The Bushfires and the Great Australian Spirit

Gerringong, NSW

Credit: Sam Markham took this photo approximately 20 minutes after a firestorm tore through his family's home. (Instagram / sam_markham_)

Bushfires in Australia when “tree stumps are kilns” and the land is covered with “red-black wounds” (Les Murray, Late Summer Fires) are certainly not new. They have been elemental to living in this land Down Under for timeless generations. They are an “ever-present part of life.”[1] We have almost become used to them, if that could ever be possible, and we might sometimes speak a little too casually of the ‘bushfire season’. Different parts of the continent given the vastness of our country experience this fiery season both in winter (dry) and in summer (hot) conditions. But it has become increasingly ferocious, where perhaps a more descriptive word for these huge fast-moving firestorms would be mega-blaze. We have had the real bad ones like the Tasmanian Black Tuesday Bushfires (1967), the South Australian and Victorian Ash Wednesday Bushfires (1983), and more recently one of our worst natural disasters the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires. Not surprising then, that we have become more acutely sensitive to both the short- and long-term consequences of these “late summer fires”.[2] And yet, these ones we are currently living through, described by many in the middle of these infernos “as hell on earth”, are like no others we have seen.[3] Australian records for its highest-ever temperatures have been consistently topped together with a number of towns during these months identified as the hottest places on Earth. These fires have not surprisingly caught the attention of the world and it has rightly asked questions as to our preparedness. But how does one prepare for something as terrible as this, for the unprecedented. The inferno, this ‘mega-blaze’, we are living through, even as I write [from the South Coast itself], has even shocked hardened firefighter veterans with flames in some instances reaching heights of over 40 metres.[4] As a scholar of the Apocalypse of John, I can say, that the apocalyptic imagery that has been used by many of the first responders, and by those brave souls in the thick of the bushfires and the ‘devilishly twisted’ pyrocumulus clouds, is not an exaggeration. Where within minutes day turns to pitch black and the sun to blood red. Desolation, an awful word which denotes emptiness and destruction, utterly describes the blackened and ashen landscape. To date we have lost over 10 million hectares compared with the correspondingly calamitous Siberian fires of 2019 where 2.7 million hectares were lost. This gives some idea of the far-reaching catastrophe. As a dear friend from Europe also wrote to me only last night, these are indeed, "apocalyptic realities".

These few paragraphs, primarily written for my colleagues and friends overseas, are not a discussion on climate change.[5] This is not the time for such a discussion however urgent it surely is. This time will come over the next weeks and months when people are safely back into their homes, when the injured have been healed, and when our dead very sadly, have been laid to rest by their loved ones.[6] Rather, I wish to speak and share some thoughts on the ANZAC spirit of Australians (endurance, courage, initiative, discipline, mateship) born in the battlefields of Gallipoli, a legacy of one of the bloodiest World War One engagements.[7] This Aussie spirit, as “tough as goat’s knees” it is said, is also evidenced in peacetimes during periods of natural disasters of which our country is no stranger. Not only ravaging fires but also catastrophic cyclones. Older Australians would no doubt still remember the devastation of the tropical storm, Cyclone Tracy, which smashed into the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory on Christmas Eve of 1974. Australians all over the country responded with incredible speed.[8] Much of this benevolence quiet and anonymous. It is true we are not to be ultimately defined by what we possess, but by what we are able to give. Nothing is insignificant, all things touch upon the eternal.

This same spirit of ‘mateship’, the Anzac ‘attitude’ if I might call it, is being displayed in abundance during these terrifying hours. Volunteer firefighters [and certainly many other essential services volunteers] together with their professional workmates threw the timetable out the window and laboured through darkened days and spectral nights to not only save the lives of their neighbours but also their homes and properties.[9] A number of these firefighters having already suffered personal tragedy of their own. Our own Rural Fire Services (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons who has been a bastion of support and of clear reason throughout these many days, had lost his own firefighting father in a hazard-reduction burn which turned wrong years earlier. Neighbours with no fire experience fighting spot fires on each other’s homes and properties, people opening up their homes to feed and to quench the homeless, truckies driving many, many hours to drop off food supplies and water to the little towns cut off from distribution routes, local communities and clubs opening their doors to those who were in need of shelter and comfort, people putting together essential survival parcels. Here too, I must mention the many reporters who risked their own lives to update us from the front line. These are all people from different walks of life testifying to good deeds of bravery, courage, and compassion.[10] Faith-communities as well have engaged in special prayer services and supported those in need of spiritual succour. Many gifts, too, have come from overseas and for these gifts we thank you. They are very important. Typical of this generosity is Pink’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar donation which made headlines here in Oz and inspired many others from both the entertainment and sports communities to get on board.

