Listening to the disturbing story of another person’s painful experience can bring us out of ourselves and remind us that we are alive and what drives us, writes Catherine McAleer.
“A good friend once said to me that we should pray, God, disturb me!” I told a friend. Had those words I uttered in remembrance formed a prayer?
When I walked through the doors of the church on Sunday morning I hadn’t expected a disturbance. I have been turning up religiously, willing myself (and sadly, not asking for God’s grace) to find my place in community after disconnection following the Fifth Plenary Council of the Australian Catholic Church.
This was a time when I was hopeful and optimistic, despite the challenges the Plenary Council posed. I’ve been left wondering why I spoke so passionately, what drove me, and how I could turn back the hands of time to feel hope and optimism inside the Church again. And yet, as each Sunday rolls around, I find myself in the pews feeling anything but hope and optimism.
I took my place in the second front pew with family. I was somewhat calm and peaceful. The parish priest had been away, but he was back and given that I’ve always been able to connect to his homilies I was pleased.
I waved across the church to friends and greeted those around me. Before long, little niggles began to appear. The deacon gave the homily, the homily I had expected the priest to give.
The usual routines had changed, and I could see in the faces of parishioners a struggle to come to terms with them. It is one thing to make necessary changes, but it is another to communicate them, and these weren’t being communicated.
I became acutely aware of animosity arising within me, like slow-burning embers ready to ignite. An overreaction perhaps – I wanted to walk out.
Suddenly, I was back at the Plenary Council, recalling when a friend and fellow member had wanted to leave when the vote on Part 4 of the Motions and Amendments document, Witnessing to the Equal Dignity of Women and Men, failed to reach the required two-thirds majority1. It felt as though this vote had turned its back on women within the Church.
Back then, I had pleaded. “Don’t go. Let’s see what happens.” Now I needed to take my own advice. “Really,” I admonished myself, “Am I any different to those who chose not to listen then?”
I was simmering, being more concerned about what I wanted and how I wanted faith to be expressed than what I was actually here for – to be spiritually fed, to have my heart set on fire for God.
All this waged within as the liturgy unfolded. Most of my fellow parishioners would not have realised the extent of my internal struggles, unless this was playing out across my face (and I prayed it wasn’t).
As the final bars of the reflection hymn faded, a family of four filed in. “Wow!” I thought judgmentally, “You’re really late. Why would you come now?” The priest stood, prayed and then invited three people to the lectern; three of the four who had just walked in. What unfolded was the story of the youngest woman.
Her life in Australia has been hanging in the balance for the past 10 years. As an unauthorised maritime arrival, her story of hard work, dedication and rejection after rejection for a permanent visa to stay in our abundant nation was laid out.
It was a plea from this young woman, who has lived more of her life here than in her country of birth and stands to be deported.
It was desperation that led her parents to put her and her father on a boat under the cover of darkness to sail across the ocean in search of a better life, free from the terror that littered her childhood but separating the family indefinitely.
My vision blurred. The sparks ignited, this time for good.
After 10 years, this young woman is still seeking refuge. Fighting for a place on our shores. She stood before us, grateful to be living in Australia, sharing stories with hope in her eyes.
She attended school, worked hard when the laws of the land allowed her to, and travelled across this vast country in search of other opportunities when they didn’t. Despite facing deportation and asking for help, she held her head high, eyes hope-filled.
Talk about being disturbed!
‘Rising Strong’ by Brené Brown.
In her book Rising Strong, Brené Brown defines comparative suffering as a function of fear and scarcity. Scarcity being that we believe we aren’t enough and fear an emotion in response to a real or perceived threat. So, we compare what we see, feel and experience with that of another, which results in us discounting what we are seeing, feeling and experiencing.
I was doing all of that. Somehow my experience that Sunday morning seemed insignificant and unworthy of my fiery response. However, sometimes the story of another puts us in our place and directs our cannonball emotions. It brings us out of ourselves and catapults us into the present moment. It reminds us that we are alive. It reminds us of what drives us.
This woman’s lived experience viscerally reminded me of what was driving me at the Plenary Council. The injustice of some systems (including those of the Church), of people being treated as collateral, not hearts and souls with stories that are so painful, and so painfully wrong.
St Catherine of Sienna wrote, “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” Her words could very well have been directed at me. My fire was being fanned into flames. God gave me life and a voice; a voice to speak truth to power and to challenge the status quo, when needed.
It saddens me that my reminder came at the cost of someone else’s painful story and is all the more reason to set the world on fire with God’s love.
1. What is it about women and the Church?, Patty Fawkner SGS, The Good Oil, July 2022.
