The Parting Glass

Well, this has to be a record for the shortest time living as an immigrant family in a country 8000 miles from home. Real life is stranger than fiction, once again. We plan to return to Orcas Island, by the end of May. I am keeping my inner eye focused on my memory of Patos and Sucia Islands, laying like whales in the blue. They are like old friends waiting to welcome us home; I am thinking of my rainbow rocks and the Laurel Lee bobbing in the swell, all to keep me and everyone else sane.

In realizing the situation we came into was not workable, we prayed and struggled and then resigned from Campion College. It is easy to second-guess such a major decision.

But nothing, nothing is wasted or meaningless, no matter how ridiculous it may seem; even the sound of God's laughter, the laughter of the Eternal Youth in the midst of our own horse-blinder stress, has meaning. 

Never before has the Litany of Humility seemed more real to me as when Audrey Assad sang it to me in the car this morning, as I wept for the loss and the apparent ridiculousness of the massive amount of work it took to accomplish this move, only to have it made so quickly and quite clearly not workable:

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
From the desire of being loved,
From the desire of being extolled,
From the desire of being honored,
From the desire of being praised,
From the desire of being preferred to others,
From the desire of being consulted,
From the desire of being approved,
From the fear of being humiliated,
From the fear of being despised,
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
From the fear of being calumniated,
From the fear of being forgotten,
From the fear of being ridiculed,
From the fear of being wronged,
From the fear of being suspected,
Jesus deliver me.
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I ,

That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease,
That others may be chosen and I set aside,
That others may be praised and I unnoticed,
That others may be preferred to me in everything,
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should,

Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.

This is the precious lesson I will have learned from Australia: to let go, let go of what others think of you, of any pretense to prestige or success in our own efforts, even in our own ability to read the signs or make decisions. Sometimes you do your best and it will simply be--not what you planned or desired, even if your desires and those of others are reasonable and even an attempt to be honest, open, good-willed. Perhaps it is an appropriate lesson from a country begun in many forms of opportunities for humility, a place that never had any pretense to "Elder Daughter of the Church" or "The Isle of Saints."  I therefore raise The Parting Glass to Australia.

I had a picture of God the other day, in the midst of the stress, and the loss of a kind of dream of serving this little liberal arts college in this youthful yet ancient land, of getting to know different kinds of Aussies, from Aboriginal people to Suits to Tradies, to all the friends that we will never know: this picture of God was different than my usual Old Man with Beard; He was young, streaking like Mercury across the sky, laughing and beckoning to me to rise from my curled position on my bed in the early hours of facing the unknown, to join in the dance. He was Zeus and Dionysus and Athena all at once, and He was, as CS Lewis says, "Not tame."

His dance, His infinite perspective, even His suffering and death is sometimes so full of energy, the energy of eternal youth, that it can crush us. He dances us around, as my sister said, "a bend in time" and shatters us. His declaration of love can break our hearts wide open. It is the nature of a love that is so great and good that it must transform, it must kill us to make us live again. It is the whirlwind that brought Job to his knees in humility and repentance. But it is a wild shattering that is good, and utterly selfless, not the shattering inflicted upon us by selfish desires or fear. It is that will that wants us to dance the way He dances, with reason, power, abandon, the dance only those with unshakeable faith and hope and love can dance--the dance of the saints. Especially in our moments of feeling dumb.

I am so far from that. I am brittle and shatter and refuse to be put back together. I am stiff-necked and fearful and suspicious and yet oh, how I want to dance like that--like the saints, with faith and confidence, to be tossed in the air by the Christ Child, to wait like a ball in the corner for Him to play with at His leisure.

I am trying so hard to deal with my high-strung, hyper-vigilant nature as the storm blows in my head; I am trying to relax as we step off an edge and get on a plane back home. How my many weak points rise up in revolution, carrying their signs and screaming obscenities. I can't get past them, my insecurities, but He can if I can just hang on, with the help of prayers, by the finger-nail edge of will.

