CELEBRATING SAINT TERESA Sr Paula Moroney

This month is the start of the centenary year celebrating the 500^th anniversary of the birth of Saint Teresa of Avila. The community at the Carmelite Monastery in Kew, Melbourne held Morning Prayer on Tuesday the 21^st of October to celebrate the start of the jubilee year, with a talk afterwards given by Sr Paula Moroney. Sr Paula’s address is here reproduced, with kind permission.

               

 Celebrating an anniversary, particularly a significant 500 years, makes us recall the blessings that flow into our lives in its wake. St Teresa certainly made a mark on history and she loved to celebrate. She captivated many hearts across the centuries and presented prayer as a desirable and sure way to live in the joy of God’s unfathomable love, pointing the direction and opening a gateway to a spiritual treasury. From her own deep experience she shared the wisdom she discovered in the depths of her heart and encouraged us to do the same. With Teresa we discover the value of contemplative prayer in our lives for the Church and the world; it expands the mind and heart to make men and women bearers of light within history.    

                Today St Teresa invites us to walk her Camino – not by foot and mule cart, but a Camino in spirit, an interior journey with her, as she steps out of the pages of history and forges a path to union with God in prayer mapped out in her writings. We shall meet her as a joyous and loving person, a woman of prayer, of wisdom with the ability to understand and explain her experiences, generous and warmhearted, confident in trust, noted for her humility and truth, her honesty and candour, perceptive and vivacious with a wit that charmed and won others for God. These are the gifts she shares with us in her writings which place her among the greatest of Christian mystics. Her books are brilliant revelations of spiritual teaching, though she was a reluctant writer occupied with the daily business of her monasteries yet always pressing on to new horizons and further foundations.

                As she took up her quill pen to begin the Story of her Life words spilled over in prayer: “May God be forever blessed!  … We hope to see more clearly the great things He has done for us and praise Him for ever!”   Her life focused on God, always committed in faith, confident in love. 500 years later we celebrate with her in joyous gratitude, warmed by the ardor of her love and friendship with God which she shared with others so generously.

                The more deeply she entered into God’s love the more Teresa’s heart expanded in prayer and in her Carmelite calling her love embraced the world.  Love will not be idle, and prayer is not idle. It was urging her to reach out to others and bring them into the ambit of God’s plan by opening their lives to grace and contemplative prayer which is the deepest source of energy and compassion for a needy world.

                So began the adventures of her Foundations – a story that brings us to the present day. Her first venture was in inauspicious circumstances when she moved secretly from the large Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila, to live her Carmelite life of simplicity and poverty in a humble little house with four young Sisters in this same town. Not only did this cause an uprising of the local population and a heated   law suit, but Teresa had to return to the Incarnation and await the verdict until she was permitted to return to her four orphan sisters. Her faith prevailed and her work continued.

                It would be a challenge to set off in her company along the Camino she travelled in 16^th c. Spain by hot dusty roads, in bumpy wagons to inhospitable rooms at the end of the day but on she went to make 17 new foundations, from Avila to Medina, Toledo to Salamanca and much further in those last 20 years of her life, despite wretched health and with limited means. Convinced it was in the Divine plan she sought light in prayer and hastened on.

                To be fully human is to be at home with God who dwells within us and draws us into the mystery of love. Teresa is recognized as a teacher of mystical prayer, the first woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970 and so in this introduction we open our hearts and minds to walk with her in spirit along paths of prayer and learn more of her teaching from some of the main themes of her writings.  Fresh and inspiring as ever, these classics of spirituality are still studied for the wealth of wisdom they contain, particularly the four major works, The Life, The Way of Perfection, The Interior Castle and The Foundations.

                Each reveals rare treasures of the spiritual life and shows us how to find Christ in prayer – but be warned! Before we can arrive at the goal we must build foundations on a life of virtue.  Teresa, the realist, writes of real proven love for one another, of the detachment that makes us free and of humility which is truth. She seems to converse, spontaneously and intimately, her vital personality shining through the homely digressions. How much poorer we would be without the personal account of her spiritual journey, written in her original, inimitable prose, with interruptions and repetitions. The freshness of her creative imagination impresses lively images and authenticity.

                Time was a luxury for Teresa even in the 16^th century, but she continued to write hundreds of letters long into the night, instructing, enquiring, requesting, nursing her newly-founded communities with a mother’s concern. She was a leader who inspired others besides being the astute business woman with an eye to quality. Usually she was discerning of character though sometimes she was disappointed, as her letters make obvious.

