Welcome to a new space on the parish website as the midyear lockdown proceeds
LIFE BITS
from Fr Paul
7th August 2021
Encouraging our adult reflection and growth in life and faith
Dear friends,
It’s obvious that our lives and growth require enormous investments of nurturing, guidance and care. I really honour parents in this current period who are stretching their normal efforts to support home learning that many are doing during lockdown. As well, I honour so many teachers who are operating on very committed and creative modes to ensure that learning is facilitated as best as they are able. I had the privilege of being
online with 80 teachers from the parish boys’ high school, St Paul’s College, for an enrichment session they were having. The energy of care for young people those teachers displayed was fantastic.
Growth in faith as adults
For all of us who are beyond our schooling or further education and training days, our learning of course doesn’t stop. Or at least, if it does stop, we easily stagnate. Likewise our adult faith needs ongoing nurturing, learning and growth if it’s going to flourish. Here in the parish, as you probably know, we are striving to prepare and provide opportunities for reflection and growth each week during the lockdown. The invitation is to tap into some of these enrichment opportunities via Zoom – BUT not only that, to invite someone else AND to tell them you’ll join them in the online gathering. I was very moved last week, by the comment of one of our parishioners at a session online. (I’ll give that parishioner the name Giovanni for the purpose of mentioning this example) – Giovanni spoke of another parishioner (who I’ll call James) who some years ago invited him to be part of a simple parish initiative. James told Giovanni that he’d be part of it with him. For Giovanni, the invitation from James, with the accompaniment James gave him, was an unexpected take-off point; a take-off point for what has become Giovanni’s passion for a very meaningful purpose in which he’s now deeply and very happily involved.
With that true story example, I really encourage you to take the chance to jump onto a Zoom session – or two – this week – and to tell someone you invite that you’ll join them. Be kind to yourself and your faith and don’t put this off. They’re engaging, friendly, enjoyable sessions and you don’t need any special experience to be part of them! During lockdown, it’s also a beautiful way of being part of the community with others. Let’s multiply this expression of community – even in lockdown – and see a whole lot more parishioners saying yes to being part of this united spirit of OLQP.
With friendship in God’s mission,
Paul
17th July 2021
Locked down, not locked out
There are plenty of predictions around that NSW might enter a bit of a harder lockdown in the coming days. The number of ‘infectious while in the community’ has become the focus of much news. That phrase is just one of the pandemic-prompted expressions either being used more or differently in this time. These days, as we know, that phrase refers to the number that the NSW government wants to get near zero to get out of lockdown.
Well, it might be a lockdown, but hopefully people aren’t feeling locked out of life. Of course I say that mindful of many in the world whose loved ones have actually lost life – and mindful of those who are struggling right now, whether in physical health or other aspects of well being. May we be in solidarity with them every day in our various ways, however small those ways of solidarity may seem. May the union of the world be somehow enhanced through the continuing struggle and loss experienced in this covid phenomenon. As I heard someone put it, if we just want to go back to the old ways of ‘normal’, we dishonour the loss that has occurred. I was moved by that comment as being very reflective of our Christian faith. When we consider the suffering of Jesus, it was an evil, no question. But it continues to become honoured the more we enable what resulted, to influence our lives. Jesus showed us the power of dependence on the Father, of dependence on grace. And in that dependence even his suffering served. It became a redeeming suffering; a suffering that became the material and impetus of transformation. Please God history will look back on this covid time as one through which we embraced the struggle together in all sorts of ways .. to enable new ways of being the world together. Newness always means some kind of letting go. And newness often means trusting possibilities that initially feel less secure! What might one or two of those things be for me or you?
From our faith perspective, one of the reminders of this time might be that we have the kingdom within us – even when we’re locked down! The kingdom, it seems, in Jesus’ vision, is all that is NOT about being locked out! It’s about being included in God’s friendship – included in mercy – included in belonging – included in dignity – included in purpose – included in hope. Maybe there can be something quite powerful about about remembering that this kingdom power is within us and giving its possibilities our focus – whilst we’re restricted. Maybe being restricted can positively stretch the question: How can I share this treasure that’s within? Maybe I / you can embrace a lockdown challenge; a challenge of playing a part to ensure that many, feel less locked out of life, as a result of our creative decisions and courage whilst locked down in life.
