Words From The Edge

There’s something welcoming about round tables. As Charles Lathrop says in his poem Round Tables, “. . . no preferred seating, no first or last, no better, no corners . . . “ If I was hosting a Mother’s Day lunch I’d have a round table and set it for eight. I’d use my very best china, the setting that usually lives on the bottom shelf of the sideboard, and the tinkly, stemmed, wine glasses, a wedding present all those years ago. I’d polish the heirloom silver cutlery.

If I was hosting a Mother’s day lunch at a table for eight, these would be my guests.  

My mum. She was one of ten children, christened Gertrude Minnie but eventually known as Pat! A country girl, she married a city boy and I was her first child and only daughter. I never got to know her very well, probably because in my mid- teens I joined a religious order and missed out those years when we could have moved into a different kind of relationship, more familiar. We never quite got to that point and as the years have passed I’ve come to regret that.  

Then there’s Martha. You may remember her as Lazarus and Mary’s sister. Jesus summed her up when he said, “Martha, Martha, you worry about many things”. Me too! Did you mutter under your breath, “Well, someone has to.” Martha and I have a chat when I feel overwhelmed.

Mary McKillop – now there’s another woman I’d be honoured to have at my table, and not just because my family has links to her birthplace, Fitzroy. God gifted her with a dream, a vision for a young country, and it lives on today in her Sisters. Maybe we could talk about her vision for the Church of tomorrow.

Because my name is Judith, religious curiosity led me to the Bible where the book of Judith is sandwiched between Tobit and Esther. It has all the elements of a pot boiler – sex, murder, violence and lies, a cruel and ruthless villain and a brave, beautiful, prayerful and wise heroine. What a time she lived in and what a story she has to tell.

Maria Scully was my great grandmother and her picture hangs on the wall outside my writing room. She looks rather stern and sometimes I wonder what she was really like, how life was for her. I know she was born in Ireland, married Joseph Scully in Tasmania in 1855 and gave birth to 10 children, but little more. I’d like to thank her for being one of Australia’s unsung pioneer women. And as she once  lived in Fitzroy I’m sure she and Mary McKillop will have something to talk about too.

Mother Columcille was my novice mistress and a big influence on my early adult life when I was way too young to be making life choices. She nurtured my spirituality with what I now see was unusual sensitivity and she was supportive eighteen years later when I swapped my religious habit for something more fashionable.  I like to think that Sister Frances, as she was called in later years, would get on well with my mother.

My last guest is Teresa of Avila- Spanish, born in 1515,a Carmelite nun, a saint, a Doctor of the Church and – a writer. Teresa has a way with words and I’d like to get her talking about the ups and downs of putting them on paper, especially when the Church hierarchy of the time considered men had a monopoly on religious words. She would be such an energising and encouraging presence at my table.

It won’t happen of course, it can’t.

But Mother’s Day can be a reminder that we come from a long line of women. A sacred thread connects their story to ours – their stories of love and pain, their creativity, their recipes, the words or phrases they spoke, their wisdom and maybe the mistakes they made unknowingly echo though our lives. We owe them a lot.

Judith         judith@judithscully.com.au  

They, and I’m not at all sure who they actually are, but it’s They who would have us believe that Easter is about chocolate, egg hunts, bunnies, heroes, the outdoors and the relaxation that comes with a stretched-out weekend. My church invites me to join its own Thems, offering three liturgies spread over four days, culminating in Easter Sunday. And I’m caught in a bind, because none of these invitations hit the spot.

It’s right-now relevance that  I long for in the church-based liturgies that mark Holy Week. I understand their symbolism, but they don’t touch my heart or move my spirit. I want to get beneath all the words, the Palm Sunday greenery, foot washing on Holy Thursday, lining up to kiss a crucifix on Good Friday and in the unfamiliar dark of Easter Eve craning my neck for a glimpse of a little fire in a barbecue pan, catching a Scriptural word here and there before taking my seat in the darkened church.

I long for a more tangible recognition that, like me, billions across the world are living out their own Good Friday and Easter Sunday stories. And like the Jesus story we read in the gospels, these two days are separated by Holy Saturday. Unlike the gospel story, however, our Holy Saturdays can last a long time.

The who, where and how of our lives can never be totally free from the pain, grief and loss that go accompany us. We long for it to abate, to go away, to ease. When we are made redundant, when our house builder declares bankruptcy, when a loved one is diagnosed with a terminal illness, when money becomes a problem and painful decisions need to be made our energy is eaten up in a search for neat answers. And we just want to get on with life.

People living with the fallout of tragedy hunger for something they call closure. A Ukrainian grandmother whose whole family died in a bomb attack, rocks to and fro in a sea of pain, longing for the touch and sound of her dead children and grandchildren. People along the Queensland coast pick through their muddy homes and workplaces, grieving the loss of possessions, longing for the clean-up to be over and life getting back into something they recognise as normal.

The followers of Jesus were plunged into grief and sorrow and a sense of betrayal after the horror of the Friday we call good. Peace and joy came slowly, Peter, shadowed by his denial of Jesus, Thomas escaping into silence, the past three years now one big question.  They needed time to come to terms with the fact that their lives had changed. The future kept see-sawing between the unbelievable fact that Jesus was still with them, but what would come next?  

The words and symbols of the Holy Week liturgy focus on the events of the days they commemorate. The commercial world ignores them all together. But all of us need more.  If we are to recognise the Easters of our life and discover the new life they hold, then we need to be reminded that God is always there, waiting with us as we face up to our own Good Fridays and struggle through our Holy Saturdays. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr calls it Dadirri, a patient and prayerful waiting that brings us to the awareness of the Sacred in all the things around us.

However and wherever you spend Easter, keep a little space clear to sit with God in your own, personal Saturday space.

Judith   judith@judithscully.com.au