, I have an ongoing love affair with all three of the internal sects that make up Anglicanism. I have received graces from God through all three. And I get angry at all three. I suppose I get angry partly because I can see myself fully capable of committing all those errors still. But I also get angry because I see our idolatries putting this great gift from God, the Anglican Communion, at risk.

He finishes with a call for all Anglican's to listen to the spirit and join 'in the spirit's building project.' It’s a call for repentance, for a joining together in community. He offers several images of how the church can be a flourishing place: a community of large welcome; a place with deep roots; a temple of worship; a many levelled school; a banqueting house; a place where mercy and truth meet; a place where humanity participates in creation; and - this is my own favourite - a treasure house of spiritual arts.

Countryman closes the work as he opened it: not only with a bid to urge us to hope in the Holy Spirit who will lead us, and a warning that she is ‘clearing her site,’ but also with reference to a poem, by Christina Rosetti: To What Purpose This Waste. It’s a ‘dream vision’, with what Countryman perceives to be a prophetic utterance; ‘if we refuse to join in the worship offered by creation as a whole...we are without faith ourselves and will end by violating the earth.'

Beloved Father, Beloved Son: a Conversation about Faith between a Bishop and his Atheist Son

Beloved Father, Beloved Son: a Conversation about Faith between a Bishop and his Atheist Son by Graeme Rutherford and Jonathan Rutherford

A reflection by Carol O’Connor

In Michael Mayne’s work Learning to Dance he references the Scottish poet D.M.Black. In Black’s poem, ‘Kew Gardens’ he remembers his father, an eminent scientist who taught him the names of all the plants and the science behind their existence.  However, now the poet son desires ‘to sing an excess which is not so simply explainable’ and to say ‘I do not believe your science, although I believe every word of it, and intend to understand it.’ The poem ends with these words:

Thus I understand and contradict you, I, your child

who have inherited from you the passion to oppose you.

D.M.Black is given a scientific vision of the world from his father, but now, with the very same passion of his father, ‘opposes’ this viewpoint.  In Beloved Father, Beloved Son we witness a similar dynamic in a father-son relationship. But here, unlike Black’s poem, the passion for faith lies with the father, reason and science, the son.  From Graeme, Jonathan has inherited a passionate curiosity about the nature of faith, the intellectual gifts to reason and articulate his inquiries, and has always been given the space to express this and be heard. Grounded in the Christian faith since birth, now as an adult he chooses the path of atheism. And he walks this path with the same enthusiasm that his father treads the way of Anglicanism.

This is a work about the debate, we hear it so much now in the public domain, between atheism and faith.  But what we don’t hear so much is the debate in the context of a relationship: a father-son relationship. The familial relationship between Graeme and Jonathan, and the vulnerability each exposes in this discussion, sets the discussion on a very different ground from previous debates on atheism and faith. This is a vital strength of the work. For those of us who are Christians, Anglicans, this approach to the debate is helpful. It can be confronting and challenging, but it is not alienating. For the discussion here does not denigrate or diminish, but respects and affirms each position. With gentle humorous intimacy Graeme complains about the junk Jonathan has left in his garage. We all leave junk in our parent’s garage (mind you, much of it given to us by them), things once valued and reluctant to part with. Part of individuation is clearing out this junk. But not only do we inherit from our parents, we give back something, or leave something of ourselves with them when we move out. For here is the place of memory, connection, as well as letting go and the subsequent coming of a new mutuality.

Reading this book is like having the privilege of eavesdropping on a father-son conversation as they sit together in the garage of the heart and speak frankly and openly with each other. There’s a sense that past storms of conflict have died down. Like two well-experienced strategists over a chessboard they can enjoy each other’s movements of thought. Not that atheism and faith is a game, or that either person is any less passionate. But depicted here is not a contest of wills that seek a winner. Here, in the garage of the heart, checkmate has become irrelevant.

