Seminary: The most difficult thing would be to change ourselves

Sydney-Gerringong

In Sydney this morning I had an interesting encounter with a young person at a bookstore when the conversation for one reason turned to seminaries (from the Latin seminarium for “seed plot”). Chance meetings can prove a catalyst to go back into past stories of our lives. I hope one day that I might be able to write down my own seminary experience, the place where some of us go that we might receive an education in theology. It is only afterwards we learn those places are in reality but a training ground for spiritual survival. Even now and after almost four decades, it is not an easy thing for me to revisit this period of my life. Allow me, if you will, to share but a small reflection going back to those times.

This college is unique—and it belongs to all of us. It could be said that it has an Australian body, a Greek mind, a bilingual tongue, and a heart that is distinctively Orthodox. (Dimitri Kepreotes, SAGOTC Students Yearbook, 1988)

Following the final address of our Archbishop Stylianos, His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos read a warm message from His Holiness Patriarch Demetrios. This concluded the official opening and dedication of our new College; the dream was over and the reality of it all was just about to begin. (Spiros Haralambous, SAGOTC Students Yearbook, 1986)

Around fourteen young men of different dispositions and backgrounds started out in our first year of seminary in 1986 as the inaugural class of this new theological school in Australia (being an Eastern Orthodox institution and an accredited member of the Sydney College of Divinity SCD it was the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere). Some of us believed we were going to change the world. No more than a few weeks had passed and then there were nine. The “Messiah Complex” which afflicts a large number of seminarians did not last long. We were enthusiastic but hugely foolhardy in our aspirations. Those of us left after that initial loss of numbers were compelled to lower our original enthusiasm and expectations. Now it was simpler, or so we thought, how are we going to change the already compressing atmosphere of our new place of learning. Surely, we could at least do this—could we not? No, not even this. It is true I also discovered, what a discerning soul once said about seminaries, that they will (as a rule) “relegate Jesus to the background.” Not too many more weeks would pass and then we were down to seven.

Finally, let it be said that nothing good comes easy: should you be sincere in studying a “faithful theology” be prepared to carry thy cross. (M. G. Michael (Ed.), SAGOTC Students Yearbook, 1986)

We have triumphed in that we have grown and learnt to accept not only our responsibilities, but our limitations as well, to be more sensitive to our brother’s needs, to realize the importance of study—more importantly, to kneel in prayer. We have failed in that we could have been less assertive, less demanding, slower to anger and reprove, more humble. (Fr. Jeremiah Michael (Ed.), SAGOTC Students Yearbook 1988)

At the start of the second year two more of the younger seminarians would leave. We were now officially down to the “pioneering five”, as our little group would come to be known. As time progressed and each one of us would do battle with their own particular demons and personal disappointments, we arrived at the hardest and most difficult realization of them all—the most difficult thing would be to change ourselves. Metanoia does not play games. I should have known better. I was one of the older seminarians, a former police officer and already a graduate of another academic institution. I was twenty-five years old. Yet, even I would fall into these deep traps. Now, almost forty years later, I continue to fight with the last of these admissions—that indeed, the road to the restoration of the self is not only arduous but also long-lasting. Which, I must confess, has not become any easier and not for any lack of belief. Unless we learn to forgive but more importantly ask to be forgiven, we will not make spiritual progress. Human nature is terribly complex and we can be deceived even by the noblest of our ideals and intentions. So, please, give each other the room and space to grow and to evolve. Who among us has not been broken? The Japanese art of kintsugi has a great deal to teach us. We cannot ever fully know the background story of another soul’s journey or how our actions might adversely hurt them. These things, as well, you learn in a seminary. To teach the Divine Word, and to preach the Gospel, the “Good News”, is not to be taken lightly:

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (Jm. 3:1)

