Words From The Edge

It can be part of the farewell routine, “Now, don’t be a stranger”. It could be a well-meant invitation to a relationship that might be familial or the beginning of friendship. Or maybe it’s touching into a loneliness we’d rather keep hidden.  

Somewhere inside us we each carry a scrapbook of relationships- memories of people and things we cherish, like holding your dad’s hand or the comfort of your grandmother’s knee, a wedding ring that encircles half a lifetime of togetherness, or maybe a stuffed toy that has seen better days. I’ve heard them referred to as memory-anchors, like the feeling that says “ I’m home” that is triggered by memories that have opened and closed a lot of doors.

Relationships scroll through our days, all are expressed in different ways at different times and all of them are a work in progress. At some stage of adulthood you begin to realize that there will always be some area of life where you feel alone, alienated, where differences can seem irreconcilable times when you feel disconnected, when the things and people that  tie you to your inner relationships feel as though they have been severed, and you are alone.

Canadian theologian and writer Ron Rolheiser says you experience loneliness “ in rejection, betrayal, abuse, powerlessness and the feelings you have when you doubt your own attractiveness, intelligence, goodness, strength and emotional stability. “ 

Jesus felt this loneliness the night before he died. He prayed – yes, but he also reached out to his closest friends. He wanted their physical presence, maybe even their chatter and mutterings or yawns, He reached out for company he could see and feel. 

There are always words that can’t be spoken, family disputes that can’t be harmonized, areas of belief – religious, political, sexual – that separate family members or long- time friends. You can be separated from family by physical distance or a silence between you and your partner. You can be felt with a feeling that no one understands just who you are, what makes you tick. It’s a lonely place to be – feeling vulnerable, unable to share it, somehow humiliated.

It was Jesus who said “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.” And he was speaking from experience. Human beings are made to belong – through physical touch, through conversation, and through what poet David Whyte calls ‘the mediation of the intellect and the imagination’. As my mobility decreases I find reading not only fills up some lonely spaces in my life, but it also puts me in touch with the writer, their skill and the world that they deliver to me.   

The aloneness that so often comes with aging, can gift us with a renewed appreciation of our personal individuality, reintroducing us to the place in ourselves where we make room to listen to  voices and beliefs other than our own, especially the young people who are changing the world that we believed was ours.

It can give us the courage to reach out to others, not with our wisdom, though sometimes that might be appropriate too, but into the ordinariness of daily life – the checkout cashier, the baby who smiles at us from their stroller, the equally lonely person who always calls just when our favourite show comes on.

Lonely and alone are not the same. We can drown in loneliness, while alone gives us the time and space to sit gently with our lonely places and share what we find there with a God who understands.  

Judith           judith@judithscully.com.au

In the space where a front fence would be if we had one, there’s a towering ghost gum. At least 20 metres tall, it stands out among the masses of slender eucalypts that crowd the outer suburban valley where we live. I stand under the tree, craning my neck to see beyond its scattering of branches. Where once birds played among the leaves, there are now six jagged wounds. High up, a gently moving canopy of leaves leans to the left, like a woman with her hair falling over one side of her face.

When we bought the house my thoughts edged around the possibility of it falling – right into our house. But as time went by and nothing so drastic happened I began to appreciate its beauty. I fancied it saying, “Look at me”, inviting me to admire the way the sun caught the broad- brush sweeps of orange, gold and brown bark that played hide and seek with its creamy trunk.  Backdropped by the night-dark eucalypts, it kept a ghostly vigil while I slept.

In February, as the northern hemisphere throws off its winter snow and breaks out into fresh green and colourful flowers, my ghost gum’s lovely bark begins splitting and breaking, revealing its creamy trunk streaked like scar tissue or stretch marks left after giving birth. As year followed year it seems to me that this subtle, yet spectacular shedding, was painting a Lenten story in God’s Australian sign language.

One Autumn evening a few years ago, I heard a loud crack and looked up to see a very large branch falling, ever-so-slowly, onto the front drive. There it lay in the silence, the noise of that crack still ringing in my ears, lesser branches scattered carelessly all around it.

Right through the spring the ghost gum had shed its winter bark ready to absorb the summer rains, but that year they never really came. In the long, hot summer its roots struggled to find water pockets deep in the rocky ground. Gum trees self-prune, which frees up sap to flow through the spreading canopy to the furthest tips of the longest branches. Not for the first time in its long life my tree knew it was time to let go of another branch.

That was six years ago and my ghost gum is still there, its creamy white trunk stained with rusty patches, like corrugated iron left out in the rain. Where there were once six wounds, now there are seven. In time, a pair of lorikeets, delicately boned and beautifully feathered, built a nest in the hole left by the fallen branch. They come and go, flashing life and energy in exchange for shelter, bringing value to what might appear valueless.

My ghost gum might look lopsided, but it’s still vibrantly alive. Deep inside the trunk the sap runs strong and new life still continues to flow through the spreading canopy to the tips of the furthest branches.

It’s telling a story God has painted in Australian sign language: your story, my story, and maybe, a Church story too.

Judith Judith @judithscully.com.au