                In the ‘Book of her Life’, an early spiritual autobiography intended for her confessors, Teresa describes her mystical experiences with clarity and frequently addresses the Divine Majesty as if in colloquy. It is reassuring for us when she explains: “Mental prayer is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time to be alone with him who we know loves us.” (Life 8:5)  This invitation is for all and no one is excluded. Grace is God’s gift of Himself, His presence in our lives. “God’s gift of All  gives meaning to the Nothing that we are.” (Ascent 11:v)  The motivating force of her life was pure and constant fidelity to her Divine Lord and this friendship animated all her relationships so that she could give others ‘the look of love they so much desire.’ Strangers became friends, for all received genuine care and consideration.

                She was absorbed in Christ, the intimate companion Teresa found as she lived the Gospels. She liked to place herself in scenes where she could be close to Him, like that other great lover, Magdalen, and this was often her habit after Communion.  She wanted to be faithful to the end and to greet him, the living and Risen One, after the Resurrection in the joy of Easter dawn. 

                She had an affection for the Samaritan woman and would imagine herself at the well asking for that living water to satisfy her thirst for love so that she would have more to give to others. (L.30:18)  The image of water fascinated her: we can think of the flowing fountains and aqueducts in Moorish palaces, cooling waters which refreshed the arid landscape of Spain.

                In one of her most famous allegories she describes the stages of prayer as four ways of watering a garden. In this case the garden is the soul and it is the Lord who is cultivating a beautiful creation, where seeds of virtues are planted and tended for His pleasure. There are four different ways to water this garden. Water can be drawn up from a well laboriously or it may be brought by means of a water wheel and irrigation channel with less effort. It may flow from a river or stream more plentifully or, best of all, the rain falls and soaks the ground without any labor of ours and the garden flourishes.

                In the early stages of the spiritual life one must apply oneself to become recollected. We tire easily but with ‘determined determination’ must persevere until the season when the gardener is ready for new growth. Where the streams flow there is great reward until eventually the rain falls abundantly and freely. The Prayer of Quiet leads to the Prayer of Union. It is sheer grace we cannot earn but which brings forth fruit and flowers to the delight of all.  (Life Ch 11-22)

                She loved to pray the Our Father, given to us by Our Lord Himself. In the Way of Perfection she advises on how to proceed gently, remaining in the Lord’s company, praying slowly over the words and pondering them as we are moved. Thus vocal prayer leads to contemplation. (WP Ch 27-37)  She herself had extraordinary experiences which are not given to everyone and there was an intensity about her spirit, a quality often found in those who must go ahead and lead others.

                Towards the end of her life after 15 intensive years of travelling and setting up foundations, she found herself back in Toledo in 1577. Time was running out and Fr Gracian requested her to write more about the ways God leads souls since the earlier Book of her Life was not accessible while it was under examination by the inquisition, wary of holy women who might stray from straight paths. Remember it was the period of the Council of Trent and Spain under Philip 11 took up the task of reinforcing the Church and unifying the Catholic kingdom. (The Book was nevertheless declared to be free of errors)  The fact that she was a woman, not an educated theologian, caused suspicion, but Teresa had learned from life’s experiences and her observations are so acute that she saw beyond narrow walls to authentic and lasting values.

                So came about her masterpiece, the “Interior Castle”, written in great haste between journeys, interrupted for several months. Of all her works it is the most coherent and organized. Teresa encourages us to explore the richness of our own interior depths which she compares to a magnificent diamond or crystal of many facets, reflecting light and inexhaustible wonders. The soul is like a castle of many rooms which fascinate and draw us inwards, where we are free to wander at will. The further we go the more we discover. The Spanish word, ‘moranas’, is more comfortable than mansion, which suggests grandeur and pretentious wealth. It seems that St Teresa had in mind the 14^th chapter of St John’s Gospel: “There are many rooms in my Father’s house” and “All who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we shall come to them and make our home (our dwelling) with them.” (Jn 14: 2, 24)  As we read further we recognize ourselves and patterns of behavior which help or hinder progress for Teresa was a realist with a practical genius, for all her mystical gifts. For us, God, the Supreme Being and most profound mystery, has a name. We know him in Jesus, his Incarnate Word, the Beloved who shows us the Father’s love and gives us His Spirit.  In fact God lives within us unbounded by space and time; as St Paul taught: “In him we live and move and have our being.”  (Acts 17:28)

                When we come to the Third Dwelling there is more security and in the Fourth the Lord takes over more of the work as we are drawn to be more still and silent. Gradually a transformation is taking place and the soul enters into more delicate awareness of its relationship and encounter with the other. “We can suffer any disquiet,” she says, “if we find peace within” (IC iv, 1,12)

                She is always full of surprises:-  

                One of Teresa’s most brilliant illustrations appears in the Fifth Dwelling.  She thinks of the silkworm growing from a minute seed, (the egg), feeding on the mulberry leaves and then spinning for itself a cocoon where it will enclose itself and die. Eventually it will emerge, a small fragile butterfly with wings and now it can fly. It has newfound freedom and beauty. A wondrous transformation has taken place. Teresa likens this to our dying to self and rising with Christ, as we live the Paschal mystery through suffering to the glory of Resurrection. Can you believe it? Just look at creation.