Outside some of the basics which we were able to collect over the four years of study (alas to afterwards even mangle many of those lessons), there remain two enduringly meaningful compensations from that time. First, we have the spirit within us to endure through almost anything so long as we have a reason, that is, a “meaningfulness” to persevere. Second, the most beautiful gift we can offer the other is compassion, that is, to “suffer with the other”—and that any pastoral theology however impressive in its exposition bereft of this charism is entirely, and absolutely without meaning. Lest, I have discouraged any soul from attending seminary (and this is certainly not my intention) there will be great days of spiritual delight, too, when you will believe with all of your heart and mind that here in this place—the sometimes “furnace”—is precisely where you had to come. You will learn to pray if indeed this is the desire of your heart and you will fall to your knees in earnest supplication. Studying theology is good. Practising the content of theology is even better. My only purpose here to forewarn you it is an arena where you must be well prepared to engage in spiritual warfare, at times brutal, with the self and the “bad” side of the ego. Pressures will arrive from every side. You will in all likelihood lose friends. You will be betrayed by some in whom you have placed your trust and perhaps had even loved. Your passions will surely be magnified. We come to seminaries wanting to be a Bonhoeffer or a Spurgeon or a Saint Maximus the Confessor, and then reality hits home hard. Above all let us work diligently on our own piece of clay and where we can help the other to do the same. For this is our lifelong task. Along the lines of what Carl Jung termed, “individuation” (the process of self-realization). We are made in the “image” but we forever work towards the “likeness”. I have thought of Christ’s “forty days and forty nights” (Matt. 4:1-11) in the desert as an analogy in some ways to the seminarian’s own testing—and especially if it leads to the priesthood.

All five who remained were ordained. Of these five, one would later ask to be relieved of their Holy Orders. This fellow was me. A decision, I must also confess, one cannot ever rightly find peace with. Particularly, if you belong to a believing community with entrenched religio-cultural values which are parts of each other. Yet, there is no escaping the fact that I took my hand off the plough and I will one day have to give an account to my Lord. Though I have referred to myself as a theologian, I do not wish to be known as one. The word alone, theologos (“one who speaks of God”), terrifies me for its implications and for the truth that I have every day fallen short of the mark. I am, indeed, the very least of the brethren. It is enough to ponder on the grace and mercies of our Creator. To be occasionally filled with an overwhelming awe—and to find opportunities to share this awe of the “tremendous mystery” with our neighbour. During our long walks down by the edge of the Pacific, that I might keep in practice, our beautiful husky, Mishka, will listen patiently as I ‘sermonize’ to her on the vitalness of endurance. Other times I will preach to the fish and the rocks and the trees, for all things are moving towards their transfiguration. This has now been my ‘captive’ congregation since the time of my exile. The photo which I have posted here after much toing and froing, I had not been able to hold for a long time. It is fine now. I have come to be grateful for that hour. I have understood a lot more of that journey in the ensuing years. And why it was necessary for me to cross this path. In spite of that, good things are never too far away for as the Scriptures say: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

MG Michael Family Archives

Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, 1987

September 25th 2010

Gerringong, NSW

Caption: The con-celebration in Rome was preceded with a meeting in 1979 between the two Primates held in the Fener.

There are moments in our lives which leave us with such a strong impression that the picture will fade little with the passing of time. One of these instances I experienced in Rome, in December of 1987. I was twenty-seven years old, recently ordained into the holy diaconate of the Eastern Orthodox Church, yet here I was about to witness one of the most significant events in the relations between the two great churches since the “official” schism of 1054.[1] I had been travelling through Switzerland and was in Zermatt where I had decided to stop for a few days, but was able to make some fast changes to my travel itinerary hop on an express train and make it to the Eternal City. It would be just in time for the highly controversial con-celebration in Saint Peter’s Basilica between Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Demetrios I of Constantinople. Some days earlier the two religious leaders issued a joint-declaration from the Vatican stressing “the fraternal spirit between the churches.”[2] This meeting would also coincide with the anniversary of 1200 years from the convening of the 7th Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787.[3] In a solemn ceremony, in a place of worship where soaring architecture and astonishing art alone could strike you speechless, the Primates of West and East together recited in Greek the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as originally put down in 381 AD:[4] without the filioque [“and from the Son”].[5] From that hour ecumenism careered into a new dimension and we would in the following decades become witness to the extreme articulations of both ‘liberals’ and ‘die-hard’ fundamentalists.[6] I believe, the implications of that great moment were not fully seized or realized. Even so, the foundation stone, directly implied in Ephesians 4:1-16 [‘the unity of the church’], has been forever put in place. 

