Unintended Consequences
A most fortunate (for we humankind) and unintended consequence of hubris is that it may sometimes take just by, and like the touch of a feather in the tender hand of a compassionate someone, to knock it gently out of us too.
On the north wall in St Joseph’s Church at Hiruharama I’m drawn to the photograph of Sister Suzanne Aubert, this diminutive woman with such a HUGE heart. This healer. I need healing. We all do in some way, in some part of ourselves, in places we don’t care to share about or sometimes don’t even know.
I feel an overwhelming desire, while standing in this Church, to sob my heart out at the carved maori-motifed altar, the altar’s matted serenity softening the blow and leading my gaze upwards and out through it’s arched stained glass windows to the hills beyond.
I’m experiencing a soulful dis-ease in the quiet places of my heart, it feels uncomfortable, unfathomable. I’m glad Craig’s gone outside, the howling in my soul is relentless. I don’t want him to see it much less hear it. And so I sob, this unspeakable anguish. This wordless prayer from the created to the creator.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once said, “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.”
The spirit of Suzanne Aubert permeates this place, it exists in “the hallmarks of her spirituality. They were faith, prayer, simplicity, compassion, and complete and utter trust in divine providence. Her faith was strong and practical, and the motivating force behind all her actions”. You get that sense as faces that appear go quietly about their business. There’s a Retreat happening during our visit. Like the awa, gentle on top today, busy beneath.
Suzanne Aubert’s was a faith that went beyond. She knew the meanings of ‘ecumenical ‘ and ‘inclusivity’ long before Pope John XXIII opened the windows of the Church for the wind of the Spirit to blow through. For her, all people regardless of race, colour or creed were important.” I understood that others got that too when I flicked quietly through the Visitor’s Book. People had come from all around the world. Off the beaten track, to this place. Why do we come? For all our own reasons and because the journey chose us to.
The sun is streaming through the arch windows on that north side, it catches the back of the statue of Mary, her hands held gracefully on her chest. Mary. Mother of Christ. As I slip my shoes back on out in the inner portico and emerge once more into the sunshine outside, I have no words to describe adequately what happened to me inside there except to realise that any inward turmoil I’d experienced had stayed there too.
I hugged Craig out in the sunshine as he sat looking out over the valley. I needed to feel connected with someone. Needed to connect with flesh and blood, like me. This journey, it’s enlarging my tent-pegs.