Jonathan is a ‘convinced atheist.’ He believes that ‘nothing exists beyond the known universe.’ For him, scientific method and rational argument are the best devices we have to understand the universe. God is ‘a human idea or concept and nothing more.’ Mystery has a place, but its place does not lie with faith. There are atheists in the public domain who, because of the polemical, vehement and dogmatic expression of their views, give the position of atheism a bad name.  Such an attitude can also be said of some Christians. Just as there are atheists I avoid because there is a sense that they are certain to a point of closed mindedness, so too there are Christians who would have us sent to hell for questioning belief. But in this book, this is not the case on either side.  Jonathan admits that ‘perhaps (his) atheism is based on self-deception’ and so remains ‘open to an authentic encounter with the divine.’ It doesn’t happen in the course of this book. Graeme, whose life’s investment for over fifty years has been the church and ‘keeping the rumour of God alive,’ admits that being open to Jonathan’s atheism has presented him with uncomfortable challenges and the re-examination of his own faith.

So, rather than the father-son relationship being one that devolves into personal grievances or aimless tussling, the work is carefully designed to continually open up the conversation. It reads like a Socratic dialogue.  And this is a dialogue that not only takes place between Graeme and Jonathan, but also invites response from the reader. Though a slender book, 130 pages, it’s a slow read because the reader’s mind continually engages with the questions each author brings forth.  The work is divided into eight chapters, each focusing on a particular area of difference between the position of atheists and that of Christians: how we came into existence, random suffering, importance of the Bible, meaning of the Resurrection, the place of morality and the human search for meaning. The content is challenging on both sides. For me it is too condensed. On many topics, as both Graeme and Jonathan would know, much more can be said.  For example, in the discussion on ‘suffering’, a distinction needs to be drawn between consequent human suffering from actions of evil, and that suffering experienced from tragic accidents or natural disasters. There are many different types of suffering - each with its own nuanced implications. So these chapters, challenging and thought-provoking as they are, become the seeds for a more indepth discussion. And the reader is invited not only to hear their dialogue, but to be a participant in an ongoing discussion.

In this work, faith and doubt become like two sides of the one coin. In Leaving Alexandria Richard Holloway speaks about the perils of certainty in religion and of ‘religious overconfidence.’  For him ‘authority does not prove, it pronounces, rules rather than reasons, issues fatwas.  It refuses to negotiate.’ Graeme thanks Jonathan in the epilogue for keeping him honest in his faith, from stopping him from thinking that he has preserved him from ‘pretentiously thinking that (he has) captured God with (his) theology.’ As a bishop, the desire to box God in would be all too easy. Many Anglican parents I know who have been strong opponents of gay rights or women clergy, have subsequently come to change their thinking after their child has ‘come out’ or entered ministry. Sometimes it’s only through an intimate filial relationship that true listening begins to take place. Not that Graeme is in danger here of becoming an atheist, but such a mindful dialogue veers him away from becoming removed from the realities of life around him.  And such a dynamic, open conversation confronting matters so close to his vision of life subsequently keeps him engaged with the wider community of faith that he also moves in. Paradoxically, this dialogue links Graeme in closer to his own Christian community because it deepens his humanity. Faith is something never to be taken for granted. It always needs sharpening, always prayer. And true faith is never that which is yielded in the manner of fatwas, the turning of knowledge into ammunition. 

As an Anglican, I know that reason is one of the three legs on that stool of our faith. But reason alone will never give you faith. As I read it, Jonathan in his head may never think he has faith, that he is a confirmed atheist, but the love and openness we witness in the heart of his words in this book reveal to me that he abounds in faith. As we read in the 14^th century work, The Cloud of Unknowing:

Every rational creature has the power of knowing and the power of loving.  Our Creator endows us with both, but God will forever remain incomprehensible to the knowing power.  Through loving power, however, each of us may know God.  Love is everlasting and miraculous.

“Be Thou my Vision” by the Rev’d Dr Hugh Kempster

This is an article based on a Quiet Day led by the Revd Dr Hugh Kempster at the Community of the Holy Name in March of this year.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;

I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;

Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;

Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;

Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:

Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,

Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:

Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,

High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,

May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,

Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Eochaid “Dallán” Forgaill (c. 600)

translated & versified by Mary Byrne (1880-1931)

Eochaid Forgaill, later known as St Dallán, was an early Christian Irish poet, whose poem “Bí Thusa 'mo Shúile” Mary Byrne famously translated and versified, creating one of the best loved hymns of the twentieth century: “Be Thou my Vision.” Eochaid was born c. 530, a royal descendant of one the legendary High Kings of Ireland, Colla Uais. He was a scholar, and the Liber Sanctorum that records his life says that he studied so intensely that he lost his sight as a result, hence earning him the nick-name “Dallán” which means “little blind one”. He died in 598 when marauders attacked his island monastery at Inniskeel, County Donegal, beheading him. The legend goes that they threw his head into the sea but some time later it was miraculously reunited with his body. Dallán was beatified in the eleventh century. He is also attributed with writing the Amra Coluim Cille or “Eulogy of St Columba” who is purported to have met and certainly had great respect for.