Outside in Saint Peter’s Square among the throng of thousands happy enough to witness the momentous event on the giant monitors, another much smaller act was about to unfold. Entry into the Basilica on that day was by a special ticket, though it was plain enough to see that it was still hugely overcrowded. I was thinking how memorable it would be to witness it all from the inside. To be part of this historic occasion as it actually happened. It was then that I was approached by a nun who appeared to have been the superior of a small group of religious in her company. I could not rightly guess her age on account of her veil, but her face though visibly pale, was strikingly handsome. She smiled with the expected reserve of an experienced religious and promptly introduced herself, “Good morning Father, I am Sister Benedicta.” All the while during this short exchange Sister ‘Benedicta’ kept her hands clasped in front of her blue habit. A rosary with a pearl crucifix was intertwined between her fingers. She asked whether I would accept the biglietto of one of her group who at the last minute could not be there. It would still prove a challenge to make my way to the entrance, let alone get in. I thanked her and took the ticket.

I would have liked to talk to this softly-spoken woman, whose accent betrayed a French background, to have asked something of her life, but before I could rightly thank her, she and her little troop disappeared into the growing mass of people. Many years later in Bucharest when I had similarly lost the “old man” in the maddening rush of afternoon traffic, I would once more remember losing her, too, in the crowd. I reflect as I write this entry many years later, if I really did ‘lose’ them or if [for some reason] it was an unconscious act which I willed to happen: “[a]nd this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.” These disarming words from the Serbian poet Dejan Stojanovic challenge me more regularly as time flashes past and I do further battle with the twin concepts of ‘community’ and ‘solitude’.

I pushed and shoved through this great sea of animated bodies to get to my destination. At last after showing my ticket to the officials I was treated with new found respect and escorted to the front of Saint Peter’s Basilica. My seat was only a few rows behind the impressive congregation of VIPs. The sister’s friend must have been somebody quite important to have been allotted a seat this close to the historic proceedings. Whose place did I take? And why in that mass of people did she choose me? There in the company of cardinals and bishops, and of politicians and celebrities, I became increasingly agitated. At the end of these solemn proceedings together with the other clergy in those front rows, this little boy with the peculiar name from Newtown would meet the Pope. As for the genial Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox [“the first amongst equals”] I would meet again in the Fener during a Christmas liturgy at the Church of Saint George in Istanbul. I felt my chest puff up and my head begin to spin. Clichés are not altogether redundant. One moment I wanted it all and knew that I could make it happen. For such are the deadly games which the ego, or better still ‘the id’ can play on us, to fuel us with a heightened sense of self-importance. Much of the ‘hard work’ I had reasoned was already done. All the big boxes [education and network] were ticked. A few minutes later I was deeply sickened by what I was feeling and realized that such high-places were not meant for me. I was possessed with too much ‘bad’ pride which I could feel running through me like the foreboding sense of mortality, and I would need to fight against it for the remainder of my life. From that time onwards whenever such opportunities might again present themselves to me, I would have to make sure to ‘uproot’ myself. And flee into the darkness in search of the ‘compensation’. This I would do more than once. I do not wish to pretend it was easy.

It never was. This need to recognize my voice.

[1] https://www.patriarchate.org/meetings-between-ecumenical-patriarchs-and-popes-of-rome-through-history

[2] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/joint-declaration-8155

[3] https://www.apostolicpilgrimage.org/meetings-of-popes-patriarchs

[4] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Nicene-Constantinopolitan_Creed

[5] http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/orthodox/filioque-church-dividing-issue-english.cfm 

[6] http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/hallam_orthodoxy_ecumenism.html

Pastoral experience and the practise of compassion

“Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.” (Henri Nouwen)

Many times I would be humbled if not completely heartbroken by my pastoral experience and it was this practical expression of the priesthood which often gave meaning and dimension to my calling. It was an education into the human condition not taught in institutions of higher learning and only occasionally captured in literature dealing with loss and suffering. It is difficult, if not impossible to be taught compassion. It is like a naturally good singing voice, you either have it or you do not. To be confronted head-on with absolute loss, some of this sudden and violent, some of it slow and agonizing, was a fast and hard lesson into the reality of unfathomable pain and the dreadfulness of death.