Credit: Jimboomba Police

Of course, we cannot forget the dreadful plight of our animals. A large group of this wildlife unique to this continent. A video of troops of kangaroos escaping the fires says much more than I could justly describe.[11] A rough estimate is around 480 million animal life lost. [12] Including large populations of our beloved kangaroos and koalas. Who can forget those extraordinary images of distressed koalas in dire need of water approaching people.[13] This great number of animal loss does not include “insects, bats or frogs.” It is estimated that in all likelihood even this huge total is an underestimation. The implications of all this to ecosystems, our biological community, is another subject altogether.

These marvellous acts of humanity, sweet-scented as they are, with such heroic mettle and backbone of steel, are of course not only common to my fellow Australians. Other countries face their own devastations and have suffered and conquered through similar tribulations. People are much nobler than what we might normally give them credit for. There are far more ‘angels’ in the world than the opposite which the popular media would normally lead us to believe. Good deeds which move the heart, even “that someone lay down his life for his friends” (Jn.15:13) or deep expressions of compassion [lit. ‘to suffer with’] from ordinary people doing extraordinary things, will rarely make the headlines. It takes such devastations for the greatness of the human spirit to warrant attention. Even now, acts of love and charity move and abound daily about us. Otherwise it would not take too long for our world to ground to a complete halt.

We will ‘regenerate’, it is what we do best. It is what this inimitable land, this “sunburnt country”, with all its natural beauty and untreated harshness, has taught us. To regenerate, is to restore. This enduring is also the ageless story of our indigenous Australians and we have much to learn from them when it comes to the wisdom of land management. That is, putting our ear to the ground and ‘deep listening to the earth’. New and vigorous life, like the uniquely Australian grass trees [the Xanthorrhoea], will return to our burnt places. Our spirits will revive and rekindle. And what is ashen now will once more turn to forest green.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2013/dec/01/history-bushfires-australia-interactive

[2] http://www.lesmurray.org/pm_lsf.htm

[3] https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bushfire-refugees-and-injured-wildlife-escape-mallacoota-armageddon-20200103-p53ojo.html

[4] https://www.9news.com.au/national/nsw-bushfires-south-coast-man-forced-to-defend-family-home-from-inside-firestorm/16cdd92e-3508-4990-bf20-53170fec72a8

[5] https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

[6] https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/what-we-know-so-far-on-the-nsw-and-victorian-bushfires/news-story/9e0268f8b13102c57370df951a6d1483

[7] https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac-day/traditions

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Tracy

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uavHvY7KPXw

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ST_n0_L7dc

[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUGvay_E4s

[12] https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/01/03/a-statement-about-the-480-million-animals-killed-in-nsw-bushfire.html

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwf9yQhYVrA

Flemington Markets and the Art of Prayer

June 1995

Katina was in the second year of her IT degree at UTS and I had started on another postgraduate programme this time with Macquarie. I needed to find some payable work, we were managing but our personal finances were starting to run low. My pride and self-belief suffered another severe blow when I joined the ranks of those on unemployment benefits. I was now no longer someone who was greeted with the respect accorded to a professional, let alone a member of the clergy. The consequences of my decision inside my own community where very often even more wounding. From Reverend or Father I was now a “number” doing the rounds knocking on doors and looking for regular work. It was humbling to be asked if I understood or knew how to complete the paperwork relating to my new found unemployment. Things were made all the more grim, for my former “employer” the Archdiocese would not supply me with a reference, especially given that it was I who had asked to be relieved of the diaconate[1]. I was “disrespectful” of authority they said, a “trouble-maker”. In the end they would call me “mad”. The exception was the heroic Father Themistocles Adamopoulo,[2] who by this time was himself out of favor and set to join the ranks of the persona non grata.

Anyone who questioned the High Porte was mad. I asked some other good men from within those walls, but their support was qualified. They wanted to know beforehand “where” their testimonials would be going. I understood their predicament yet had to decline. Two generous souls from the clerical fraternity who were outside my immediate environment, but who did supply me with wonderful references at a vital time not long afterwards to greatly lift my spirits, were my former lecturers from the University of Sydney, the Reverend Dr David Coffey[3] and Bishop Paul Barnett.[4] Such grace and charity touch you for life and are not to be easily forgotten. They must be paid forward. There is to be found one of the great joys of living.

It took some weeks getting used to, but I began to love going to my new job at Paddy’s Markets in Flemington, near Homebush Bay.[5] It was a time of long stretches of peace and a new type of learning. I was hired as a cleaner: toilets, floors, potato conveyers, fruit crates, large vats, giant coleslaw mixers, windows, walls, and more. If it had to be cleaned, I was the man! I was also proud of my new ‘vestments’: a pair of weatherproof boots, gloves, overalls, and a yellow raincoat with a hood. The hours as well, they suited an old night-owl like me. Work started eleven at night and I would clock off the following morning around seven, it was not full-time so I had rest days in between. There were many things I enjoyed during those few months that I was able to stay at Paddy’s before I left to focus on the dissertation, the one dealing with the “666” conundrum and the tradition history of antichrist.[6] Each night I looked forward to greeting my new ‘con-celebrants’: the Asians who would cut and prepare the salads; the sunburnt farmers; the busy stall owners; the testy truck drivers; and every now and then the pest-control fellow who would also moonlight as a Reiki Master.