Although physically blind, St Dallán clearly had remarkable spiritual and intellectual vision that drew him into God’s future. Vision and visionary experience has long been the domain of the religious sage, the prophet and priest. As the King James Bible translates so memorably from the wisdom of the Hebrew tradition (Prov. 29:18): “where there is no vision, the people perish.” The Bible, both Old and New Testament, is filled with stories of visions and encounters with heavenly beings: Moses and the burning bush (Ex. 3); Isaiah’s vision of God in the Temple (Isa. 6); Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary (Luke 1); Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9); John’s revelation on the island of Patmos (Rev. 1).

Our theology of visions and visionary experience is rather important. Are these Biblical narratives just interesting stories from a pre-scientific past, or do they hold ongoing significance for us in today’s world? Do they tell of something real and valuable for the twenty-first century Christian? Interestingly psychology, long concerned solely with the cure of ills and ailments, is now turning its lens on other areas that were previously off-limits. Positive psychology is a rapidly growing branch of psychology founded in the 1990s by a former President of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman. Current research in this field includes, for example, Chris Peterson’s ground-breaking work on “Virtues in Action” a scientific study of character strengths such as gratitude, love, wisdom, kindness, forgiveness, hope and so on.

Pertinent to our topic today is a recent paper by Seligman and three colleagues entitled “Drawn into the future, or driven by the past” (Seligman, Railton, Baumeister & Sripada, 2012). In summarising the paper they write:

Prospection (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007), the representation of possible futures, is a ubiquitous feature of the human mind. Much psychological theory and practice, in contrast, has understood human action as determined by the past, and viewed any such teleology (selection of action in light of goals) as a violation of natural law because the future cannot act on the present . . .. Viewing behavior as “drawn into the future” is seen as a core organizing principle of animal and human behavior.

The idea of being “drawn into the future” is one that resonates with me personally. When I first left home to study Engineering at University, I spent too much time playing the guitar in a band, and not nearly enough time with my books. As a result I failed my first year exams and had to re-sit the year externally. It was one of the hardest years of my life, and in the midst of some pretty despairing times I went home to visit my parents. It was Holy Week and I went with them to a simple Tenebrae service at their church. In the middle of the prayers I had a visionary experience. In my mind’s eye I was engulfed by flames but remained unharmed. Just ahead, through the flames, I caught a glimpse of two marble lions, like those that stand on either side of the entrance to a grand house. I wept as I felt God’s loving and forgiving presence envelop me. The vision triggered a major shift in direction for my life, morally and spiritually. It started to draw me into a new future. When I went back to University I started attending church again, something I’d not done regularly since leaving home. A whole new world opened up as I went on a retreat to Taizé, discovered contemplative prayer, and started reading about people like Julian of Norwich who also had visionary experiences that drew them into a very different future than they could ever have imagined.

I invite you to reflect on the vision or visions that may have shaped your life to this point and are drawing you into the future. Of course not all visions are dramatic mystical experiences. There are many different ways that we can be drawn into God’s future. Some visions are very bodily, based on our physical needs and desires. The Biblical example of Abraham and Sarah comes to mind (Genesis 18). They entertain three strangers, and in this simple act of hospitality they meet with God who promises what they are both longing for, a child. Other visions are political. In the Palm Sunday gospel (Luke 19) we see Jesus and the disciples staging a political rally and offering a vision of hope to an oppressed people. It is well stage-managed, with a Messiah’s colt for Jesus, and the Pharisees get anxious at the jubilation of the crowd and what Roman wrath this might unleash. Get your disciples under control, they urge him, but Jesus replies: “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” It is a vision of liberation in a time of fear and censure, and a defiant act of hope in the face of death.