The one thing I could not accept even from the start of my little ministry was the ‘pious’ response to death, and I did try hard to avoid it. I am sure, however, that even with the best intentions I was not always successful. It was above all painful to listen to indefensible nonsense when it involved the death of a child when the words came from the mouth of a priest who should have known better, “A. is now with God, the Lord needed another angel.”  This is not the loving Creator of things both “seen and unseen” but little more than a cosmic psychopath. C.S. Lewis reflected with brutal honesty on the heavy grief of losing his beloved wife:

“It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”[1]

Mother Maria of Paris writing agonizingly and yet without the abandonment of hope, after the death of her beloved child:

“Into the black, yawning grave fly all hopes, plans, habits, calculations and, above all, meaning: the meaning of life… Meaning has lost its meaning, and another incomprehensible Meaning has caused wings to grow at one’s back… And I think that anyone who has had this experience of eternity, if only once; who has understood the way he is going, if only once; who has seen the One who goes before him, if only once- such a person will find it hard to turn aside from this path: to him all comfort will seem ephemeral, all treasure valueless, all companions unnecessary, if amongst them he fails to see the One Companion, carrying his Cross.”[2]

It goes without saying, I do not hold the answer, but I have made some reasonable peace with the hard reality of loss both in the context of my own faith and in the discernible movement of transfiguring love.[3] Like many of us, I too have experienced profound loss, and like most of us, it has for a season come close to paralysing me. I have yet to completely come to grips with the passing away of one side of our entire family or my darling Katina’s four miscarriages. I spoke of ‘transfiguring’ love, for this has been the implication and consequence of Christ’s own death and how from that darkest day in our human history, came the greatest solace to the human race, that death is not the end.[4] But this belief founded in a religious faith does not exclude those who are not religious, for the underlying lesson, the ‘meaningfulness’ of the resurrection [even if we should only accept it as a metaphor] is that death does not mean inertia. It is a movement and a response [both for the living and dead] from one condition into an other. There is hope for a better tomorrow, and should we endure through the dark night, there will come a time when at least something of our suffering, will make some sense. As impossible as it is to accept when pain has no words, a time of solace will come. And this ‘dealing’ will arrive for each one of us differently, at a different time and in a different way. For suffering is almost always an intensely personal experience. Even if in the meantime our loss is to be redeemed no more than with our dignity in the face of an overwhelming blackness, and our refusal to be fully broken.

My brave young friend Leo

I have been blessed to have encountered genuinely courageous souls, amazed at the vast and often immeasurable endurance of the human spirit. Hospitals and grave-yards are the unadulterated universities of our world. It is in these places of unmistakeable reality we can measure ourselves and learn to heal and to forgive. I met Leo when I was still in the early stages of my ministry, starry-eyed and believing that I could make a difference. I would often make unannounced visits at hospitals and do not remember ever being turned away. In a pocket to my cassock I kept a carefully folded piece of white paper. On it I would register the names of all those I would visit and next to their name put down the colour of their eyes. There you are, I share with you one of my great secrets. We should look into each other’s eyes more often. It is all there, the unabridged history of a life.

Leo K., a young man in his early twenties had been involved in a horrific accident with the worst of all possible results: quadriplegia with locked-in syndrome [LIS]. He was fully conscious but trapped inside his body. Neither able to move nor to speak. A drunkard had disregarded a stop sign and crashed head-on into the beautiful boy who was riding his motor-cycle. The next time my brave young friend was to wake up it would be without movement in his limbs and without his voice. Until his death a few months later, he would only be able to communicate with his eyes. I would pray some silent prayers. Other times I would want to hold him in my arms. Did he like to dance? I am sad that was something I never had the chance to ask.