                The culmination of the mystical journey upon reaching the Seventh Dwelling is Spiritual Marriage when the soul is totally at one with the Beloved sealed in a permanent union. As rain falling into the river becomes that river or the stream flowing into the sea or light streaming into a room from separate windows cannot be separated. Truth enlightens all and the three persons of the Trinity communicate love and peace in silent embrace.  God is both Noun and Verb.

                What is more, to have participation in the life and love of the Trinity means that one can share that life with others without it diminishing in any degree, for those who draw near to God do not have to withdraw from real life but rather become truly close to others. The harmony within opens the person to compassion and unselfishness and enables that one to grow as a person, being totally at peace with itself and the world. ‘This is the reason for prayer…the birth always of good works…’ (IC VII 4:15)  Let us not underestimate the influence we have on each other because it is in the here and now that God becomes present to us. Our companions on the same journey might even be other little Thereses, unrecognized and unappreciated!    Indeed both Teresa and Therese discovered that “The Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our works as at the love with which they are done.” (IC VII 4:15)  Above all she had a relationship with Christ that enabled her to overcome obstacles and accomplish so much. Christ is her ‘Living Book’, the source of her generous life of love. 

Teresa, that ‘undaunted daughter of desires,’ ever open to God’s stirring in the human heart, was transformed with sanctity and the radiance of her intimate friendship with God. This is ultimately the essence of her lasting attraction. This is our deepest desire too, yet it is a rare gift to find someone who can communicate it with Teresa’s sincerity and candor.

As we celebrate and rejoice in the blessings that have come to us personally and the far-reaching graces across the centuries through the fidelity of this great friend of God, we can go forward in confidence knowing that Our Incarnate Lord has come to meet us. When we dare to go beyond our own narrow boundaries true love flourishes and light shines, revealed in the Gospels when we listen attentively and ponder them faithfully.

 Pope Francis gave us the Gospel of Joy, ‘Evangelium Gaudii’ so that we encounter Christ in a joy that frees and illuminates us. St Teresa shows us how we can live in that joy which enriches our lives and inspires heroism to overcome obstacles, surmount barriers and experience  supernatural  grace capable of transforming the whole being. The Carmelite Way, St Teresa’s Way, gives everyone the encouragement to cultivate the contemplative dimension which holds the promise of the past, the passion for the present and the courage to look to the future, as Pope Francis has suggested. (cf. EG 199 & Homily 16.12.13) Thus we return to our Carmelite tradition and see Love as “Allegiance to Jesus Christ”, and taking up Teresa’s desires, treasure the beauty of intimate friendship with the One who loves us into being and transforms our lives to be prophets of hope in our 21^st century.  Teresa beckons - her Camino leads us to live love to the full and carry it to our world.

       

Divine Landscapes: The Writings of Ronald Blythe

Susan Southall

Picture of Ronald Blythe at home,  via the Daily Telegraph (London)

“In the Village Church where I often preach there are two kinds of window, that filled with clear glass and that with painted glass. In heavenly terms both have to be looked through, not at. Through the clear glass we glimpse nature — a cloud, a yew, a passing bird. Through coloured glass we glimpse other worlds than this.”

Spiritual Reading Group met in the Carmelite Library on Tuesday 21^st October, where Susan Southall gave this introductory paper on Ronald Blythe, who is considered to be England’s finest country writer. He is a cathedral canon, lay reader, and preacher. He belongs to a tradition which sees the divine hand in a landscape filled with nature, history, literature and art. He calls himself ‘a listener and a watcher’: his unique style curves this way and that, relaxed and exact, both dreaming and real. Prayer, he says, is part of the pattern of life. Here is Susan’s opening paper, with quotes from some of Blythe’s work.

Early in 1947, Ronald Blythe was living near Aldeburgh, in a rented house found for him by the woman he describes as his muse: Christine, wife of the painter John Nash. Christine Nash had met Blythe while he was working in Colchester Library as a reference librarian, but he was leaving his job to undertake a career change while still in his twenties. John and Christine Nash became patrons to Blythe, who was determined, in his shy and quiet way, to become a writer.

