REFLECTIONS AND NOTES WINTER 2004

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Making connections
Reconciliation and winter

Teacher notes page 2-3
Mum's the word
Simon's story
On top of the world
Students images of God

Principal reflections prepared by Chris Gleeson SJ
For the school assembly
For the newsletter
A prayer

Making Connections: Reconciliation and winter

The theme of this winter edition of Australian Catholics is reconciliation. Reconciliation has to do with re-making connections. Because we are now in winter, a time where we often need to fight our tendencies to isolate ourselves, we describe the making of connections in difficult circumstances.

Anyone who has heard East Timorese people speak of their experiences knows how much loss and pain they have suffered. Those hard things can easily isolate people. The stories we tell in this edition are of the simple gifts of friendship and shelter that refugees in our community have received, and how much difference they have made. They also tell of the gift that people from East Timor have been to Australia, and also of the gift made by Australians who have given themselves to East Timor.

At the heart of Christian faith is the paradox that community and connection come through Jesus’ solitary journey to the Cross. He experienced it as a path of exclusion and isolation. But it was through this kind of death that came the life of the resurrection and the beginning of a new community. Because we remember Jesus, we Christians keep close to hard places of alienation and exclusion, because through them we often find reconciliation.

Perhaps that insight lies at the heart of the St Vincent de Paul Society who have been so important in Australian Catholic life. We publish a Supplement to celebrate the 150th anniversary of their arrival in Australia. The stories of the St Vinnies’ work in the different states are stories of enabling isolated people make connections and finding again a place in the wider community.

For most of us, the challenge to be reconciled is felt most directly at home. Georgina McEncroe muses wryly on the challenges of being a young mother. Sometimes making connections is a job for the long haul, as in the case of Simon, whose life is always poised between rejections and isolation.

All these are simple stories of finding reconciliation. They might make us ask, too, in what sense the church is a community. In it we live our relationship with God. Perhaps we should expect the same drama of isolation and reconciliation both in our relationship with God, as well as in our sense of belonging in the church. Connections are often built in hard times, and enjoyed in the green times.

Andy Hamilton SJ

MUM’S THE WORD page 30 of Australian Catholics

In this article by Georgina McEncroe we meet a woman who decides that she needs to introduce some changes in herself. An encounter with an old man in the park causes her to reflect on her life and behaviour and enables her to hear her own voice, this time, from the listener’s point of view.

Students may wish to make a tape recording of themselves in conversation, for example, at the dinner table. The teacher could point out that the voice they hear from the inside sounds different the one others hear. The students could be invited to listen carefully to their tapes, and then asked to consider the following questions:

1. Have you ever tried to hear your voice from the listener’s vantage point?
2. Does your voice sound different from what you expected? Is your tone sarcastic, angry, nervous, bored, superior…? What role do you adopt during a conversation? The giver-of-unasked-for-advice? The grumbler? The stirrer? The know all? The organiser? Or….?
3. Is there anything you would like to change in the way you speak to people? Make a plan of action to achieve this.

SIMON’S STORY page 24 of Australian Catholics

In this article we are introduced to a gifted young man whose life has been blighted by epilepsy. The problem with Simon’s illness is not only the physical disability, something which could be treated and controlled by medical treatment, but the overwhelming inability of people in wider society to cope with the symptoms of the disease. They find it embarrassing even frightening, refusing to consider including the sufferer in their activities.

As 2004 is the year of Luke, it is interesting to read some of the accounts of healing miracles in this Gospel. Luke often includes a parent or some other concerned carer in the stories, and he also refers to the reactions and comments of the community. So often we are confronted by the contrast between the compassion of Jesus and the callous indifference of the crowd. The victim is pushed aside as not part of their society; not one of them. Simon’s experience of the bullying of his classmates and the post school rejections of the university and other organisations mirrors this indifference.

ACTIVITIES

The class could begin considering this article by relating personal experiences of their contact with disabled people. They might look at their own reactions and feelings towards people with cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, epilepsy or someone who has lost a finger or a limb through accident.

Has anyone in the class made friends with a disabled person? Do they avoid contact with such a people, pretending they have not seen them? Why do human beings act like this towards exceptional people?

The class might then read the article about Simon and the struggle his mother experienced in trying to find a place for him in society.
Students could then set up role- plays on these topics:

1. a conversation with a person in a wheelchair on a suburban train.
2. your new cousin has been born with Down Syndrome. It is a topic of conversation at the family dinner table.
3. you are the conductor of a choir who has to tell a disabled person he cannot continue singing with the group.