Leo and I would communicate using a magnetic board with red letters. I would point to a letter and he would blink at the right place. Then we would move on to the next one, soon we managed to work out short cuts and this made things simpler. So we were able to drift into other places and explore additional modes of communication. Not once did he complain or express a desire to die. Often he would be smiling. His heart was at peace. Of course, needless to say nothing of this was easy. It took titanic strength. Years later when horrifying thoughts of suicide would unrelentingly torment me, I would many times recollect him and hold back until the next day. I asked Leo if it was okay for me to bring a recording of the Gospel of John. He replied, “Y.” I asked him if he still believed. It was the same response, “Y”. There were other things we spoke about as well, including rugby league. He told me he was a fan of the Sydney Roosters. Leo, who had the most penetrating green eyes, died from pneumonia a few days before he was due to fly out to Moscow for some cutting-edge treatment.

One afternoon I visited Leo with a new seminarian. He said to me, “[w]e have nothing to complain about, look at Leo.” This especially upset me. We should not find comfort in the suffering of another nor look upon suffering with pity nor patronize the wounded. ‘Feeling sorry’ helps no one and can diminish our companion’s understanding of hopefulness. On some bowed stringed instruments we find metal strings, they vibrate in sympathy with the stopped strings. These are not touched with the fingers or the bow. They are called sympathetic strings. Compassion is something like that, to feel sorrow for the sufferings or misfortunes of another. Compassion [from the L. compati ‘suffer with’] has much in common with that glorious word: sympathy. What is sympathy? It is derived from the Greek sympάtheίa which literally means “feeling with another.” It is good to be a ‘sympathetic string’. Yet it is not always easy and it can only happen in small increments of grace like the baby steps we take to enter into the mystery of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37).

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

At the conclusion of the last class when I was teaching regularly at the university, I would suggest a reading list to my students which was outside our information and communication technology (ICT) bibliography. This list included authors such as Primo Levi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Viktor Frankl, and Jean-Dominique Bauby. JDB the editor of the French fashion magazine ELLE was made famous by his incredible book (which was published two days before he died), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.[5] In 1995 at the age of 43 he suffered the brain stem stroke (the brain stem passes the brain’s motor commands to the body) which causes locked-in syndrome. Bauby with the help of some good people, particularly Claude Mendibil, wrote and edited his memoir one letter at a time with the only part of his body that he could still control… his left eyelid. He did this similarly to the way I would communicate with Leo, by using a board with letters. This type of system is often called partner assisted scanning (PAS). And like Leo, he too, would die of pneumonia.

[1] The Quotable Lewis, Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root (editors), (Tyndale House Publishers, Illinois, 1990), 149f.

[2] https://incommunion.org/2004/10/18/saint-of-the-open-door/

[3] ‘The paradox of suffering and evil,’ says Nicholas Berdyaev [whom Bishop Kallistos cites in The Orthodox Way], ‘is resolved in the experience of compassion and love.’ These oft quoted words point back to the Cross but also to Saint Paul who understands suffering as a participation in the mystery of Christ (Phil. 3:8-11).

[4] The Paschal homily of Saint John Chrysostom (c.349-407) read on the Sunday of the Resurrection continues to inspire and to comfort believers across Christendom: http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/sermon.htm

[5] https://www.amazon.com/Diving-Bell-Butterfly-Memoir

On the First Years at Sydney University

Kingsgrove, NSW

In 1981 with an amount of street-wise after resigning from the Police Force, I commenced on the first of my degrees, a Bachelor of Arts at Sydney University.[1] Without too much thought for future employment, not uncommon for those of us enrolled in the much deprecated Arts, I selected my four core units of study after the requisite hand-to-hand combat with the Faculty’s hefty handbook: General Philosophy, Modern Greek, Linguistics and Government. I relished the three years it took to complete this degree, above all the pleasure of discovering a great read and as C.S. Lewis might add, ‘never again to be completely alone’. This passionate love for books surprised me for though I was an inquisitive child and liked to read, I was no more than average at school with some occasional results in English and History. Another critical thing I came to quickly appreciate was the importance of a good teacher. Often I would select a subject if it was taught by someone with a reputation as a charismatic instructor.