On this snowy day, Blythe saw in the street E.M. Forster, who was staying in Benjamin Britten’s house for the Aldeburgh Festival. When Blythe got home, there was note from Forster inviting him to Britten’s place and when he got there, he found the living room covered in paper, pages spread over every available surface. Forster was writing a biography, and he had no idea how to construct an index. This was simple for Blythe, who made quick work of the pages, and that was his introduction to working at the Aldeburgh Festival.

Ronald Blythe is in his 93rd year now, in 2014. In 2013 he published the memoir of his association with the Festival, the artists, painters and musicians he knew at that time, for the centenary of Britten’s birth, and this book was received with much acclaim. A number of his books are collated from his weekly essays for Church Times, his diary entries, and sermons he preaches in his parish church: three of them! His latest volume records some 33 published works, most of them non-fiction, though he has written three novels and a book of short stories. He views himself as an essayist and poet, and the book that brought him early and lasting success is a longer work, Akenfield.

Akenfield (1969) gives voices to a vanished way of life, the agricultural world of rural villages that was passing away by the 1950’s. It was a world that revolved around the church in its daily, weekly and seasonal ceremonies. The world of The Book of Common Prayer. The artisans and farm workers Blythe interviewed lived in deep poverty, but they held a strong spiritual connection to the land. Akenfield was made into a film by Peter Hall, (with music by Michael Tippett, as Britten was too ill to contribute), and it has now become a classic.

The Blythe family has lived in Suffolk for centuries, near to the river of that name. Ronald Blythe has spent most of his time in East Anglia, in the house he inherited from John and Christine Nash, called Bottengoms Farm. It is by observing the passage of seasons through the surrounding countryside, the birds, plants, animals and weather, and the ritual year of the church, that Blythe gives expression to his spirituality.

Introducing Wormingford, the place where his farm is located, Blythe first says that it was the home of John Constable’s people. Blythe is said to write landscapes — and part of the landscape is the inhabitants — through history, literature and art. History isn’t linear but depth, layer after layer, over the landscape. He’s president of the John Clare Society, and has written about George Crabbe, the realist poet- parson, all these references slipping into the landscape and the seascape around him. In an essay about the sea, he says:

“There is Benjamin Britten's house. Sea-trained by his Lowestoft origins, he would have found the interior silences of my native scene sterile, maybe. No thud and crash of water, no pitiless distances, and an absence of drama. No glitter to life. What was sometimes wearying to me was reviving to him. George Crabbe, the great realist poet, heard the Aldeburgh sea calling to him wherever he went. He would make long journeys to it, just to breathe it in. His snowy bust looks up at Britten's memorial window in Aldeburgh church, and away from congregations.

“The Revd George Crabbe was given a hard time when he re- turned to Aldeburgh as a curate. But the mighty sea solaced him, and while he could be said to have taken his revenge in The Borough, an exposé of a poem if ever there was one, in his head the sea put all human behaviour in its place. And so here it is once more, diminishing, yet somehow praising us mortals.

“There are no oceans in the King James Bible, only seas, and these abundantly. Awe accompanies the many references to them. It was St Paul who used the word "peril" in relation to them. Most scriptural references show humanity acknowledging the sea's supremacy. Those who wrote them would not have heard of the Pacific or the Atlantic. They would have seen them as roads, and the Gospels have a marine flavour to them.”

This shows a little about the way Blythe works. He begins with something autobiographical, his own experience, with its interior silences, which immediately brings to mind Crabbe, whose poem The Borough inspired Britten to write his opera Peter Grimes. And from there he goes directly to the church, and its stained glass windows. And from there to the sea, the way humanity is put in its place. And from there to the King James Bible, and how the sea was anciently perceived: with awe. And then to the Gospels, and the voyages of Paul, who travelled on sea roads bringing the church to the world. So the church is central to his spirituality: it means he doesn’t have to be complicated about it. He isn’t going to be a person who says “”I’m spiritual but not religious.” He doesn’t even think he is particularly religious, either. And yet he is a churchman.

Blythe was once invited to become a priest, but he pointed out that he was far too quietly disposed ever to be able to run a parish. He spends hours, he says, daydreaming. He says he’s a Reader who happens to be a writer, and so there’s this deep well of sensibility to draw on. The oration for his honorary doctorate from the University of Essex says: he talks of “the living, the departed, the abundance, the dearth, the planets, the prayers, the holiness of things.”

