Anglican Communion News Service

From the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral Melbourne
the Very Revd David Richardson

[Anglican Media Melbourne] "She looks into my old, foolish face, sees through it I think, sees below the ruination, hears behind the senseless, ceaseless chatter, sees right down to the despair but also beyond to the terrific thing there really is in me, the joy I would have in God and she should have in life which come to much the same thing."

Barbie Batchelor is a character in The Towers of Silence, the third volume of the Raj Quartet by Paul Scott. Here she describes her gratitude to know that there is at least one person in the world - the young woman Sarah Leyton - who sees Barbie for who she is.

What would it be like to be seen in that way? Imagine seeing that look of recognition in someone else's eye and knowing that they have seen the "terrific thing" that you have in you. That's not what usually happens. What we normally see when, in our myopia we look into the eyes of another, is silliness, greed, self-deception. It seems as if the pain and bankruptcy of history is played out time and again in life after life. It's the same old story of the rich and the poor, the hungry and the greedy, the oppressed and oppressor, locked in one cycle after another in individual lives, in families, in dynasties, in politics.

Are our personal lives then no more than the acting our of a drama whose script is already written and not of our control? Is our much-vaunted freedom merely illusory?

For those of us who work at St Paul's Cathedral Melbourne the question is posed with a terrifying bluntness. Heroin is currently costly and difficult to access. So, the spent syringes scattered around the building have been succeeded by aerosol paint-infused plastic bags and spray cans. The details are different but the tragedy is the same.

Humans tell stories to discern patterns, and we look to patterns to make some sense of our lives. The Church has many stories, like this one: once upon a time there was a man and a woman; a snake and a tree and a garden. But at this time of year, it tells another story as well, of another tree, fashioned into a Cross; another garden, not Eden but Gethsemane. There is a new woman and a new man in this story, too.

Many scenes of the crucifixion of Jesus have a skull at the foot of the Cross. It is Adam's skull, the first man, at the foot of a new tree on which the new man hangs. The Cross is a sign of a new beginning. The story of the fall of humanity has an antidote in the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. This is a way of penetrating our mystery and finding out how we got lost and how we're to find our way home. This longer story puts our personal ones into perspective; we need the larger one to burst into the centre of our little stories to give us new life and to lead us back to the "terrific thing" that there is in each one of us.

Christianity's claim is that of us is part of a larger story, a more generous story that we have ever imagined. Whatever story we like to tell about ourselves - about how we are victims, or about how much we've made of ourselves, about how we couldn't help it or about how we couldn't help them - Christianity explores all our protective myths by saying, "You aren't alone, you're part of a great and wonderful communal story about a new man, a new woman, a new garden, a new tree. And it is the very newness of it that is the terrific thing, and it is already happening, already at work".

As I look at the sadness outside my office window, talk to the people among the discarded plastic bags and listen to their stories, I wonder what might be achieved if each of us were to let the story of the new woman, the new man, the new garden and the new tree take root. Possibly, just possibly, we might see through someone to the terrific thing they are and by doing so set them free. Imagine what it might mean to someone if we could see beyond the chatter, the despair, the meanness, the addiction, to the terrific thing that is truly in them, truly in us.