During these first impressionable years of my introduction to tertiary studies I was enormously fortunate to study under some inspirational teachers, including the internationally renowned linguist Michael Halliday[2] the originator of systemic functional grammar (SFG) and the legendary political analyst and founding editor of Media International Australia (MIA) Henry Mayer.[3] It was a tremendous thrill too, to finally sit in the lecture room of the famous duo of Modern Greek scholars Michael Jeffreys and Alfred Vincent to hear these neohellinist Englishmen analyse and read the major Greek poets in their original tongue![4] The philosophers John Burnheim, Lloyd Reinhartd, and W.A. Suchting each a reference point in their own right, instilled in us the drive and motivation towards higher learning.[5] J.B. [Pragmatism] tall and dignified a former Catholic priest he was the very definition of a philosopher both in speech and demeanour; L.R. [the Ancient Greeks] was at the same time hugely erudite and unapologetically bawdy; W.A.S. [Marxism] urbane and outwardly relaxed but totally tenacious on the inside. There were other splendid scholars as well and to have walked in the shadow of these learned and enthusiastic academic personalities was one of life’s milestones.[6] And in an era, too, without the disruption of the iPad or mobile when we really had to listen and to fervently take down notes (there is still a deep indentation on the tip of my middle finger in that place where my pen was hard pressed).

The lecturer who would have the strongest influence and inspire my life-long interest in philosophy, and more specifically in existentialism, was Paul Crittenden (formerly a Catholic priest and still in holy orders when I sat in his classes).[7] This compassionate and genuinely discerning philosopher’s lectures on Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard in particular, were responsible for opening up new modes of thinking in me. I would not view the world or understand myself in quite the same away again. Things were not as simple or as ‘linear’ as I once might have imagined or wanted them to be. My early brand of Christian fundamentalism, thankfully, would not stand a chance. Then there were those ‘grey areas’ particularly to do with the fundamental nature of being and knowledge, where no amount of scaffolding would rise high enough for the definitive answer once the taste for “doubting” had been ignited (as the disciple Thomas himself would discover wanting to plunge his fingers into the wounds of his teacher).

From these significant years I would also delight in the discovery of such literary genii as Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Kafka, Kazantzakis, Sartre, Beckett, Camus, and Hemingway. But of course not in equal measure. Sartre I would abandon, Beckett I would still occasionally visit (and remain grateful for his ‘introduction’ to Joyce but from whom I would also later depart company). To the others I would remain a dedicated reader from that time onwards. Clearly these are not all “existentialists”.[8] It remains disappointing that the general perception continues to be that ‘existentialist literature’ only deals with despair and alienation (or the absurd i.e. Beckett). And Camus, himself, would distance himself from any such direct affiliation. I became fascinated in the collective contribution of the pre-Socratics to our philosophical and scientific traditions and awe-struck like most neophytes with Plato’s gigantic contribution to western thought. There was also Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Pascal, Locke, Hume, Marx, and the Pragmatists. The Department of General Philosophy with promises of boozy parties and merriment (the infamous ‘philosophy wars’ were still ongoing)[9] threw everything and anyone at us, including the now very highly regarded but then much younger Stephen Gaukroger lecturing on Karl Popper and the philosophy of science.[10]

On the whole this was a wonderful time with the making of new friendships [Kay, Georgina, Judy, Paul, John, Rodney, Thomas … where are you] confidence very high, and the OCD under some tolerable control. Except for those days when a trigger would set if off, more often than not when I would be in the library (either at Fisher or up the road at Moore College) having to “solve” the discrepancies of the Bible. It was also during the last year of this degree when I was offered philosophy honours but declined to start on my theological studies, that I would begin my first meaningful reading of the Church Fathers.[11]

I loved Fisher Library, that overwhelming colossal hive of books, but it often proved difficult to go there. The books are out of place… put them right, Michael… put them right… by year; by colour; by height… symmetry… there must be symmetry. “Oh, I am so sorry. Are you closing?” So I started to buy the books on our reading lists. At home, on my shelves, they would sit just right. No gaps… unless absolutely necessary. I would keep awake to read, not that I could ever understand it all. Not much of this bottomless sea of oscillating words would stay in my head or make good sense to me; it would take many years for some sort of practical comprehension of the fundamentals to start filtering in. I like very much what Ezra Pound has said, “[m]en do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.” This process of discovery will not end and is what makes learning exhilarating, having to know. I would dip into as many of the other greats as I could, Homer, and Dante, and the plays of Shakespeare. These demon story-tellers would manage to stock more revelation into one or two heart-stopping paragraphs than others might manage in a hundred pages.