An editorial from The Guardian for Blythe’s 90th birthday in 2012 notes that “tucked away on the back page of the Church Times each week is one of the most elegant and thoughtful columns in British journalism. Word from Wormingford mixes acute, elegiac rural observation with a strand of English mystical thinking that often seems to reach back to its 17th-century roots.”

From Word from Wormingford:               

“Reading has always been my way to the Way, always my way of knowing anything. I read the poet John Clare for his authoritative village sounds. One has only to open a page of him to hear every day of that Northamptonshire year, the cries, the grind, the song, the humanity, the creatures… I tell the flock about St. Thomas, that so-like-us man, who demanded physical proof of a spiritual reality. A week before him there was St. John of the Cross, Spain’s Traherne, with his daring Christian imagery, and who found that the very waiting for Christ enchanted the landscape, making the beautiful river country at Baeza distractingly lovely. For this writer scenery became the physical proof of his Lord. I have to make the best of outdoors on lessening days.” (17)

He’s telling us about his spirituality by telling us about other people’s spirituality. A domestic scene from Village Hours (2012):

“Forget the economy: the big question is: can I say at St. Andrew’s this Sunday what I said at SS Peter and Paul last Sunday? Would this be sloth, or a fair distribution of genius? The white cat sits in the window, grumbling at green woodpeckers devouring Waitrose chicken strips. It really is the limit.

“The day is grey and sweet. The wood is full of snowdrops. The study is piled with books. Epiphany is fading into Before Lent. There isn’t a sound except little animal-grousings…

“I have an ancient ash on which ivy has created or founded a kind of leaf city for countless creatures. It feeds on pond water, and generously sheds dead boughs for kindling. It has been here for ever: since 1900, say. It sings, along with its birds.”

There’s just this simple security. He writes: “A Medieval King would keep his Christmas at Woodstock or Westminster, or wherever he happened to be.  And God keeps us, wherever we happen to be.” He tells about the Christmas festivities when James I saw the play Twelfth Night, and Lancelot Andrewes was the preacher. And Andrewes forgot his lines. He says, “Nobody was more understanding than James, for whom the word ‘baby’ was so wonderful that he went on calling his son and lover this when they were in their 20’s, signing them ‘Your Dad and Gossip’. Seated below the pulpit, he heard Bishop Andrewes approaching the stable on Christmas morning with his theology pat, his severe face all set for the great occasion, his notes crackling in his hand.  And then — a newborn boy. The Saviour of mankind. The preaching went out of his voice, King and court went silent. Not a sound in the freezing chapel. But Andrewes was not in it; he was in Bethlehem. ‘An infant —the infant Word— the Word without a word— the eternal Word not able to speak a word— a wonder sure…” And Blythe says, “One should long ago have been surfeited with all this. How does it all stay so fresh? How do babies cause one to be at a loss for words? How strange it all is.”

All words quoted here are copyright Ronald Blythe. The Carmelite Library has a good and growing collection of his writings.

See also his blogspot:   wormingford.blogspot.com.au

Pamela Carswell writes to Philip Harvey in December 1993

Pamela Carswell was already into retirement when called upon by the librarian of the Joint Theological Library (today the Dalton McCaughey Library), Dr Lawrence McIntosh, to work there on rare books and cataloguing. Pamela, Lawrence, and I were for many years editors of the Australasian Religion Index (ARI), something we did inside library time over maybe two to four days, depending on the load of indexing received, and its complexity. Complexity of some kind or other appears to be at the forefront of Pam’s mind when she typed this letter in December 1993. The letter itself surfaced during a clean-out of old stuff at home over the weekend. Why she wrote rather than just told me may be because I was on leave and she needed to unload her troubles long distance. Those were the days when we still unloaded and before we started uploading or downloading. ARI indexers and other readers are here given a rare glimpse into the backroom thoughts of the ‘razor-sharp’ mind of Pamela Carswell. ‘Razor-sharp’ was a term she herself used whenever referring to someone of high intellect, usually with her tongue in her cheek. The context is that Pamela has taken home the draft printout of Volume 5 for correction. Footnotes follow the letter.

Saturday (11 Dec. 93)

Dear Philip –

                      Have done 900/971ths of ARI vol. 5, which I promised LDM (1) to bring up on Thursday. I’m becoming increasingly exasperated with that CD-ROM thing. I mentioned Missions – Directories, which is perfectly good LC but simply not permitted by the Thesaurus (2), either by way of the standard subheadings or by analogy with some other entry in the body of the text. The CD has it, many times over. Similarly, while the Thesaurus has Christians – Relations – Jews see Jews – Relations – Christians, the CD allows both – which again I imagine is LC practice and probably an LC imperative. The Thesaurus seems so often to go out of its way to differ from LCSH, and yet the RIO indexers are happily using both, including LC subdivisions.

