The tradesman who cleared six months of leaf litter from our roof gutters tells me that I’m living in a fire trap. Something that I already knew, but not what I wanted to hear. Living among gum trees is beautiful, but each year as summer begins to take hold, I wonder if this will be our year of the bushfire. Like the majority of residents I will live through the fire season with an undercurrent of fear, masked by bravado. When the CFA advises evacuation all the talk about memorabilia and favourite belongings being replaceable feels a bit hollow.
People like me who choose to live in Warrandyte, Wurundjeri land, are always a guest of that land. Quirky, individualistic houses overshadowed by tall, skinny eucalypts are dotted through the ranges. Away from the Yarra River flats the soil is rocky and only offers its hospitality to plants that have always found a home there. There’s a whiff of otherness about it, an indifference to our need for safety and security, and it’s where I live.
What turns a house into a home? Maybe it’s the door – front, back, side door, even a two- night -stay hotel apartment door. Standing there, key in hand or ready to turn the knob, a split second, then step inside- and you’re home, somewhere you belong. I know it’s a cliché, but ‘there’s no place like home’. That is unless you can’t afford to buy or rent one.
So what happens if you’re homeless? Sleeping in the car is no substitute, staying with a friend or relation can get difficult if it lasts too long, temporary lodging in a motel is impersonal. Children’s schooling is interrupted and jobs are lost. This is happening in our own country.
Turn on the news, any channel. Month after month we have seen houses in the Ukraine, houses that have sheltered families for generations, reduced to roofless wrecks, big city apartment blocks, home to young families in what were once fast-growing cities, tumbling after a rocket strike. Just this week thousands of families in the Gaza Strip were deliberately made homeless, whole families murdered in what they had once considered the safety of their home. So much suffering, so many lost children, thousands upon thousands of lives turned upside down – for what reasons?
As a nation we voted No in the referendum. I look back to the horror stories of our First Nation people who lost land, children and their dignity, everything that had been home to them for 60,000 years. We’ve made their land, our land, but at what cost to the original inhabitants and their successors.
Taking all this on board can lead to compassion fatigue. Jesus experienced it too. He sometimes took a break to re-charge his spiritual batteries, time to touch into God, a breathing space that gave him the energy to heal the sick and broken, to be a front man for those who yearned for justice. So much need, so many places where the healing power of God is needed.
After a one-night-too-many 7 pm News I looked up Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart to see what she had to say about compassion. “Compassion is the daily practice of recognising and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.”
Compassion expands the heart and recognises that each in our own way have known loss, loneliness, pain and sorrow, sometimes homelessness or home-sickness as well. Homilies and sermons, Gospel reflections and the media have done a good job, and by and large we are a compassionate country. We give money, time and energy to good causes, both in our own country and abroad.
Compassion is action in the face of suffering, or you may see it as religion with skin on.
Judith judith@judithscully.com.au
Words From The Edge 