 

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The Early Days of the Community of the Holy Name

The Early Days of the Community of the Holy Name

Sister Elizabeth Gwen was working in the C.H.N. Archives in 2007 when she came across the following article, written by Sister Christina in 1932. The article was published in the St Peter's Eastern Hill paper 'Apostrophe', after being passed on by Sister Valmai. The events detailed here occurred during the 1890s.

It is very hard to remember facts about the beginning of Sister Esther’s work at the Mission House at 30 Little Lonsdale Street. I remember the day she arrived in Melbourne off the French steamer, coming to my mother’s house at “Cora Lynn”, Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda, brought by a friend of ours, Mrs. J. Mackay, who worked with her (Sister Esther) in the London slums with the Oxford Mission.

The Mission House at that time was run by St. Paul’s (now St. Paul’s Cathedral) parish. A Bible-woman, Mrs Davis, lived there with her two children, a growing-up son and daughter, and a Miss Mitchell worked there, not in residence. She was a niece of Sir Edward Mitchell, a very delicate woman and not very suitable for the work. She used to teach in St. Peter’s Sunday School and do district visiting and visited the Children’s Hospital &c.

The Mother (Sister Esther then) was called upon by Mrs Darlot, who lived a few doors from my mother’s house, and welcomed her, and invited her to dine with her and talk over things and later introduced her to the Council and Canon Handfield – who were very delighted to meet her but thought her very frail and fragile to undertake such hard work, but promised her all the support and loyalty that such a strong Council could give her – and well and faithfully they fulfilled that promise. They never “let her down” – Canon Handfield supported her every suggestion to the last fence, true gentleman that he was. Then trouble began.

Mrs Davis got notice to leave, and the ladies of St. Paul’s made very generous arrangements for her departure, fixing her up in a little business in South Yarra and asking her to come to the Mission House and show Sister Esther around, which she did with a very bad grace. Sister Esther was quite willing that Miss Mitchell should work with her, but after a fair trial found it, for many reasons, impossible to work with her, and as she was young and very pretty, and the poor people as well as influential people liked her, felt very angry with Sister Esther. Canon Handfield also liked Miss Mitchell, so Sister Esther had to go to him and explain the reason (a drug fiend) and although he never gave Miss Mitchell away, he stood by Sister Esther loyally defending her against all comers. After that she was looking about for some likely girls to help her, and train them for the work and as she often came to my home and I used to help a little at St. Martin’s, Hawksburn she asked me if I would come and help her for a time – I had no idea of joining her – and Sister Ellen who was doing her training at the Children’s was attracted by Miss Mitchell and Sister Esther and met her at the Mission House and she asked her to come and help her at the Mission as soon as she was through her training at the hospital. Sister Ellen was delighted to join as, from the very first, she adored Sister Esther.

I used to go to the Mission House on Sundays and help. They began having a service every Sunday evening and I used to go round and collect the people and stand at the door and give them books, &c., and show them to a seat. A Mr Pearce, the Superintendent of St Peter’s Sunday School used to take the service. He had a good singing voice and led the singing while the Mother played. It was a queer collection of derelicts we gathered in and not always a well-behaved lot.

Gradually things shaped for better order. Sister Ellen arrived and I finally made up my mind to join too, so I renounced my “glad rags” and was clothed in the queerest garments any girl was ever asked to don, a bonnet out of someone’s rag bag, an old black dress belonging to someone’s grandmother and a cloak full of grease spots, worn by the little Mother at Wantage. Thank goodness I could laugh at myself. Sister Ellen wore her nurse’s dress and was quite decent. Bye and bye I was allowed to go to Buckley & Nunn’s and got fitted for decent clothes and caps and collars and was accepted as a probationer and allowed to live at the rat-infested Mission House in a room with no door to it, only a curtain and a window looking out on a Chinaman’s yard and a stable, and on the opposite side a house of ill-fame, where they used to throw kerosene lamps at each other and squeal like sirens all night. But it was all in a day’s work. The work then began to take shape. We used to visit the Melbourne Hospital, the Eye and Ear, the Homeopathic Hospital, Carlton Refuge, and the Melbourne Gaol every Wednesday afternoon, and the factories.