As for Wagga – it’s not just their computer, it’s them. (3) Surely the computer can just as easily file Women’s Christian Temperance Union after Women, Catholic as before it? Or Women, Catholic before Women missionaries as after it? The Thesaurus follows the ALA filing rules – why should Wagga set up a system of its own? Quite apart from the computer’s inability to recognise articles, prepositions and conjunctions most of the time – most of the time, not always – the filing is quite perversely different from that in the Thesaurus (or in any card catalogue I’ve seen), e.g. Freedom (Theology), Freedom of speech, Freedom, Religious, (an instance, note, where the computer has decided to recognise the ‘of’ – you see, it can do it if it wants to). Just noticed another: Women (Theology) – Biblical teaching followed by Women – Bibliography.

Then of course there are the plain blues such as the one I showed you, where Paul VI is weaving in and out of all the Paul the Apostles.

I thought that’s one of the things computers were miraculously good at, putting things in whatever order they’re told to. Anyway, I’ve rather changed my mind about those see refs., I don’t think Wagga could cope with the interfiling of them.

I’m glad the entry-by-entry, descriptor-by-descriptor checking and checking against the index is almost through. The first 4 vols. weren’t so bad but with this one about a third of the things I queried were on the CD, so it seems a waste of time to check the descriptors against anything else. Tho’ I scored one or two – e.g. Depressions – 1929 – Australia (Depressions, Economic … and that one didn’t stop at 1929), plus Mysticism - Jewish [ - Judaism] and Cambodia [Kampuchea since 1976] and the odd misprint and blind ref. Apart, that is, from the quick-flip-through list LDM asked for a couple of weeks ago, which he checked against the wretched CD thing – seems most were OK, including to my chagrin Christians – Relations – Jews, and Missions – Directories.

Kay and Michael Cole (4) had lunch here yesterday – nice, easy guests and never before have I had such success with a pud – a chocolate mousse, one whose ease and foolproofness in making is entirely due to the appalling richness of the ingredients, no beating, no separating of eggs, no food-processing, just all casually stirred together. I managed to pile the recipe for six into two individual dishes (naturally I couldn’t eat it) and expected them to give up about a third of the way through. I watched fascinated as they didn’t even slacken speed till they got to the dish-scraping stage. I think had they been alone they would have gone on to the dish-licking stage. I was gratified almost to the point of tears and when they fell to their knees and pleaded for the recipe it was very nice to be able to produce a photocopy on the spot. I see no reason now why I should go to the bother of cooking anything else when I ask people for lunch.

Totally unexpected Xmas note from Janet yesterday, I’m glad she hasn’t despaired of my lack of rapport with Esmeralda. (5) But she rather suggested by delicate implication that by way of contrast with her life-affirming paganism (pagan is the word she used) I’m to be classed with the monkish flagellants of the Middle Ages, turning their flayed backs on the delights of this world for the joys of the world to come. I suppose I’ve brought it on myself – who could endure the Pritikin diet were it not for pie in the sky? (6) But I’ll have something to say about that (delicately phrased) as soon as I’ve finished that dratted ARI (only 71 entries to go). I’m really glad she’s resumed contact.

Almost came to blows with my Croatian friend (the Einstein of Rosanna) about the word ‘strive’. (7) Very alarming, she now thinks we discuss these things on equal terms. She showed me a job application letter she was particularly proud of, in which she expressed her admiration for the strive displayed by the firm with whom she was seeking employment, the strive for good employer-employee relations. ‘Striving’, I said. ‘Strive’ is not a noun. ‘But I like the word ‘strive’,’ said Debbie. ‘It is a good strong word.’. ‘Yes, it’s a good strong verb’, I said, ‘but tho’ you can admire someone’s drive or dive you can’t admire their strive. It’s not good English.’ ‘But I have seen this word used just like that, many times!’ ‘Look, Debbie, IT IS NOT GOOD ENGLISH. You mustn’t use it in your job application!’ We fair glared at each other. And do you know I woke in the night and almost convinced myself that these days it’s quite acceptable to say things like ‘You know, the sheer strive of the man is undeniable’ and ‘What would I do for a tenth of his strive?’ Next day – when I knew she would have put this thing through their laser printer – I said I hoped she’d amended strive to striving or thought of another word, and she grinned and said she had. But next time - ?

