Blog Archives

The lady with the lamp

6/25/2019

I went to my friend’s funeral this week. Few friends span a lifetime, but she was one of them. Her name was Joan, and I had known her for 70 years. Our lives weaved in and out of the inevitable changes of life and circumstances, but never waned.

She was everything I long to be. Her life overflowed with love and compassion and I’m not surprised she chose nursing as her path in life. It fitted her well and gave expression to her wonderfully kind and gentle heart.

There was a serenity about her, a peacefulness that washed over you whenever you were with her and a joy that danced in her eyes and shaped her mischievous sense of humour.

She was an example to me of life lived well, her passionate love for Jesus and her life poured out for others.

That’s what real friends do; hold a light for you to let you see the way ahead more clearly.

1949 at RPA

There’s an indefinable quality about friendship, a meeting of minds and hearts … elusive, intangible, but is there any more glorious moment than when someone ‘gets you’, when there’s no need for explanations, just a deep sense of being understood and known?

And if you are truly fortunate a meeting of souls, that deeply satisfying connection where silence can be a language just as powerful as words.

Graduation photo

Each of my friends brings something unique to my life. Just as no two people are the same, no two friendships will be the same. We offer each other the essence of who we are and a new breadth and depth is added to our lives. If I were to write a list of all the ways my friends have enriched my life, the list would be exceedingly long.

The deepest friendships are forged over time, through the ups and downs of life, through shared experiences and creating memories together. It’s forged in laughter, in tears and in the ordinariness of the everyday.

But true friendship is costly, not the Facebook friendship or even the let’s-catch-up-for-coffee friendship but the I’m-here-for-you-at-2am-if-you-need-me friendship, because friendship is a sacrifice for the good of the other.

That was the Joan type of friendship, sacrificial and generous. She didn’t miss a thing, sad eyes, furrowed brow or aching heart, she noticed them all and was a listening ear and a strong support. I always thought of her as a cup of cold water friend, practical, sensitive and involved.

I remember when my son and his best mate wanted to start an adventure club for boys at our church, the road wasn’t easy. But Joan was there cheering them on and becoming their greatest prayer support through those difficult days and beyond when many boys lives were changed through their Wilderness Adventure Group and no doubt her prayers.

My daughter has never forgotten Joan’s enthusiastic involvement in her 1920s themed 21st birthday party and her joy as Joan walked through the door dressed for the 1920s (Ist image above). But that was Joan, always an encouragement.

We all need a witness to our life, someone to cheer us on, to walk the rough patches with us and to celebrate the small victories. Someone to helps us glimpse ourselves with different eyes. Someone to help us be the best that we can be.

It's a precious thing to have a friend and an even greater privilege to be one.

It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being. John Joseph Powell

Crown Street Woman's Hospital

3 Comments

Shedding

6/18/2019

1 Comment

You know that drawer where you put all the odds and ends, the one full of things you might need one day but it turns out you rarely do? Well I have one of those and this week it had a clean out. I attacked it with uncharacteristic ruthlessness, discarding three quarters of its contents. If I hadn't used it in the previous twelve months, I figured I didn’t need it.

The drawer is now vacuumed, scrubbed and exquisitely tidy with just a handful of things, which I can see at a glance. It's a nice feeling. Funny isn’t it than getting rid of stuff can actually make you feel a little lighter and brighter.

Whether it's cluttered bench tops or desks, outgrown shirts or jeans languishing in wardrobe corners, out of date spices on pantry shelves or that fast accumulating stuff filling valuable space in the garage, shedding makes room for the fresh and new.

Shedding stuff, whether physical or emotional, opens the door to so much more.

That’s something nature seems to know instinctively. So many of the great secrets of living well are written across the landscape if we have eyes to read them.

A tree grows from the inside out and reaches a point where the bark is restricting its growth, where it can’t expand any more, so it cracks and sheds its restricting bark. Sometimes that’s a gentle shedding in small flakes. Other trees shed their bark more violently, in great sheets or ribbons, but always the tree is set free to flourish.

