I lived like that for about 50 years. When my beautiful little son was brain-damaged by his polio vaccine, I quickly put away my tears and became even busier than usual. Because I felt that being a 24-hour carer limited my life, I did two matriculation subjects by correspondence. I also joined Lifeline and went on the phones in the middle of the night at least once a month.
When my son entered a facility after 16 years of my care, I felt as though the world was mine and I rushed into endless activity. I began theological studies to prepare for ordination. What I didn’t face was that, although I felt enriched and satisfied by all this, deep within I was highly vulnerable.
I began my ministry with the Pitt Street Uniting Church in the centre of Sydney, and found that the work was endless. After a while, exhausted, I went out to St. Mary’s Towers to the monastery of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart on silent retreat.
My retreat director told me to spend the first day pondering, “What is the deepest desire of my heart?” and just observing things close to me there. I sat in silence beside a river. After a while, it felt as though Christ was right beside me saying, “Peace be with you.” I didn’t know how to respond. Peace was something I offered to others, not to myself.
This Christ seemed to sit gently with me. I sat and cried until I could cry no more, although I didn’t really know why. Partly I was weeping because I couldn’t even connect with the deepest desire of my heart. Then I looked and saw the wind moving a leaf. I saw all sorts of tiny creatures around in the grass and the sun on a ripple of water. I heard a God who said, “If you stop, you will see all my little blessings around you.” I did that for a day, and felt the wonder of all the small gifts, which I never normally stopped to receive.
The next day, I looked into my soul and felt with alarm that everywhere I looked there were hard questions. But it felt as though my friend Jesus was in among them with wounded hands and side, just staying there, not afraid of them or me.
For the first time, I discovered that when I had the courage to stop and stay with myself and my God, to feel my own fear and pain and tiredness, I would be truly renewed. It wasn’t that I had all the answers to my hard questions. It was rather that I knew I could ask them and stay with them.
Later on, I realised that there are different spiritualities that intersect with different ways of renewing ourselves – in silence or sound, in music or art, by the sea or on a mountain, in movement or stillness, in city or countryside.
I felt that I needed to lead my Pitt Street congregation with strength and courage. Again, I tried to call upon my inner resilience, even though I was being stalked and attacked by a Neo-Nazi group because of the stands for justice our church was making. Then one day, I could not keep going. I came to prepare my weekly homily and I couldn’t do it. Maybe in answer to my prayers, the layperson who was to lead the liturgy the next day rang and asked if I was OK. I wept over the phone and she came around.
When I entered the pulpit the next day, I told the congregation that I was afraid and had no more courage left. They gathered around me and I learned that resilience and survival was not founded upon personal courage but on shared vulnerability. It is also about being humble enough to call upon others.
