Words From The Edge

Memories of loved ones are tangled things, calling up a jumble of emotions.

I remember my husband who loved golf, and John, his brother, who drove a train and conducted the parish choir. Both died far too young, both moved slowly into death with the same loving faith that characterized their whole lives.

I remember an aunt who devoted her life to looking after her widowed mother and unmarried brothers. Her Methodist faith was deep and strong for the whole of her 95 years.

I remember Kate, the long- anticipated and much loved baby who knew nothing about Jesus, and whom God gathered up into eternal love before she could walk or talk.

Two large plastic crates hold the journals my father wrote during the last twenty five years of his long life. I pick up one of the books, flick the pages open, and see my father, sitting at the kitchen table writing about his day in one of the exercise books he bought at a two dollar shop. Such items are precious, tangible reminders of the person who owned them.

None of these loved ones will have a church named after them, or be mentioned in the Litany of the Saints, but the Church recognizes each of them on the feast of All The Saints.

When I was young the feast of All Saints was like a roll call of people who lived a long time ago. They were mostly priests, bishops or nuns, often died as martyrs, never seemed to have had much fun and had Saint tacked to their name. As far as I could see they had nothing in common with the people I was familiar with. Then and there I decided that sainthood was out of the reach of ordinary people.

Now I know differently. For every Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila there are thousands of unknown and long forgotten mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, friends, co-workers, neighbours, nurses, supermarket employees and other individuals in various occupations and countries, who all lived prayerful lives, imbued with the Gospel values of Jesus Christ. In other words – saints.

The Apostle’s Creed says this very simply: I believe in the communion of saints. Suddenly my family story isn’t all there is. In some wonderful God -way I am linked with every person who ever linked their lives to God, whatever their race or culture, whether they died today or thousands of years ago.

In reflective moments, times when a memory of a loved one is triggered by something tangible, I remember that each person’s life story doesn’t just begin at conception and end at death. It starts before they are born and goes on into eternity. There is no time with God. Our prayers for those who have died have been gathered up into eternity, contributing to the bliss that is everlasting life with God.

November invites us to pray to all the saints- all those sassy saints and stumbling sinners who lived before us- asking them to help us to live our lives in faithfulness, hoping, no, knowing, that one day we too will be numbered among all the saints.

Judith Scully

A fortnight ago the publisher David Lovell died. Six weeks earlier, on a late Sunday afternoon, David and his wife Phillippa had hosted a gathering to launch my book, A Gentle Unfolding – Circling and Spiralling into Meaning. David was the publisher, editor and proofreader.

It’s not easy to find a publisher when you are an unknown and writing a memoir kind of book, something that slides between religion and spirituality. I was aware that David Lovell Publishing (DLP) published books on spirituality and wider Catholicism-related social issues. Then in 2014 I was surprised to receive an email from him:
Dear Judith. Michael Mullins passed on some info re your Tarella website, which is beautiful – congratulations. Then I saw your piece in the latest Good Oil. One of the hats I wear is as associate editor of Madonna magazine and I am writing to see if we might include that piece in our next issue. We have had a series running called ‘Why I love the church’ and while your article is not quite on that topic it fits quite well. I noted your role as a writer for Let’s Go Together. I was part of the group who gathered in the early 1970s with Gary Eastman, who created the template for LGT, to begin Dove Communications. A nice connection.

That piece, titled My God Dream, was published in Madonna. A year later, I took a deep breath and wrote to David.

Dear David, Last year you published my piece about Vocation in the Madonna. in the intervening twelve months I have been mulling over what I wrote, aware that it was taking me further but not sure where or how. Then in June this year I attended the Catholic Communications Congress and was delighted to see that grey heads like myself were the exception in the gathering and that young, enthusiastic women and men, but particularly women, had picked up whatever baton it was that people like myself had carried for years, and were running with it.

It led me to reflect on the fact that I am one of the thousands who left religious life after V2, taking the formation and education we had received and then giving it a breadth and focus that was new. Those years were unique and later generations will look back and analyse their importance and the effect it had on the way women and men minister. I would like to write my experience of those years, putting it in a framework of the many events, movements and changes that have coloured the last 50 years. I have begun to research this background material in relation to the way I lived out my vocation and am seeing connections that I had not suspected before.

Would material like this be something that your publishing house might be interested in? I would appreciate your comment or maybe a chance to talk with you and expand my ‘vision’.

We did meet, David was encouraging, I wrote the book, David published it – and now he is gone.

Publishing was more than a business for him and I don’t suppose it made him a rich man. The books he chose to publish reflected the Vatican 2 values he lived by, words that nurtured our spirits and gave a voice to people like me, women and men who had something to say, looking for somewhere to say it. We found it in David’s warmth and editing skill.

Thank you David. May you rest in peace

Judith Scully