We had a Busy Bee Club at the Mission House held every Tuesday. The girls from the factories used to come straight from work and we provided tea for them, for which they paid threepence each. They had meat pies, scones, bread and butter, tea and pastry. Then after tea people came and gave them instruction or entertainment. Sometimes nurses from the Children’s Hospital came and showed them how to bandage, how to make a bed or change sheets. Nurse Jane (Miss Power) from the Eye and Ear gave them lectures and Dr Hamilton Russell played the piano and Dr Guthriel (?) played too, good music. Every evening we had either a boys’ class or a girls’ class; we taught the girls sewing and the boys drawing and then they had games for an hour.

We had different ladies come to help us. A Miss Campbell and a Miss Clapperton used to teach the girls singing and action songs, and did it well. Sister Esther used to have a Mothers’ Meeting in St Mark’s Parish. On Mondays we had one at the Mission Hall at which Miss Woolley and Mrs Teague used to come and give the girls sewing ready for Thursday night, and cut out for the mothers. Afterwards Canon Handfield used to come and give the mothers a short address and Miss Woolley played a hymn.

On Tuesday mornings Canon Handfield came and gave instruction to Sister Ellen and me and set papers for us to do for the following week, and answered any questions we liked to ask him. After class we had dinner and in the afternoon went house-to-house visiting. Each had their own district to do. Often when I returned Sister Ellen and the Mother would have eight or nine people in the room attending to broken heads or sore legs or fingers, or giving them some medicine to relieve a pain – fancied or otherwise. We only had the one room for everything, running classes, curing souls, mending broken hearts and limbs, feeding the hungry – and our own dining room. We just had a screen put round to hide us from the gaze of all. It was a very happy time.

One time the rats were so bad, something had to be done. As Canon Handfield was preaching one Sunday evening we saw the ceiling sag a bit, it was only hessian and paper, and two nice plump rats fell at his feet and scampered through the hall. The dear man never turned a hair, but the women screamed and stampeded. A Mrs Dearlove, a very fat old lady cleared the seats like a young race horse. Sister Esther shoved the rats out and made for order amongst the congregation. Then we laid poison or something and after a time the smell was unbearable so we got a cottage at Sandringham belonging to some of the Mother’s relations and the Mother used to come up to town every day to see about things. Sister Ellen and I had a good time – the caretaker of the cottage was an old sailor and lived on the place and did all our cooking and hard jobs. Canon and Mrs Drought joined us and we had a very jolly time. Canon Drought was curate at St Peter’s at the time.

Many of the Trinity College students used to come and help us then at the Mission House. I can only remember the names of a few – Evelyn Snodgrass, George Pringle, Joe Tyssen, Fr. Grabham. They used to take services for us and when we had the Soup Kitchen they used to come and ladle out soup for over three hundred men. Things were in a very bad state then and men were starving. Bishop and Mrs Goe, Lady Clarke, the Misses Godfrey, Mrs Ellery, Mrs Talbot Brett, Mrs Dunbar Hooper, Miss Woolley, Mrs Darlot and many more all used to come and give us good help at the Soup Kitchen. Sister Ellen and I used to go to the Victoria Market at an unearthly hour in the morning accompanied by one or other of the Wolfe Pack with their hand-barrow and bring back meat and vegetables for the soup, and many other provisions. Mrs Wolfe used to cut up all the vegetables in the back yard and Sister Ellen had all the four big boilers boiling before six o’clock.

I’m afraid I wasn’t enthusiastic about the 4 o’clock rising, but Sister always brought me a cup of tea to waken me up. When I was up I was alright.

The men were all off the premises about 4 o’clock p.m. They came in the front door and went out the back, with policemen at each door to keep law and order as sometimes they would come round again to the front and come in again. We also had a “jug department” – the children used to come for their share, with jugs and billy cans. Big bedroom jugs they were, too, and we had about 50 dozen small loaves, or more, made a certain size, so that each could have their proper allowance.

