Remembering Riverglenn 

P. Mark O'Loughlin cfc

October 2007 

And, being opened, we found ourselves turning instinctively to identify with the pains and burdens felt in our whole earth community.

The Heart of Being Brother.  Congregation Chapter 2002 

I am grateful to have been chosen to represent the community of our former province of Saint Patrick at the Oceania pre-chapter gathering at Riverglenn in Brisbane recently.  I experienced a reinvigoration of the brotherhood that I am privileged to share; I took a first few steps into being a brother of the Oceania province; and I made a renewed commitment to "be brother to the whole earth community", as I understand the invitation of our 2002 congregation chapter.  I have returned awash with many conflicting emotions and associated reflections.  I experience exhilaration and grief, love and loss, satisfaction and disappointment. 

Two memorable highlights of the Riverglenn week for me were Emmaus experiences.  We were invited to companion another brother, whom we did not know well, and spend extended time listening to our respective deepest stories.  All-to-rare and privileged opportunities, that left me filled with appreciation of the other, encouragingly affirmed, and valuing even more our brotherhood.  I found it a challenge to share my deepest truths, as it has been during my life journey to boldly embrace them.  But it proved to be so liberating to do so.  I think of a gospel comment about "truth making one free".  Yes, indeed.  What wisdom there is in that Emmaus insight, and invitation. Exhilarating memories. 

The collective experience at Riverglenn that in my view evoked the most enthusiastic communal sharing was in response to Trevor Parton's facilitated invitation to enter into the "imagining and dreaming of the cosmos", and to then share our personal dreams.  The communal outpouring of dreams was hope-filled and visionary.  Later Philip Pinto shared with us his perception that in our part of the world we have made the biggest advances into integrating a necessary wholesome relationship with earth and cosmos into our spirituality.  One of my lingering disappointments is that we did not elect Trevor to take his wisdom and vision to the congregation chapter next year.   

In sombre and necessary contrast, Brian Brandon led a brief session late in the gathering in which he asked some probing and disquieting questions about our congregation assets and needs and expenditures and priorities and risk management of investments.  Brian invited us to wonder what an audit of recent expenditures would say to our proclaimed "option for the poor".  These matters were of no consequence to the gathering until Brian raised them.  It is another lingering disappointment that Brian's experience and wisdom will not be at the congregation chapter. 

I harbour disappointment with the election process.  Perhaps I missed something, but I came to no understanding of what gifts and skills were to be looked for in those who would be asked to go to India from our new province of Oceania.  There was little opportunity to explore as an electing group who might best embody appropriate skills and gifts.  As a consequence I have no idea why we elected some, and why we chose to not elect others.  I had no sense of discernment. With one noticeable overnight change in voting patterns, I did have a sense that there must have been some clandestine lobbying that I cannot reconcile with discernment.  In recent province discernments I have seen respectful communal weighing of options, and open development of a communal consensus.  Genuine discernment.  I think that our growing maturity admits of a further movement towards the sort of communal discernment where secret voting would be unnecessary and inappropriate.  I like to think that we have moved beyond the fears and unaccountable privacy of secret voting.  Not that there would be no differences of opinion, but any differences would be publicly understood and respected. 

We gathered for a pre-Eucharist liturgy of the Word one morning in the quiet cool of a tall grove in the verdant gully at Riverglenn, and heard from Peter Harney how this once dry gully was planted with native trees by a visionary brother and his trainee charges.  Rainforest and flowing water returned!  As I stood in that grove reflecting on its restored burgeoning of life I had a strong felt experience of a grateful love.  The memory and love remain with me.   

But the awful tension between "celebrating Eucharist" and "going to Mass" remained unresolved for me during the week.  My most Eucharistic liturgy was on the first morning when we gathered to celebrate the birth of our new province of Oceania.  I certainly did not want "Mass said", but I hungered for some Eucharistic symbols, be they breaking and sharing of bread  and sharing of cup of wine, or some new and yet-to-be enshrined Eucharistic symbols.  This was a profound moment of story, of listening, of letting go, of dying, of seeking to be reconciled, of new commitment, of rising.  Why would we not claim such a moment as Eucharist?  I despair that we continue to support the now past and irrelevant theology and language and rituals of "Mass", and cannot recognize "Eucharist".   

There has been much rhetoric about restructuring for renewal of hearts and minds, and this was echoed again at Riverglenn.  I heard disturbing overtures in this, as it seemed to be saying that before restructuring there has been no renewal.  And that now that there has been restructuring we must undertake renewal.  I was disappointed to sense that all of those brothers living faithful and generous and authentic lives were to be challenged to somehow now change rather than be appropriately encouraged and affirmed.  Perhaps renewal will sweep through our aged care communities and they will suddenly empty!     

There was deep satisfaction for me at Riverglenn from many invigorating experiences, and more simply in the hospitality of Bob Wallace and Ted Magee, and in the pleasure and companionship of renewed and new acquaintances.  But my overwhelming experience became one of grief.  I elected to spend our day off before elections in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at the foot of nearby Mount Coot-tha.  My day began with a reflective amble in a rainforest section that was confrontingly dry and deepening in unseasonal leaf litter.  In front of me a broad leaf see-sawed onto the path in death.  So symbolic of a dying mother earth around me.  My awareness was suddenly filled with images from the adagio of Anton Tudor's intimate and poignant ballet "The Leaves Are Fading", which he choreographed to an Antonin Dvorak chamber music piece for strings,.  I was plunged into grief, and the balletic images became a leit-motiv. 

I know that it is often difficult to recognize the real sources of grief, but I recognized that I was experiencing loss.  And as I wandered through the dying gardens I grieved for the loss of mother earth as I have known her.  The folly of our rhetoric about "sustainability", with its anthropocentric bias, annoys me in the face of our obscene over-populating of the planet and obliteration of so many of its life forms.  As does the unreality of imagining that we can halt, let alone reverse, the catastrophic climate change that we have set in train.  As I grieved I reflected also that I can love mother earth more, and seek to be reconciled even as I watch her being changed irrevocably.  I can minimize my eco-footprint in respect.   

There were other losses too that I recognized.  The final loss of my filial family with the recent death of my sister, a loss that makes the community of my confreres so much more precious.  And I continued to grieve for the unnecessary dismantling of my province community, a community that I have cherished and that I know would have brought significant presence and strength to an impossibly communal Oceania.  I grieved too for the loss of the brotherhood I have know all my life within Australasia, with the erection of a predominantly high-salaried bureaucracy of non-brother management. 

I had a strong sense of flying back to Melbourne to a vacuum.  But at the same time I was grateful to be able to look forward to returning to the nurture of my home community, and the opportunity to be brother within its rich ambience of culture and age and gender and spirituality.  And to look forward to continuing my caring engagement with a ravaged  marine world.  I was aware again that I am a part of all things, and reflected that as I fade towards that moment of entering into eternal belonging I hope that in that moment I will know that I am welcome.