The coffee-breaks were history classes in themselves. I heard many stories in that small kitchenette by well-weathered men who had seen much and done it all. These were tough but honest folk, people you could trust and where you quickly learnt to call “a spade a spade and a spud a spud.” They would remind me of the abattoir workers I used to help load the meat trucks in the early hours of the morning when I was a student in Thessaloniki. They were also not lacking in the stories department. During this time at the markets I would read whenever I could steal a few minutes during the morning breaks or in between my scheduled jobs. The Philokalia[7] and the Art of Prayer[8] were invariably within reach, together with the lives of two saints whose personalities had especially attracted me, Saints Seraphim of Sarov and John of Kronstandt. Yet again I would be taught that marvellous and encouraging lesson often heard on Mount Athos: it is not the place, but the Way. Other times it might be as simple as the positive energy good spirits release into the air. 

Given my earlier life at the café this was not unfamiliar territory. I was in my element in these environments. I look back thirty years when I first put on the cassock and I realize it is with these ‘straight-talking’ people at places like Paddy’s markets and Egnatia Odos and King Street, Newtown, where I am most happy and comfortable. And I would have stayed at Flemington for much longer if not for my pride “this perpetual nagging temptation” according to C.S. Lewis and because I knew there was some unfinished business as Martin Heidegger might say.

And Secretly Bless Them

The young priest, Grigori Mikhailovich, was now unemployed. It seemed that there were two Gospels; they should have informed him of this during orientation week he had thought. He made the hard decision to keep on with the traditional version. Unemployed priests who chose to receive the “older story” would find some few hours of work at Flemington Markets. The young priest Grigori chose the graveyard shift where he was introduced to other exiled cleaners. He would put on his yellow uniform and waterproof overshoes with pride and honour. He remembered the “putting on of the vestment prayers” when he would prepare for the Divine Liturgy, and these he would now recite once more. Though no one knew that he was once a priest, they would instinctively call him “Father” and he would rejoice and secretly bless them through the soap suds and the potato crates.[9]

[1]

[2] http://world.greekreporter.com/2014/11/13/rock-star-turned-greek-priest-fights-ebola-in-sierra-leone/

[3] http://www.marquette.edu/mupress/CoffeyPM.shtml

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Barnett_(bishop)

[5] http://paddysmarket.com.au/history/

[6]

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4qtQ6AUrRE

[8] http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Prayer-Orthodox-Anthology/dp/0571191657

[9] M.G. Michael, Southerly, Golden Tongues: The Arts of Translation, 70/1 (2010), p. 32f.

Farewell to Brian Johns (1936-2016)

A beautiful thing to have done a good deed and never to have known.

For a number of years it has been my habit late in the evening to visit the Wikipedia “Recent Deaths” webpage.[1] This not on account of any morbid curiosity on my part, but to discover who of those that have passed on will reveal new things to me. Necropolises are our greatest universities. The dead are our truest teachers. And I have left the richer not only to be reminded that I have been given another day of grace, but also with an addition of valuable knowledge from visiting these lives which have come full circle. People from all walks and schools of life. Lessons are everywhere to be found. Sometimes, too, these visits have been touched with an additional and deeper gratitude. I come face-to-face with men and women I have met at some time during my own life either incidentally or in a more personal space.

On the evening of the 1st of January 2016 I read of the passing of one of these people that I had encountered in those more personal spaces. A man who was a paper boy and a factory hand when growing up to afterwards wear a number of different hats with great distinction in the corporate, business, and academic worlds.[2] I met Brian Johns for a brief but decisive moment in my life in one of his many personifications as managing director of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) 1987-1992.[3] It was during this evening when I visited the “Recent Deaths” webpage that one of the clues for his compassion and affection towards me would reveal itself. But first something of the context behind our correspondence and the two meetings at SBS.

At the time I was living through one of the two life experiences which would in their own season and for their own reason, take apart and change me forever. I had made the heartrending decision to ask to be relieved of my priesthood and was seeing out the last months of my diaconate.[4] I was increasingly becoming estranged from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in Sydney and had fallen into a deep melancholia (a more correct word for depression).[5] In short, outside my immediate family I was almost completely alone and on the edge of letting go of everything which I had up to that time lived and worked towards. Support from those places where I would have normally expected was not forthcoming and this was made known to me in some heartless ways. In reality, there is no one to blame, more often than not we move and respond from within a space we alone create and inhabit. I was a greatly idealistic twenty-nine year old who could now envision no future for himself. In a moment of desperation I thought my one way out (excepting for my ongoing battles with suicidal ideation) was broadcast journalism. I loved to write and to communicate with people and to listen to their stories. I felt I could do well in the media. It would have been utterly marvellous I thought, to do the research and then to sit down in a chair in front of an audience and do the interview.

