Dear Friends

For the past eighteen months, we have watched as the pandemic see-sawed across the globe. There have been lulls and then spikes. Just when it seems to be under control, there is a new outbreak. Even as vaccines are being distributed, emergencies are declared in parts of the world. This is certainly our current experience in Australia with the accelerating spread of the Delta variant.

Our shared COVID-19 experience crystalises a reality: we are vulnerable, fractured and damaged. Not just sometimes, but always. This is part of our human condition. We are people who need nurturing and healing. And our world needs healing. Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. Raging bush fires and floods engulf varied parts of the globe. Lebanon is close to economic collapse. Liberties are lost in Hong Kong. Oppression continues in countless countries. Destruction caused by global warming seems constant. It would be easy to become dispirited and distressed by the avalanche of bad news. And in all of this we can feel so powerless.

However, our faith calls on us to remain hopeful, and do what we can. There’s a poem by Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, entitled the Cure of Troy. It really is an anthem of hope.

Human beings suffer.

They torture one another.

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hope

On the side of the grave,’

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles.

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,

The utter self-revealing

Double-take of feeling.

If there’s fire on the mountain

And lightening and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

It means once in a lifetime

That justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

While not a specifically spiritual poem, it does focus on common human truths. It explains that “people get hurt and get hard” but that justice and healing are available. It encourages us to “believe in cures and healing wells”, and reminds us that “a further shore is reachable from here”. And the phrase “someone is hearing the outcry and the birth-cry of new life” references the proximity of the other; whether God or human, and holds out the hope of support and joint endeavour for a better, more just future.

But when is this “once in a lifetime” that “justice can rise up” and “hope and history rhyme”? If left to our political leaders, I’m not sure it’s on the doorstep yet. It seems it may be at a time of our choosing; when we decide to act. The poet repeats his call: “Believe”. We may not be successful, but continue to believe. Our Faith presents us with notable precedents of that. We are Resurrection people. Believe, Hope, Act. Now is the time.

Br Peter Carroll,

CRA President.