I feel like we've lived here an equivalent of twenty years, in terms of the intense lessons we've learned, all of us. The spider house has become a sort of cartoon emblem for us. But for every single one of us, the lesson of humility underscores it all...the kids learned their weaknesses in the crucible of experiencing school; we were cared for and loved by the teachers and staff at their schools, but it was definitely an eye-opener for them. It was hard, yet they succeeded in ascending the peak and will I think be better, wiser people for their short time at Redfield and Tangara.

Other goods: We've met some stellar and delightful people--Angela, and Amitavo, and Stephen, Abe, Susanna, Geoff, and Liam, Marian, Jess, Fr. Luke, Peter, Mrs. Woodhead, Mr. Ramos, and on and on. We've had a chance to bask in the beautiful Australian ocean, see family...and most important, I suppose, I finally saw a wombat in the flesh and met the bird who sounds, as Thaddeus said, like a middle-aged woman tired of cleaning the house. I speak to them in their own language as I hang out laundry. I watched Thaddeus care for those around him, saw he has a deep care for the common good, saw him bring delight and depth and humor. He is a good man, I found, as I watched him work with my dad in making tremendously difficult decisions, the most Christian-leader one that of stepping away with courage from an untenable situation--and with all the charity and humility as he could muster when the time came.

Also, there were some amazing blessings--we found a couple of wonderful, wonderful doctors one of whom finally diagnosed me and the other Ana, who has mild Reynaud's Syndrome. These were no small deliverances, though we are still working through the process of figuring it all out. We finally had the delight of having Marylynne with us, and she and Thaddeus found a friendship and a delight in each other; we again felt the deep, deep blessing of supportive, honest, and unconditionally loving parents who cried with us and held out hope and let us borrow the wisdom of age.

I met, eternally, St. Mary MacKillop who is the patron saint of those who are abused--a fitting first saint, I think, for Australia...it seemed to be one of those experiences where a saint finds you...she showed up first in none other a place than Madame Tussaud's, right round the corner from Justin Bieber, as I walked around with Ana, trying to be cheerful but barely seeing anything in front of me. It was so odd to see a nun there that I looked her up...and she grabbed me, perhaps in hindsight, to tell me to seek the way of forgiveness, humility, and being deeply aware of any trouble or hurt I've caused, those knocked over by my lack of wit or unnecessary waves...to be profoundly aware of the effect I have on others, the life-giving and terrible responsibility of leadership and fathering and mothering in all areas of life, that our free will and those of others can truly, really, either harm or deliver others, that it is no game, that self-deception is to be pitied and borne with.

I found her shrine in Sydney and we visited her marble tomb and left the whole thing in her hands, to pray for us, for Campion, for Australia. Here are some of her words that seemed to fit us perfectly as we walked through the decisions of the last few weeks:

“Remember we are but travellers here.” (1866)
“We must teach more by example than by word.” (1867)
“Do all you can with the means at your disposal and calmly leave the rest to God.” (1891)
“Courage, courage, trust in God who helps you in all things”
“We feel our crosses hard at times, but our courage should rise with them.” (1882)
“Let God’s Spirit guide you in your choice.” (1898)

The main thing is: charity, charity, charity, and humility, humility, humility. Humility brings the possibility for the true sight of charity.

Thaddeus has his own lessons, as do I...little and big ones. So, we're on our way to see some last-minute things as we sell our car, furniture, shut down bank accounts and all that other stuff we just got together. It is almost enough to laugh at if it wasn't so much trouble all round to lots of people, not the least of whom are the faculty and students of Campion, and to my parents who must welcome us home to their home. As my dad said, "Well, I came home with a quarter in my pocket from Afghanistan. My dad met us at the airport and I told him, 'We're hungry, Dad.' He bought us lunch and took us home."

 We must appear like the Monopods on the Hermit's Island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader who baked the potatoes and then buried them to save time, who, when the cat got into the dairy barn, moved all the milk out and left the cat in.

My memory of Australia is forever entwined with a nun who had piercing blue eyes, and middle-aged woman birds, 'no worries' and many other things...

"Fill to me the parting glass

And drink a health whate’er befalls
And gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all "