The wall on Goddard Street, Newtown 2042

I have in my lifetime broken enough promises to my Lord and God [or to myself for those gentle readers who might share a different cosmology to mine] that I do not need for ‘the wall’ to remind me. The wall in question is on Goddard Street, Newtown, where I spent the early years of my life. I still walk up that little street, turning left to continue onto King Street, where our ancient café the Reno with other names continues to exist. Whenever I am in Sydney I will come here to chew the cud and to reminisce with my old ghosts. This week I was in Kingsgrove to spend time with Mother who was having eye surgery and to visit Father who is sleeping in Rookwood. ‘The wall’ is the side of an old building now splattered in graffiti. Years ago it ‘belonged’ to a notorious Greek nightclub, the Mykonos.

There are things which burn into the subconscious making them hard to forget, and typically they are events or encounters which contribute to our identity. Today I was in Newtown walking up Goddard and where normally I might simply acknowledge ‘the wall’ to move on, this time it was different. I had been thinking how long it had been since my last confession and I stopped to brush my left hand against it in self admonition. This was close to the spot where thirty-six years earlier I had slammed the underside of my closed hand in frustration, and in the process making one of my first [and ill-conceived] promises to God. When we “promise” something we quite literally ‘send it forward’ by making a declaration or giving an assurance.

Not surprisingly, soon afterwards I broke this promise.

I would make it a second time being none the wiser, in different places and in faraway worlds, in deserts and in cities, the same result. I broke it again. And I would struggle with this ‘thorn’ in the flesh for decades. But this is not the reason for this little journal entry. What I want to do here, is to especially encourage my younger readers to not despair if they have broken a promise, or indeed even a vow to our Father, Who art in heaven. Often enough our big promises to God and still to our earthly companions, could be made out of an anxiety to express the true intention of hearts or to reveal solidarity in a common cause. There are many reasons why we might feel strongly driven ‘to give our word’ to the deity or to a friend. It should not shock that most of us will in the end fail, that we will stumble and before too long become confronted with yet another instance of our breaking a promise. The feelings are more intense and dreadful for the religious if they feel they have ‘perjured’ themselves against their Creator. It does not help to spend the remainder of our lives in recrimination or self-blame and so becoming blind-sided to the many tremendous opportunities of visiting grace. We are not speaking here of impulsive promises or oaths, they should be resolutely avoided. And pledges should in no way be made lightly. So what to do if in a moment of spiritual fervour or youthful zeal we make a promise to the Most High only to have it broken soon after?

I hurt for having been too quick in the giving of my word. For a long time it was a yoke around the neck. And though I struggled much with the knowledge of the broken promise I did not despair that restoration would one day arrive to bring its consolation. For in the end, what does matter is the true intent of the heart [or the “will” which is behind all things as one of my favourite philosophers argued]. It is this honesty to be found in our souls [or in our “fragmented wills” as another profound thinker has said][1] and the desire to give the very best to our Maker that should comfort us. Ironically, it was this which is the authentic promise, the intent itself. We have not broken our word if only we should continue to strive towards its fulfilment. It is one of the most comforting and encouraging paradoxes to be found in the wisdom literature of the great religions that there are ways to make amends if we should go back on our word.[2] In this atmosphere of the spirit we are not dealing with ‘worldly’ contract law which can be terribly unforgiving.

I would remember these words from the psalter and weep, “I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips (Ps 89:34) and yet from the same book I received both my comfort and hope, “[t]he steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.” (Ps 37:23-24) We can be severely harsh with ourselves and this will rob us of wonderful opportunities and dim too much of our natural brightness. I still make promises to my Maker, and still I break them. Whether this is because of spiritual weakness or physical infirmity or the abiding desire to express my love to Him through grandiose declarations: “I promise that from this day onwards I will always be the first to ask forgiveness from the other.” [Okay, then, from this Monday…  the New Year at least… I start again]. Sounds familiar, does it not? I remember also, and alas, too well, those times when I was very close to losing my life in heavy seas off the New South Wales south coast and in the stormy skies above the Caribbean flying over to Puerto Rico, and the solemn promises made should I be delivered from the approaching darkness. These promises too, broken.

But when was it I first supposed that making a promise to change something was any more powerful than the simple joy of trying to do it.

[1] The two references here of course to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in the first place and to Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) in the second.

[2] In Islam, for instance, a broken promise to Allah is a serious act but there are a number of opportunities for expiation, such as to engage in acts of charity, or alms giving, or fasting. In Buddhism it is heavy karma to break a promise but once committed the direction is to straightaway get back into the path. In Judaism if a vow is made in error or unwittingly or if the person was not fully aware of the ramifications, the vow or oath can be declared to be null and void by a rabbi or a sage.

