For Suzanna Kingsland, becoming a Good Samaritan Oblate was an unexpected turn in a spiritual journey that has touched on a variety of traditions and practices, but, combined with daily meditation, it has been a pathway to companionship, peace and hope in the spirit of St Benedict.
By Debra Vermeer
Suzanna, who became an Oblate in 2023 and is now the Local Coordinator of the Victorian Oblate Group, said no one was more surprised than she was to find herself drawn to a spiritual community within the Catholic tradition she had turned away from decades earlier.
“I was fundamentally a long-term refugee from the Catholic Church. I still have huge issues with the Church, but I’ve been an explorer of the spiritual life my whole life,” she said.
“At about the age of 22-23, I made a decision to become an atheist, and I held on to that decision for approximately 15 years although it got harder and harder. Because of the way I’m created, I knew that something was going on that was not just what you can see here.”
Over the years, Suzanna tried a number of different forms of meditation and had some significant spiritual experiences, which convinced her of the reality of God, leading her to make occasional contact with the Church through visits to St Francis’ Church in Melbourne’s CBD.
Her spiritual search also led her to the practice of Ascension Meditation, a technique that is described as being based on praise, gratitude and love, and which has become a mainstay of her daily life.
Good Samaritan Oblate Suzanna Kingsland. Image Supplied.
An invitation from a friend to attend the Santa Casa Retreat Centre in Victoria some years ago led her to meet Good Samaritan Sister Colleen Leonard, who was giving a retreat on the Christian mystics. Despite an initial resistance to the idea, eventually Suzanna felt drawn to receive spiritual direction from Colleen during that retreat, and they kept in touch afterwards.
“In our conversations, towards the last day or two of that retreat, she spoke to me about the Oblates and over the next six to eight months she mentioned it to me once or twice again, and I decided to come and check them out,” Suzanna said.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that her Inquirer/Candidacy period for becoming an Oblate was a slow process, something she looks back on as a gift.
“It was a great time to go slow, to not have to commit because I didn’t know. There were still a few hurdles in my mind,” Suzanna said.
Those hurdles included the question of whether she could still practise Ascension Meditation as an Oblate.
“Colleen just told me to pray as I can, so I got past that hurdle,” she said.
The next hurdle for Suzanna was her longstanding issues with the Catholic Church as an institution.
“The last little hurdle was that step of aligning myself with an organisation that’s aligned with the Church. But then I thought, ‘Nah, you know, the Church is God and they’re wonderful people (in the Victorian Oblate group)’.”
Suzanna said that since becoming an Oblate, her spiritual journey has continued to unfold. “Being an Oblate has definitely nurtured me,” she said.
Given the Rule of St Benedict when she became an Oblate, she said it wasn’t until she undertook an online course on the Rule by Sister Teresa Jackson OSB from the US that it really came to life.
“It completely opened up the Rule. I study a chapter or a section of the Rule every morning, then I do my meditation, prayer, and I pray The Office, and I love it,” she said.
Following the formation of the Good Samaritan Oblate Leadership Team and Oblate Council in 2023, Suzanna was appointed as Local Coordinator of the Victorian Oblate Group and is also companioning a long-time friend of the group who is now preparing to become an Oblate.
“It’s a wonderful group and we all bring our own characters and backgrounds and gifts,” she said.
Following the pandemic, and with some members of the group not always being able to get to the physical meetings in Melbourne, Suzanna suggested a hybrid model where those who wished to could join in via Zoom.
“For instance, the woman I am companioning at the moment is living in the Northern Territory, so this allows her to join our meetings, and it works well,” Suzanna said.
The group not only explores Good Samaritan and Benedictine spirituality but also shares their own spiritual journeys and reflects on different formation topics provided by the Oblate Leadership Team.
This year, as the Church celebrates the Jubilee of Hope, Suzanna wrote a reflection in which she acknowledged that sometimes, in the face of seemingly intractable world crises, such as the situation in Gaza, she struggled to retain hope.
Speaking to a couple of fellow participants during a week-long meditation retreat in New Zealand, she surprised herself by saying to them: “I’ve completely given up hope when it comes to Gaza.”
“I was a bit shocked to hear these words coming from my mouth,” she wrote in the reflection. “It surprised me, in light of who I thought myself to be. A good Samaritan Benedictine. In a Year of Jubilee with the theme of Hope.”
Reflecting on her sense of hopelessness in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Suzanna said she recalled something that Oblate Leadership Team member Pat O’Gorman had said in a formation session for Oblates on the topic of Hope.
“One of the questions we were invited to ponder was ‘What does place your hope in God alone mean to me today’,” she said.
“As I reflected, I realised I want to see some pathway to an outcome, an answer. I need this to maintain the illusion of control. When I cannot see a way forward, I have a largely unconscious mental habit of believing there is none and giving up.”
Later, Suzanna attended a presentation from American Benedictine Sister Judith Sutera OSB, which highlighted for her that simply by doing the next kind thing we are presented with in life, we are helping to build the kingdom of God on earth and being agents of hope.
“There’s something quite Benedictine about that whole sense of just doing the next good thing or kind thing. It’s embedded in things like humility and hospitality of heart,” she said.
Suzanna said that a sense of hope can drive people to stand up for what is right, something which is being seen now as people speak out against the situation in Gaza.
“People are standing up about that. But if you look at the long view, people stood up about the Vietnam War, people stood up about women’s suffrage, people stood up about slavery. People stood up about civil rights in America. They stood up and just did the next right thing,” she said.
Suzanna said that discovering the Oblate path and practising meditation provided foundations of hope in her life that ripple outwards.
“What actually gives me joy in having found this path is that I feel like the journey that I’ve been on, the search that I’ve undertaken, is for some purpose … a purpose in living the best life you can and, from this perspective, we are creating the kingdom of God,” she said.
“We can help create the kingdom of God on earth … if we just do the next right thing, the next kind thing. And that is a great cause for hope.”
If you would like to know more about Good Samaritan Oblates or find out more about connecting, click here.
This article was published in the August 2025 edition of The Good Oil.
