More Holy Week in Sydney...

Towards the Cross

As I was saying in the previous post, Holy Week in Sydney was a great time for walking and wondering, pausing and praying. Here's a little more of what I mean....

Striding along the Harbour Bridge out of the city - my first Holy Week outing - I found myself heading appropriately but unexpectedly towards the cross. A white cross, bold and positioned high on a red brick building at Milson's Point. Later research revealed the place to be St Aloysius' College, a Jesuit school for boys dating back to 1548. Here's what the College says about itself in 2015.

Today Jesuit schools are committed to form people of conscience, compassion and competence. Our way of proceeding includes some key themes:

• Finding God in all things: every aspect of our life and labour can affirm the goodness and presence of God.
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• Cura personalis: we seek to foster a culture of concern and pastoral care where students, staff and families feel accepted for who they are and what they might become.
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• Formation of the whole person: we focus on the intellectual, affective and moral to develop a sense of self-worth and of one’s place in the world.

• Being men and women for others: we want to show love in deeds and to serve others generously.
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• Engaging with the wider world: we aim to be aware of the challenges of our time.
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• Encouraging excellence: we want to be distinguished for our academic, co-curricular and pastoral provision through which we encourage a bountiful development of gifts for others.
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• Co-operating in the mission of the Church and the Jesuits: we want to witness to Christ’s presence in the world, to find and form Christian community and to participate in Church life. 
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• We seek to serve the needs of the world and the Church especially in the light of the apostolic aims of the Jesuits.
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Inspirational aims don't you think? With challenging aspirations for any one of us seeking to be formed by Christ and for Christ in today's world. I particularly like their '3 Cs' - conscience, compassion, competence. 

Movements in Mission

It's years and years since I'd encountered Revd Dr Keith Garner and Carol in their UK days so it was lovely to meet up at Wesley Mission's midweek Easter luncheon and hear Keith on great form at the lectern. They became Australian citizens in 2009 and have devoted themselves with passion to Wesley - a big set up - which has social justice in Christ's name at its heart. We didn't have the conversation about whether they would term themselves in any way 'missionaries' or 'mission partners'. They've clearly embraced Australia and are well tuned in to Sydney's heartbeat - real Sydney not 'tourist' Sydney. 

The Revd James McLeod made a missionary journey to Australia a few years previously to Keith. A Scottish Presbyterian missionary, he was minister at St Stephen's - now Uniting Church - from 1933-39. I went to St Stephen's to hear their Good Friday offering of Olivet to Calvary - moving and musically accomplished. This window's quote preserves the good Revd James's reflection on his missionary immersion into and appreciation of new surroundings.

But how about this accompanying window for a sting in the tale?

Was he teasing? Or did he live convinced that the beauty of his native land could never be surpassed? Australia would always be second best, even though he'd learned to love it? 

And whose land anyway was he measuring and assessing? I was at Pitt Street Uniting Church, a short hop away, on Easter Sunday and reflected on the words very intentionally placed on sheet one of the service order

We acknowledge the Gadigal clan, part of the Eora nation,

who are the traditional custodians

of the sacred land on which we gather

This serves to highlight the Uniting Church's recognition of 

the pain and damage caused to our country’s native people through settlement and beyond. In 1997, recognising its past mistakes, the Uniting Church made a formal apology to the Stolen Generation. We participate each year in National Sorry Day. 

For more information on justice and community services in the Uniting Church visit the UnitingJustice website or the UnitingCare Australia website.

I've read no history of James McLeod and so have no extra insight or take on this one sentence of his commemorated in glass. It just struck a chord with me, a newish mission partner in Fiji, for whom new and precious places are being discovered daily. McLeod's window spoke of 'beauty', and that's a deep concept to process in itself. Whom and what do we treasure as beautiful and why? Will England's green and pleasant land always rate more highly for me than Fiji in the beauty stakes? And by what criteria would I ever compare them?

Bluebells at Leith Hill near Dorking, Surrey in the UK

Fiji flowers in Thurston Gardens, Suva just down the road from PTC

I wondered as I wandered... and not least at the commemorative plaque beneath my feet just before the Harbour Bridge.