Sunday

Since I last addressed you, the knob on the cold water tap on the bathroom basin disintegrated in my hand so that I couldn’t turn it on or off without savage use of the massive pair of pliers I picked up in the street some years ago, and only then with very great difficulty. Brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink didn’t appeal and anyway I felt as outraged as if one of my legs had dropped off while out shopping so all indexing/letter-writing/eating/calm thought ceased till things got back to normal. It is now less than six hours since the crisis broke and there is now a new and better knob on the cold water tap in the bathroom basin and – just as a bonus – a new and better washer too. All for $10, which is about the price of the knob and washer. It’s not that I have a friend who is a plumber, but a plumber who is a friend – even on a Sunday. And  I’ve finished ARI vol. 5. I’m sure that Lawrence will see the point of this particular objection, nor even that you will – but I don’t like these descriptors for one of the articles: 1. Religion, Primitive - Mangaia (Cook Islands). 2. Mangaia (Cook Islands) – Religion. I mean, I don't like the first one, surely it's a value judgement? Why not just 1. Religion, Primitive. 2. Mangaia (Cook Islands) - Religion ...? I mention this in case it comes up for discussion but I feel LDM is deciding all these things himself with the help of Pope CD-ROM and the only thing we’ll perhaps be discussing is the filing problem. Anyway, I’m sick of ARI and even sick of trying to sever Timor Timur from Indonesia, it’s a lost cause. (8)  The main thing is I can turn the cold water on in the bathroom and turn it off again, whenever I like.

love – Pam

FOOTNOTES

(1)   Dr Lawrence McIntosh, librarian of the Joint Theological Library (now Dalton McCaughey Library) in Parkville, Victoria, 1982-1996.

(2)   Religion Index Thesaurus, the subject list of descriptors of Religion Index One (RIO) used for indexing ARI, loosely based on Library of Congress Subject Headings (LC or LCSH) but with its own subject-specific variations and subheading structure.

(3)   ARI was at that time published by the Library Studies department of Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, where data input took place. I hasten to say that Pamela is here engaging in ‘razor-sharp’ annoyance and intends no harm of anyone living or dead. Her subsequent complaints are directed at technology and not humans.

(4)   Kay Cole was librarian of Corpus Christi College Library in Clayton, since shifted to Victoria Parade, East Melbourne and renamed The Mannix Library.

(5)   A mutual friend who had, at the time, adopted the unusual name of Esmeralda and expected her friends to call her by the same.

(6)   Janet seems to have assumed that Pamela was still a practising Roman Catholic.

(7)   Pamela lived in the north-eastern suburb of Rosanna. Debbie was one of her neighbours, recently arrived from the Balkans.

(8)   A major bone of contention inside editorial at the time was the independent status of East Timor. Pamela argued for its independence while consensus held that, whatever one’s political beliefs, Timor was part of Indonesia. After self-determination at the turn of the century the country became known as Timor-Leste.

Australian Poetry and Spirituality

Philip Harvey

Michael McGirr and I gave the final session of Poetry for the Soul on Wednesday evening. This year’s subject was Australian Spirituality, so my approach was to find fifteen poems that spoke, in one way or another, of those large-meaning words: Australia, Poetry, Spirituality. My thought was to follow the air currents across the continent west-east, which is about as much structure as necessary. One could spend a whole day or lifetime following this method of reading Australian poetry, but the time limit was 50 minutes. In the end I only had time to read eleven of the fifteen poems, given there was commentary as well, still here is the sequence with three-sentence remarks on each poem.

THE INDIAN OCEAN

Bound for South Australia

Traditional shanty

The vessels crossing the southern oceans in the 19^th century carried with them the divided inheritance of European Christianity: Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, and others. They also carried the Enlightenment project, which was both hostile towards and questioning of that inheritance, materialist and blindly faithful to scientific worldviews. It is this rich mix of spiritualities that informs to this day even the most seemingly non-religious poetry written by the European Australians.

PERTH

Day

Philip Salom

His quote is Sigmund Freud (“The best remedy for the mind is love and work”) while the poem itself appears to argue for acceptance of the body and the mind. Is the life-force faith, or faith the life-force? While the image of the body as a hive fills up with life, the poems fills up with questions.

GREAT SOUTHERN REGION & CRANBROOK

Untitled

Archie Weller

We ask, by contrast with Salom’s world, what faith means in this picture of local Indigenous society, where young men are “drunken stumbling warriors.” Connection with the natural world of the “flashing silver king” happens at the same time as the reality of loss and dispossession. A busted old couch in the open serves as throne for the elder who knows he rules this challenging scene.