With friendship – Paul
7th July 2021
Pivots and Possibilities
Another week of Sydney lockdown announced – and on behalf of the parish team I especially wish school students and teachers the best for the days of online learning ahead next week. Here’s to their pivoting. What? What’s that mean? Well, the large online platform called Linkedin that connects people across many vocational pathways suggested during 2020 that pivot was the new word of the year! Obviously it’s a word that’s been around for a long time but in the changed circumstances of the pandemic, just about all is us were called on to pivot, in the sense of shifting around the way we did things.
One of the champion pivoters in the previous parish where I lived, was a man in his mid 80’s who learned how to access and use websites during 2020. I so much admired his humble openness to taking new steps. And he’d send me periodic text messages to say he was enjoying keeping connected through the parish website etc. But even more significantly in his version of pivoting, he said that doing these things was encouraging him to check in on others more often, to connect well with them, see how they were going and follow up on their story. That Linkedin platform also suggested that some of the runner-up words applied in new ways in the world’s lockdown times have been; pause, shift, re-imagine, lean into. You might think of other words and phrases describing how history, in addition to the world’s sadness and loss of this time, might one day speak about this era of the pandemic. I wonder if one of Albert Einstein’s quotes might play out as a result of this period of history. Apparently when Einstein was asked about a certain problem he replied: “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity”. Hmmm. What do you reckon?
From our faith tradition, there are various reflections we could make concerning this time of 2020-2021, which introduced the strange word ‘COVID-19’ into our language. One reflection might be from the common word used in our faith; repentance. Repentance is a translation of the Greek word metanoia. And it literally means to change your mind/heart; to change direction. In essence it’s not about guilt and shame. John the Baptist called people to a change of mind and heart. Repentance in that context meant turning around and moving differently. It’s a call to think and act differently.
So rather than seeing COVID and lockdowns as a time of waiting to go back, I wonder if our pivoting can gift us with some helpful metanoia; with some next new thinking; some moving differently, in the way we view our relationship with each other and the world. Enough for now, but probably plenty of scope for us to take such reflections further.
With friendship – Paul
1st July 2021
Here’s to being the presence
Hello everyone in these first days of the lockdown. Since recently coming to the parish, my desire to put time into the website with the generous parishioners who keep it going has continued as a ‘to do’ still waiting on the list. For starters though, with the church building currently shut, it seems timely to at least start this new space called ‘Life Bits’. Depending on how long the lockdown goes, it can be a place of regularly updated life and faith reflection. And depending on how useful it is, maybe it can continue once the doors are open again. I intentionally used that expression above that the ‘church building’ is shut, because as I heard someone say yesterday, the ‘Church’ itself is still open – if we take it to heart that ‘we are the Church.’
It’s also why I used an image of Mother Teresa in this first column of ‘Life Bits’. That’s actually a statue; it’s in the chapel of the main house of Mother Teresa’s Sisters in Kolkata, India, today. Just last week, a few of us on the parish team had the pleasure of sharing a few different session times with lots of parents who are guiding their children towards their First Eucharist in August. And among the various focuses we used was Mother Teresa’s encouragement of our calling to be the Church – to be the visible love and presence of Christ today. Christ’s frequent starting point in the Gospels, is simply to connect in a quality, intentional way, in people’s stories. In our Christian faith, the ‘Incarnation’ is our remarkable claim; that God came to be among us in the world in the flesh’. And we believe also that ‘in the flesh’ is one of God’s key ways of remaining among us in the world NOW. That’s another remarkable claim as it says that that the Incarnation continues; that God is present in our flesh, in our humanity, in our gestures, in our connecting in a quality, intentional way, in people’s stories.
May the lockdown be a special time for us to find creative ways to be the Incarnation today; to enjoy our capacity to be God’s presence in the life of the world. So here’s to phones and notes and messages, to screens and caring inquiries and gestures, to affirmations and encouragements and remembering to check in on specific things that matter in people’s stories! Here’s to the hundreds of things of ‘being the presence’ that can still happen even if we’re not in the same physical space.
With friendship – Paul