The realms of unconditional love

Gerringong, NSW

I was fortunate that this truth stumbled upon me when I was broken enough to receive it. Pride is a barrier to all things really important and is never wholly defeated. One of the most difficult and ‘objectionable’ of prayers aimed directly at the ego: Lord, I pray for anonymity.[1] Had I been a younger man when I feigned to be inclusive of my heterodox brethren and when in reality I was fundamentalist almost to the core, I would have been too proud or too arrogant, probably both, to get off the high-horse and see past my own life-legend.[2] This truth which presses on us is amazingly straightforward yet one of the hardest challenges to a member of a believing community, in particular to a believer who has invested years in the building and defending of their life-legend. This is not difficult to understand.

Good religious people with sincere and honest intentions want for their ‘Myth’ to be the right one,[3] for this will validate their life and give reason and meaning to the suffering and to the wounds along the way. It has been correctly pointed out for instance, that if we are to look for the unifying theme in the writings of Dostoyevsky, it is his exploration of the human condition centred about the need to be sure of at least one thing. Kierkegaard before him would ask a similar question of his readers, do we will the one thing and what is this one thing? And yet a believer need not abandon the consolation of their spiritual home to concede that others may make comparable claims as to the comprehension of the Right Way. Here is found the delicious irony: the truer and more profound one’s own religious experience within the believing community, that is for instance, the ‘more’ Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim… the more humble and cognizant one is of their own lowly position before the Almighty Creator. Some like the German-Swiss philosopher Frithjof Schuon have spoken of that which underlies religion, the religio perennis, or the religion of the heart, the religio cordis. 

Within this atmosphere of the mutual understanding of the uniqueness and preciousness of our neighbour, the more tender and compassionate does the heart become in acknowledging the right of the other to exist and to explore and to love. At its crux, terrorism has nothing to do with the practice of religion but is a movement of violence which makes use of and exploits both religious rhetoric and sacred paradigms. This is exactly what the ‘anti-theists’ have not been able or have not wanted to understand. Cultural Marxism (at least in the West and certainly post 1920’s) has played a big part in the establishment of the “religion is violent” narrative. Diving deeper into the Divine (or into “the Aleph” as some mystics might say) takes you further into the realms of unconditional Love and into the opposite direction of the bomb makers whatever their stripe. Ultimately, the greatest force for change on earth which neither yields nor breaks and is ancient even beyond the oldest stars, is that energy which has its source in the Light. Let us then not underestimate our own possibilities, for light  too we have learnt, can be reflected from dust.

One of the great joys in my teaching life was when one of my under-graduate students at the University of Wollongong (UOW) came to my office to thank me for re-igniting the religious zeal in her heart. I was surprised but more so very deeply moved. This student was a Muslim and I her teacher a Christian. This gifted young lady would go on to earn a highly commended doctorate and inspired both Katina and myself, her two thesis supervisors, in equal measure. The busier we are trying to live and to work out our own religion, the less time we will have to bury our neighbour’s. On the problematical question of religious plurality or ‘Ecumenism’ I am in free-fall somewhere between Karl Rahner’s “Anonymous Christian”, and John Hick’s “mutually inclusive inclusivism”. For many years I have held to the Apokatastasis.[4] Not as a dogma, but as a theologoumenon which is a theological opinion. Nowhere am I suggesting that doctrine is not important. Precisely because it is that we should not spend our time fighting over it, but rather we should be immersing ourselves in the understanding of its eschatological and soteriological implications.

There is an extraordinarily beautiful and telling admonition aimed at Peter by Jesus in the last chapter in the Gospel of John which proved defining for me as I battled with issues of my own faith and ministry. Peter, pointing to the younger disciple John and curious as to his future, asks Christ, “But Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me” (Jn 21:21-22). In other words: mind your own business, and go about your work.

George, Eleni, and Jeremy, my three beautiful children, should you ever read these little reflections from your dad when you are grown up, this is all that I would want for you to take away: hold fast onto the faith you have received and exchange it for nothing of the world and for nil of its promises; at the same time do not close your ears or limit your wonder to the unique stories of others who have gone on a different journey nor shut your eyes or your heart to the divine presence in the other who is standing before you; and be the first to offer to fill your neighbour’s cup with cool water. This alone would have made my life worth living.

[1] This little prayer uttered by an idealistic young clergyman in a hotel room in Athens one evening, might be better understood nowadays given the internet and the rise of social media, as more of a condition of the spirit and state of mind rather than an actuality or a possibility.

[2] By life-legend I simply want to term the story we write for ourselves to describe and to justify our decision making and personal history. That is, all of that which goes into the creation and development of our identity and world-view.  

[3] I will normally use myth close to the intentions of Carl Jung for whom “mythmaking” was a pathway for the unconscious part of our psyche to express itself. It is one of the ways of how the collective unconscious strives to become conscious.

[4] For an excellent summary of this theological opinion held by a number of the Church Fathers, see Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, (Penguin Books: London, 1993), 261-263.