The whole process and what emerges from under the bark can be truly beautiful and one of the things I most love photographing.

But shedding what is holding back my growth never seems comfortable or beautiful. Whether it’s my expectations of others or myself that keep me stuck, or limiting beliefs about what I’m capable of, they become restrictions to me blossoming. We hold tight to false truths … that I’m less than adequate, that I need to be the perfect partner, parent or friend, that I’m not good enough, strong enough or clever enough.

When the bark is shed so too are the mosses, lichen and parasites which can harm the tree.

There are fears and anxieties that stop me stepping out into the unknown where growth beckons. Instead I cuddle under the warm quilt of familiarity. I allow caution to keep me prisoner and shame to coax me to fit in rather than stand out.

And maybe comparison is the worst prison warden of all. Once I allow myself to compare myself to others, I will always find someone who looks better, does better or seems wiser than me. Comparison kills the joy of being me.

How easy it is to hinder our growth by holding on to beliefs shaped by our past or to march to the drumbeat of the opinion of others. Those things are like the bark that the tree is wise enough to discard.

1 Comment

Jules Francois

6/11/2019

1 Comment

He is an enigma. A man who birthed a renowned art exhibition but never painted. A man so passionate about all things French that he changed his name to Jules François. So great was his obsession with work that he was admitted to a mental hospital. Yet a man of exceptional kindness, compassion and generosity.

His name is John Feltham Archibald. Last week when a friend and I visited the Archibald I became curious about the man behind the prize. Who was he? What motivated him? This week I got to 'know' him and I’m so glad I did.

Born in Geelong Victoria in 1856, he had only one ambition, to be a journalist. But the road to achieving his dream was somewhat convoluted and included time on the goldfields, which proved to be a defining influence in his life.

He endured the hardship of bush life, lived it first hand and encountered characters that were proverbial gold to his journalist’s heart ... argumentative miners, a pub keeper, Aboriginal elders, hard working Chinese diggers and a drunken padre.

At the age of 24, he and fellow journalist, John Hanes, pooled what little money they had, purchased a box of battered display type, put a deposit on a second hand printing press and rented a room in a ramshackle building at 107 Castlereagh Street, Sydney.

There in 1880 they launched the Bulletin, a radically different news magazine that quickly caught the imagination of Australians. Artfully capturing the picture of outback life, the day it arrived each week in the bush became known as Bully Day, a red letter day on the bush calendar. They would sit around on dusty verandahs and gather at watering holes, devouring stories and poems of the life they knew.

Archibald with Henry Lawson

It just as magically portrayed what was happening in the city and political life. Unlike so much of today’s media, controlled by dynasties and vested interests, Archibald gave his staff significant freedom and encouraged submissions from far and wide.

Many of the giants of Australian literature we know and love today climbed those narrow, well-worn stairs to his office and sat around his desk overflowed with papers and surrounded by a wall of pigeonholes crammed full of stories and poems waiting to be spoken.

Archibald was a genius at spotting talent even when it was buried under awkward sentences and wandering thoughts. He was an exceptional editor and called himself, “a soler and heeler of paragraphs”. It was said that his “tactful sub-editing helped Henry Lawson find his laconic and superbly succinct prose style” which Australians came to love and value.

But maybe his greatest attribute was his compassionate heart. He noticed if his worker’s trousers were wearing thin or their boots leaked. He asked if they had enough food for their families. When he discovered that Henry Lawson was struggling to make ends meet, he gave him five pounds and a ticket to Bourke, where Lawson wrote many of the poems so dear to our heart.

Packing Room prize

One of the outstanding entries in the junior Archibald section - painted by a 15 or 16 year old

Sadly Archibald was a workaholic, declining social engagement and almost living at his desk, an obsession that finally led to his admission to Callan Park Mental Hospital on several occasions. He died in 1919.