The next thing was Rescue Work. Sister Esther asked Mrs Davis to take me round the slums and to find out about the children living there and if we could do anything. You must remember that only the ladies of benevolent societies ever visited there before we came. One night Mrs Davis took me to a midnight meeting in, or off, Little Bourke Street. Gospel Hall, I think it was called. It was the weirdest kind of place, women off the street coming in, nearly always drunk, or stupid with opium. They were given strong coffee and something to eat and every now and then a voice called out, “Will a Sister lead in a word of prayer.” I was so terrified that they would ask me, I felt inclined to cut and run, but thought better of it – and a Miss Booth got down and offered a word of prayer and afterwards handed round strong peppermint lozenges (!!) to the erring Sisters. Then we all sang hymns and someone got up and asked, “Who will sign the pledge?” I noticed a half-witted lad who frequented the Mission House, and the boys called Cyclops, as he only could see out of one eye. He was trying his hardest to get a girl up to the penitent form, a girl who spent her days in and out of Melbourne Gaol and in between got drunk, sniffed or rather took snuff or opium. Sister Esther said, “I don’t think we can work on their lives,” so I paid no more midnight visits to the Gospel Hall and saw very little of Mrs Davis after that visit. Sister Esther said we must think out a better way than that.

After nine months pretty severe training, and final examination, given to us at St Peter’s Schoolroom – pretty stiff papers they were – Sister Ellen and I were ordained Deaconesses at St Peter’s Church - a beautiful service. The choir consisted of young gentlemen from Trinity College, a big crowd of them. Sister Esther was scared that I wouldn’t get through as I had influenza and was running a temperature of 103. I don’t remember much about it, my head kept me busy. After the service many people shook hands with us, and reporters came back to the Mission House with us. I was sent straight home to my mother and stayed in bed for a week. After that people asked us to speak at drawing room meetings and Guild meetings. I dreaded that part of the work, and got out of it whenever I could, as I knew I would only make blunders. Sister Esther, always ready to help, used to say, “Don’t say much, just smile at them – you can do that all right.” That’s just as far as I ever got in that direction.

Then we talked about having a home for girls – as any girl we got hold of we had to take them to the Geelong Refuge. We went by boat to Geelong and then by bus to the refuge; it meant a whole day’s journey as the boat didn’t return until late in the evening. So Sister Esther got permission from the Council to look out for some suitable land, or house, that she thought would do. After many visits to agents and trips to look at places, we decided on Cheltenham. I think it was Mrs Aubrey Bowen who gave the money to buy the land and also helped with the building. The first building could only accommodate 10 girls; it was opened free of debt. Next the Children’s Home was thought of. From then on, you all know more about it than I do – the new Mission House, &c.

[Here Sister Christina’s paper finishes.]

What you value about your Faith

Philip Harvey

Words written in response to the invitation “What you value about your faith.”

Well, first I grew up in a world where faith was shown to me, given to me. So it’s not as though faith is just some kind of thing, a skill or talent, like musical ability or a flair for languages, that you either have or you don’t. Faith has been lived out around me my whole life in other people’s lives. So it is observable, as well as experienced personally.

One has to be careful in making easy claims for faith: often faith happens when all grounds for faith have been removed. Like hope and love, faith is still there when all reason for it may have been negated.

For me, faith is the constant proof that there is something more than current explanations for living. I find the creed, for example, and when of this mind, not a set of final absolute statements but a whole series of ways into new meaning. The statements are less doctrines than clues as to how faith can make meaning.

To say I have faith in these words of the creed is not the same as saying I believe in them. We can and do believe “ten thousand things” (as the Chinese say), but that doesn’t mean we have faith in them. I may believe in most of the discoveries of science, that doesn’t mean I have faith in science. The faith we put in the realities enunciated in the creed goes beyond explanations.

Faith is turning me again away from distraction and noise. Not only is it easy to go after the everyday sensations of life, the drive is there to pursue them to the exclusion of all else, including faith, hope, and love. This pursuit fills my days with temporary gratifications, with all the little things I shore up to distract me from truth. It is a short-lived belief in Me and the passing show, whereas faith is about the truth that is more than Me, more than throwaway explanations and hasty cures.