The class could end with a prayer for the gift of compassion.

ON TOP OF THE WORLD page 10 of Australian Catholics

Most of us believe that we have a clear idea of ourselves and our limitations. Most of us have family members and friends who remind us if ever we forget. Madge McGuire, in setting out to conquer Mount Everest, found that she had to conquer herself first.

ACTIVITIES

A class discussion in which students answer the question: ‘Have you ever succeeded in doing something that you and everyone else thought you were incapable of doing?’

The class might make a journal entry in which they reflect on the idea of self-conquest and service to others.

Read the article On Top of the World, which tells the story of Madge’s trek to the top of a mountain from the moment the idea first came to her until the triumphal arrival at her destination.

1. How did she make her solitary journey ‘a collective endeavour’?
2. Madge had been working with the residents of Catherine House for some time; how does she describe these homeless women?
3. Does Madge’s description differ in any way from your own idea of the homeless person?
4. Where does our stereotype of the homeless woman come from?
5. Madge wanted to help build a drop-in centre for former residents of Catherine House; how did she think such a place might help them?
6. After deciding to climb the mountain, Madge had to take a long hard look at herself and to make some significant changes to her self image and her life; what were these?
7. In what ways were her ‘prayer partners’ important to Madge’s daily routine while climbing?
8. What are some of the other methods she used to overcome the pain and discouragement that she experienced during her climb?
9. What is a ‘mantra’? Have you ever used one to help you pray?
10. How did Madge feel when she reached her goal?

Students images of God

In 2001, Rose Duffy CSB completed her doctoral thesis, entitled The Images of God of Middle Secondary School Adolescents. The purpose of the thesis was to identify the images of God held by middle secondary school adolescents aged 14-17 years, and the influences shaping these images. Pictured here is one of the student’s drawings of God, and the student’s response to questions asked about the drawings.

Religious education teachers may find it an interesting exercise to invite their own students to participate in a similar activity.

1. "Would you tell me about your picture/symbol of God?" It’s a cross sitting on a cloud with like a spirit behind it.
2. "What is the most important thing in this picture?" Probably the cross or no, probably all equal.
3. "What is the most important thing you wanted this picture to show?" The cross represents Jesus and the spirit behind it represents the Holy Spirit and the cloud represents where God lives and it shows that they are all one. God, Jesus and the Spirit. So it’s an image of the Trinity.
4. "How would you describe the image of God represented here? God is . .?" God is one. The Spirit, Jesus and the Father. That they are all equal

THE KITCHEN TABLE

There are lots of things wrong with Australia today,
And I’d like to have something to say if I may.
You know that, forsooth, our problem with youth,
Untidy, ill-mannered, untamed and uncouth,
Is the fact that their home life is so often unstable
And it’s all for the lack of a kitchen table.

Remember how once we would sit down as one,
And Dad would say grace when the carving was done.
Our own serviettes from our own special rings,
And we all knew our manners and etiquette things.
Then our elders would tell us of custom and fable,
When we all sat about at our kitchen table.

Now they’re building new mansions with four-car garages.
Our working lives mortgaged to interest and charges.
There’s less time at home for the tea to be made,
And it’s seldom today that a table is laid.
There’s room after room under gable and gable,
But there’s not enough room for a kitchen table.

At weekends the parents are chauffeurs unpaid,
No wonder they’re tired and their tempers are frayed.
As they ferry their broods to arenas of sport,
Where the culture of winning’s intensively taught,
And there’s more on the tele both free and by cable,
So there’s no room for talk around the kitchen table.

Karl Marx called religion the drug of the people,
But there’s scant regard now for the church or the steeple,
Just give ‘em more sport and don’t let ‘em think,
And keep them away from the kitchen sink.
We’ll give ‘em more sport and the culture of Babel,
The throwaway culture that threw out the table.

With the culture of rap and their baseball caps,
There’ll soon be no fellers, no blokes and no chaps.
When they all dress the same then it’s little surprise
That the girls swear as much and as foul as the guys.
So we grandparents must, just as long as we’re able,
Keep our culture alive around the kitchen table.

Quoted in Christopher Gleeson SJ, A Canopy of Stars; some reflections for the journey, David Lovell Publishing, 2003, p 19

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