This was a vibrant universe of exotic names and magical writing. I desired to touch and to taste as much of this world as I could. Tolle et lege [take up and read] as Saint Augustine continues to prompt. Later on when I was better equipped there would be time enough for the concentrated reading of these writers and the others that I would uncover. For now the emphasis was more in the doing than in the being: an accumulation without the necessary sorting. A dumping ground, hopefully a fertile one, for beautiful words and noble ideas. I had decided that my education would not stop here. But this would lead to another question, and this had to do with “canon” which would many years later become the central focus of my doctorate. How much of an author’s canon must we read before we can genuinely pass any reasonable judgement or criticism on their work? Is it enough to have read four or five of Shakespeare’s plays to join in the conversation? How much of Karl Marx or John Maynard Keynes, for example, must we have read before we can damn one and praise the other? What if we have only managed Wittgenstein’s Blue Book notes but not yet made it to the Brown Book? Can we still make some reasonable observations on Plato or Aristotle if we have not spent decades reading them as Heidegger might want? There are Christians who still do not agree on the final composition of the Old Testament canon and yet they consider it inspired by God.

I have found that one of the ways around this problem is to acknowledge our limits and be clear as to where we set our margins: and what other ancillary readings we are introducing into the discussion to inform our argument. For ultimately we are all, whether professor reading the latest journal or store keeper reading the local newspaper, reading out of context.[12] No one can claim to see the entire Picture or to comprehend the profundity of the 'knowledge canon'. I remember reading in some place, the last person on earth whom we could reasonably assume to have possessed all of the knowledge available to him during the course of his life was the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 BCE). We cannot solve the ‘problem’ of knowledge, “[t]here are only different ways of understanding our world, some of which work better for some kinds of questions, and some of which work better for others.” This might not be ideal or acceptable to some, but as the philosopher and linguist Ray Jackendoff writes in his stimulating A User’s Guide to Thought and Meaning where he also distinguishes between rational and intuitive thinking, “…it’s the best we can do, so we’d better learn to live with it.”[13] In the fifth century BCE we were bequeathed one of the famous dictums and doubtless the single most important lesson of relativism from the Greek philosopher Protagoras, “[m]an is the measure of all things.” Or alternatively, that knowledge itself is perspectival. [14]  Regrettably, for most of us, we arrive at this truth when we are way too deep into our lives for it to make any real difference.

Like when this generation will grow up to find that “browser knowledge” has robbed them of the deep reservoirs of wisdom and “surfing the net” of the best years of their lives.

[1] http://sydney.edu.au/about-us.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Halliday

[3] http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mayer-henry-17251

[4] http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/biog_jeffreys_michael.shtml

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burnheim

[6] A poignant moment a few years ago when I was by now a lecturer myself at UOW to find that another of my favourite lecturers was at this time a Fellow at the same institution, an eminent Australian philosopher in her own right, Denise Russell (Rationality and Irrationality). Karen Neander who was with John Hopkins at this time one of my best tutors (Sanity and Madness).

[7] http://www.amazon.com/Changing-Orders-Scenes-Clerical-Academic/dp/1876040866

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a-8xBbr05Y

[9] Or alternatively “The Sydney Philosophy Disturbances” http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gaukroger

[11] My ‘discovery’ of the Church Fathers during this period was seminal in my future understanding of Church History and the development of Christian doctrine. The first patristic literature I made efforts to read at that time were compilations from Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, and ‘copper guts’ himself Origen.

[12] I have only recently come across this informative paper from Jack A. Meacham where he dissects the intriguing question of the connection between wisdom, the context of knowledge, and our traditional models of intelligence: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240419729_Wisdom_and_the_context_of_knowledge_Knowing_that_one_doesn%27t_know

[13] http://www.amazon.com/A-Users-Guide-Thought-Meaning/dp/019969320

[14] Though I have personally qualified that statement in my own life with another equally famous motto, that of the eleventh century philosopher and theologian Saint Anselm, fides quaerens intellectum [faith seeking understanding].