There is no doubt that faith remains even when reasons for faith have been attacked and even seemingly demolished. Nowadays some would call this adaptation to changed circumstances. Maybe it is. Certainly the ability to find new ways of dealing with life after catastrophe or loss or just plain indifference is a remarkable human ability. Not everyone seems to have this ability, others have it in abundance throughout their lives. Is it something we learn? Where does it come from? Simple faith in possibility is itself a gift. The faith though that (to get poetic) “moves mountains” and is (to use Christian language) the resurrection, this kind of faith might start with nothing. It is being declared as a way forward, against all the odds. Even just to have such a faith as a possibility is an extraordinarily valuable invitation, and its comes from outside ourselves, there for us to try and understand, there to take up.

At other times I ask, What is faith? In arid times, or times of stress or conflict or turmoil,  I will be left with only questions. Like, What is faith? Times of doubt, times when the only certainty is uncertainty, can cause one to question everything altogether. One can understand why others give it away, or simply see no point, or seek permanently after distraction and impermanence, materiality and power, as replacements for faith. But at such times there is only one thing really that can be done, other than seeking help where it may be found, and that is to ask after that which is unknown, which is beyond all these states of turmoil and emptiness.

It is in this state that Christ’s promises, and Christ himself, become the great value. We would give up everything for the pearl of great price. We would follow him to Jerusalem, unready for the consequences, although we think ourselves ready.

Then there is the second sense of the word ‘faith’, as religion or religions, in the way we talk about great faiths of the world. These are all to be valued. Christianity, for example, is a faith of outward show as well as inward life, a faith of history, a faith across cities and continents where its manifestations are culturally complex and ancient. As a reminder and a means to personal faith, it is of inexpressible value. As simple spectacle with a price tag, it is of no more value than the ten thousand other distractions of this world.

In his own retreat summary, Bishop Graeme Rutherford used words that helped further with my understanding of the value I put on faith. Christianity keeps on working as a whole worldview that can be put to the test, he said. This is certainly the case. By keeping to faith we see existence clearly, new ways of seeing the world are explained. Faith keeps on giving, it renews and is renewed. I was saying similar things when I wrote that faith is the constant proof that there is something more than current explanations for living. I am sometimes amazed at how that testing happens, and how faith is not wanting.

He placed emphasis on how faith teaches us to see the wonder of the world. It gives us a new way of seeing the world. This, I have to say, is something I take so much as a given about faith that I did not think to include it in my evolving page of values, when in fact it is at the core of the creative act and the motive and object of so much creative work.

But faith, he said, is a way of living involving decisions and actions. We can think about all sorts of things, can view the whole of existence from a vantage point, but life itself and faith is out there “on the road”, being and doing. Certainly this is a central truth of my life of faith. It is one I value, simply for a start, because it is give  freely and is a freedom to use wisely.

Words written in response to the invitation from Bishop Graeme Rutherford, “What you value about your faith.” This invitation came as part of a St Peter’s Eastern Hill parish retreat held this weekend at Pallotti College near Millgrove in Victoria.

Introduction to the Library

Who may use the Library at the Community of the Holy Name?

The Sisters of the Community, Oblates, Associates, and Visitors. Anyone staying at the House as a guest or on retreat is also welcome to use the Library. It is a private library.

What are the charges?

There is no fee to join the Library. Theological libraries offering such holdings usually serve those enrolled in study, or else they charge for membership. The Community generously offers free access to its Library on site, asking only that borrowers leave contact details and undertake to return or renew their books in good order when due.

Do researchers use the Library?

Yes, access is given to people researching special subjects connected with the Community, its history and interests. Special subject researchers also find important material here. For example, research work has been done in recent years on stained-glass window makers and on the history of church banners in Melbourne. Researchers are welcome to contact the Community to discuss their objectives.

What are the collection strengths?

The strongest area of the collection, and the most used, is spirituality, including Christian life, prayer, mysticism and devotional meditations. Focus is steadily on the religious life. Biography is another collection strength. As one would expect, Anglican traditions are strongly represented.

How many books?

The Library holds over twelve thousand titles.

How is the collection developed?

As well as standard acquisitions approved by Committee, the Library receives new books and gifts donated by the Sisters. The Library also receives donations from friends of the Community, often from clergy. Donations and bequests are always welcomed. Please contact the Community or the librarian if you wish to make a book donation.

Is the catalogue online?

The Library has an in-house database which maintains the catalogue, borrowing records and reserves. Some retrospective cataloguing from the card cataloguing continues. An online presence is not necessary, just phone with your enquiries.