February/March 2009

We’ll all be rooned” said Hanrahan,
in accents most forlorn…

So begins one of John O’Brien’s best known poems, published in 1921; it recounts a conversation among farmers outside an outback church one Sunday about the need for rain. Someone suggests an inch would save them, another two, but one voice insists on the gloomiest outlook: “If we don’t get three inches, man, or four to break this drought, we’ll all be rooned," said Hanrahan, "Before the year is out." Of course, “in God’s good time” the rain comes, tanks and dams fill, creeks and rivers run a banker, but now Hanrahan can only see the certainty of floods. And when the grass is knee high and the wheat flourishing, Hanrahan insists that bushfires are just around the corner.

It was no great secret that, in reality, “John O’Brien” was a country priest, whose characters were drawn from among his family and parishioners. I suspect he didn’t have far to look for a Hanrahan: every family and every parish has at least one! It is the voice of Cassandra, the voice of Jonah, and perhaps, a small but insistent voice within each one of us, raising doubts and misgivings. And yet, at our parish meeting yesterday, we passed a challenging budget without demur, and exhibited not only confidence but also enormous kindness and sensitivity. I spoke this morning with another priest about his parish’s annual meeting, and he too was still moved by how positive and supportive and encouraging his congregation had been. This should not come as a surprise, of course, if we have managed to remain focused on being who we are called to be, and doing what we are called to do. But it seems to me that what we managed to be and do yesterday was deeply grounded in our individual prayer.

I believe that among the things we receive and learn from God in prayer, over and over again, is confidence about the future. To submit the deepest worries and hurts we carry to God, to lay bare our broken hearts and broken dreams and hand them over to God’s care and God’s wisdom, is always to hear in return, with the psalmist, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Six hundred years ago, the English mystic Julian of Norwich distilled centuries of prayerful listening when she transcribed God’s constant reassurance that

All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well.

There is never a shortage of volunteers to insist “we’ll all be rooned” – it takes no imagination, no discipline, no greatness of spirit or intelligence. But a group of men and women approaching a difficult future with equanimity and courage and assurance is simply grace, working in us and among us, grace born of hours spent listening to and being formed in the ways of God.

Outside there must be forty goldfinches around the feeder, squabbling and jostling, rising in clouds of alarm then settling in an instant. Most are shades of grey, but here and there are soft yellows and flashes of pure gold. A robin is worrying one the apples left on the tree from fall, orange breast burning in the afternoon sun. Is she early, or did she never leave? They too face a difficult few weeks ahead, but they know that then, all shall be well.

TPG+

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