In his will, he bequeathed a significant part of his estate to launch what has become Australia’s most prestigious portrait prize. The idea came to him after he commissioned John Longstaff to paint a portrait of Henry Lawson. So delighted was he with the finished work that he saw the value of a portraiture prize.

He also bequeathed to Sydney the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park. His will stated that the fountain was to be created by a French designer and was indeed build in France and shipped to Australia.

But while Archibald is best remembered for his bequests to the city, I have no doubt his greatest legacy is in the lives of the people he helped use their gifts and through the Bulletin find their place in the world; people like Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson, Henry Kendall, Ethel Turner, CJ Dennis, Mary Gilmore and Norman Lindsay.

I guess for all of us, our legacy is less about what we leave in our will than what we leave in our life. Who stands a little taller, has stepped out with more courage to use their gifts or faced their difficulties with fresh hope because of some small part we’ve had in their lives? Maybe the investment of our love, our time and just being-there is the greatest legacy we can leave.

But I think the most valuable thing I learned from Archibald was that he worked with what he received, not discarding it, but soling and heeling it into something more beautiful and meaningful. I remember the days when we had our shoes repaired, when the bootmaker would work his magic and give them new life. Now we discard and replace them as we do so many things in our lives, difficult jobs, awkward people, things that aren't working out. Oh Lord, give me the eyes to see beyond the messiness and difficulties to find the gold worth discovering underneath.

1 Comment

A storm waster

6/4/2019

2 Comments

I came across this tree deep in the forest, and it took my breath away. It seemed like I caught it in the midst of a swirling dance, it’s green cloak shimmered in the morning light. It was like stumbling into an illustration from a children’s fairy story.

I sat for a long time on a mossy rock and drank in its beauty, wondering how long it had been a witness to the world, who had found shelter under its now fallen leaves and what storms and winds had shaped it into its elegant form; there had obviously been many.

That’s the thing I love about trees, they don’t resist the strong winds and storms and they grow stronger and shapelier in the process.

Craig Lounsborough said, “It is within the fury of the very storms within which I cower that I find resources for my growth that are entirely absent on calmer days.” Then he asks himself an interesting question, “Am I a storm-waster?”

Do I resist the very storm which has the capacity to make me stronger, to shape me into a more compassionate, more understanding person? I think that’s been true of me on a number of occasions; I’ve chosen safety rather than face the full force of the storm.

I know my prayers are more often about safe keeping than about courage and strength to face whatever comes. I wonder how much I’ve sacrificed of my growth in the process?

We learn courage by being courageous and we’re never going to get those opportunities on calm days in safe waters.

The other thought that came to me as I sat looking at the tree in all its broken loveliness was that it stood as the sum total of all the storms it had weathered and all the battles it had endured, yet a more majestic tree it would be hard to find. The scars had only added to its beauty.

Our scars come from the painful events that come unbidden in our lives but also from the times we take the courage to step out with vulnerability, willing to share our imperfections, mistakes and stuff ups. Sometimes that takes an even greater courage.

My last job required me to speak in public, something that terrified me to the core, so I booked into a 10 week Toast Master’s course. Every single week I would have to write and present a speech to the group whose sole responsibility was to judge me.

There was a time keeper with his stopwatch, someone responsible for counting my ums and ahs, someone else who scored points for various parts of my speech and presentation and everyone in the group gave me a score out of ten and written feedback. Every night was pure agony, I felt exposed and inadequate amongst so many accomplished speakers but I leant as much about life in those weeks as I did about public speaking.

About twelve months later I stood and delivered a speech at my daughter’s wedding and that night people were brought to tears. In that moment I realised that all the pain and embarrassment had not been wasted, that growth and change often come at great personal cost, but it was worth every bit.

I have a picture of the tree in my office now, a reminder to allow the uncomfortable, uncertain and painful times to be my teacher and grow in me greater courage, faith, compassion, resilience and a deeper understanding of myself. For light shines brightest through our brokenness.

2 Comments

The lady with the lamp

Shedding

Jules Francois

A storm waster

Author

Archives

Categories