ALICE SPRINGS

The Urumbula Song

Aranda

Europeans love to play the game of Top Ten Everything, including Top Ten Poets, persisting in doing this against their own better nature. But who are the greatest Australian poets when we have no names before 1788? This awesome cosmic ritual song of fertility is a communal poem, known by all, with no special claims on its authorship.

THE COORONG

The Song of Hungarrda

David Unaipon

It gives us heart to know we now have two poets on our bank notes. Unaipon felt it required to employ ‘thine’, ‘thy’ &c. for his magnificent poem about the “Bright, consuming Spirit”, which makes it sound fixed in Edwardian time while making effortful apostrophes to translate the untranslatable language of the Coorong original. We ponder with some wonder the magnitude of the original, however it may run.

HOBART

Night Thoughts

Gwen Harwood

Humour is never far away in this poet’s writing, as here where she plays out the role of a psalmist trying to get at the meaning of hell. It is a curiously Tasmanian poem, locked into its sense of no escape while dealing with the tests of self and world. We can hear Harwood reciting this equally well with a theatrical malign cackle in her voice during playtime, or the very real pleading of a vestry member at the Sunday lectern.

MELBOURNE

Life-Cycle

Bruce Dawe

The cleverest aspect of this poem is how the poet takes for granted that his readers understand all the religious language upon which the humour and meaning of the poem rely. Melburnians enjoy calling their football religion, though I believe that football culture actually and more accurately reflects the commercial and mercantile changes of the city, especially given that the game is run by businessmen, not bishops. The undying allegiance to one club is highly reminiscent of bygone Melbourne faithfulness to a particular denomination, so that even though the Uniting Church has existed since 1977 there are still people today who will tell you they are first and last Methodists, even if they don’t go to church.

MELBOURNE

Skins

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

A poet of deceptive simplicity, whose main questions and concerns hover around the edges of his hymns of praise. Humanism will always come back into fashion while there are humans interested in humanness and in things that are more than skin-deep. Everything described in the poem, inside and outside the skin, is home for this poet, we are left sensing.

MELBOURNE

Emmaus Vic 3130

Aileen Kelly

While we shouldn’t expect Mary Magdalene to show up in Blackburn, another part of us asks, why not? Or rather, Blackburn is as good a place as any to meet the revelation unawares and be made thus fully aware. There is even something quirkily biblical about the bewildered way the poet says, “So maybe I’ll see you around?”  

CANBERRA

My Mother’s God

Geoff Page

The hardness and determination in this portrait of a certain kind of Protestant reminds us of the concept of Australian old-fashioned values, such that we wonder if this is not where it all came from. A Judaic ethic and Calvinist belief in predestination go hand in hand with a severe materialism. We are almost grateful to move on into the community-minded happiness of the next poem.

GOULBURN

Patrick Joseph Hartigan (‘John O’Brien’)

Said Hanrahan

This is a useful poem to analyse in the context of Australian attitudes toward climate change. While we laugh at the doomsayer at the church door, we each of us have some Hanrahan inside us and ponder if he is a pragmatist, a pessimist, or a real Cassandra. The poet’s detail and voice is masterful as he describes the movements of conversation and manners.

EASTERN AUSTRALIA

Robert Harris

The Cloud Passes Over

Somewhere in Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, somewhere. The poet builds up a subtle list of related landscapes only then at a crucial moment to put it all down to one thing. We listen attentively for the psalmist to claim the Lord’s attributes.

SYDNEY

Our Lady’s Birthday

Francis Webb

By contrast, here is a poet who names out of the turmoil of his mind in language of painful analogy, the same difficult recognitions. The violence and energy of the experience exists in contrast to the calm of the library where, we are left to surmise, the poet is making up his poem. Intensity must find some release, whether in prayer or poem making, and here in both.

BUNYAH

Poetry and Religion

Les Murray

This is not dogma, but the poet is very confident of the orthodoxy of his assertions. Poets can be known for a line or a word and this poet is remembered for ‘sprawl’, an excellent self-descriptive word with an ‘a’ to start with in the middle and everything else spreading out around it in all directions. This poem is the gentle rejoinder to fundamentalist secularists who want religion banned from the Earth, just because they don’t like it.

MOUNT TAMBOURINE

To Hafiz of Shiraz

Judith Wright

A hafiz is someone in Islam who can recite the entire Qu’ran, a thought worth considering during an evening of poetry reading from paper and in a world where jihadists would rather bomb Shiraz than learn anything from its Sufi poets. Imagine the poet sitting up on the mountain talking to this wonderful individual about the uniqueness of everything in our world. She talks about ‘everything’ in terms of its special existence, not its type or number, which is the lesson she is telling Hafiz that he has taught her, across centuries.