This is when Brian Johns enters into my story, around late August or early September of 1990.

Somehow during those weeks of numbness and inertia I managed to put together a few words outlining as best I could my current situation and what I was hoping for in terms of the future. I addressed and posted this letter not to one of the department secretaries or programme directors, but directly to the SBS Managing Director Mr Brian Johns! And that’s where I thought it would end. Immediately afterwards I was embarrassed thinking that even if that rambling letter would reach this man what on earth would he make of me? A week or two had passed when a phone call came through to our home in Kingsgrove from the Managing Director’s private secretary asking to speak with “Father Jeremiah Michael”. Brian had actually received my letter, had read it, and asked to meet with me. It is not possible to spend our entire lives living in a world of pure perception. At last some little light at the end of the tunnel. 

I was not the young man of even a few years earlier. My once unshakeable and booming confidence was very close to being completely shattered. I was frightened of exploring new territories and had decided to never again open up my heart. To make matters worse, I had started to binge drink in a futile effort to shut away the pain. But somehow, by the grace of God, I had always been able to find that extra bit of reserve I have needed to keep moving forward. And so I nervously made an appointment with Brian’s secretary to meet with him on an afternoon of the following week. I prepared the best I could, put the alcohol and those awful anti-depressants away, and read up on the basics of news media.

It will not be possible to forget the days leading up to my meeting with Brian. I was very much anxious during the cab ride and was fearful of becoming physically ill. I needed a drink or to be sick. It had become difficult to tell the difference. A few years earlier in 1987 in my mid-twenties during the Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox Joint Declaration at the Vatican where I had been present to witness this historic moment, I was together with a group of young inter-denominational clerics introduced to Pope John Paul II.[6] Certainly, I was nervous and anxious then, but not as apprehensive or hesitant as I was during the hours heading into this present moment. I had an entirely different perception of myself back then in Rome and now in lots of ways I was another man. Except for the fact that hope and my belief in the Creator, would refuse to wholly go away.

As soon as I walked into the foyer of the SBS building at Milsons Point (unless I am mistaken the move to Artarmon had yet to take place)[7] I became positive and I allowed for an excitement to rush through my body which I had not felt for a long time. I was still a cleric and was dressed in my black and freshly pressed cassock. My shoes were spit-polished from the night before. More than a few quizzical stares came my way. I explained to the reception the reason behind my visit and was soon sitting in the waiting room leading into the executive offices of the Managing Director. There was a deep sense of relief as if I had succeeded in escaping from a dangerous place. Though I knew my present situation was complicated and there was more waiting for me, here at least were some lovely shards of light.

It was Brian himself who stepped out and invited me into his modestly furnished office. It was a room stacked with books. I remember from the start being impressed with his old world elegance and demeanour. Well dressed and softly spoken with a striking mane of thick greying hair, he cut an impressive figure. You knew immediately with Brian Johns, that you would have to bat straight to get his attention. On his desk, I was taken aback to find, that he had open and was in fact reading a typed MS of my poetry which I had included in my initial correspondence. It was I must confess what writers term juvenilia. Yet here was a man who had previously been a publishing director with Penguin Books taking interest in my earliest literary efforts. Even now as I write these lines, I smile at one of our first exchanges. Brian quickly asked me what it was “exactly that I wanted”. I was overwhelmed by this incredible opportunity and trust which was directly cast my way. I fumbled for a response and came out with a less then convincing “I would like to read the news.”

He smiled warmly and encouragingly, he asked a few more questions, and then said, “Okay, Jeremiah, we will speak again.” What happened afterwards and my reasons for not carrying through with Brian’s amazingly generous response is for another day. I wrote a letter telling him “I was not in the right frame of mind and that I was extremely sorry for robbing him of his valuable time”. But a few weeks later I back-tracked and Brian once more, unbelievably for someone in his position, reached out to me again. However, for a second time I told him I was in no condition to go ahead with such a “visible career move" when I was so close to “abandoning my priestly vocation” and that I was heading for England to enter a retreat.

I flew out to London soon afterwards as the First Gulf War (1990-1) was getting underway and the world was entering into yet another of its post WWII apocalyptic moods. I asked and was given permission to spend time with the monastic community of Saint John the Baptist in Essex, Tolleshunt Knights.[8] The abbot at the time was the recently sainted Father Sophrony.[9]  At Heathrow Airport everywhere there were signs of the war, the surrounds replete with heavy armaments and soldiery. I, too, on a much smaller scale was to enter into my own private war. It was to last for many years with as many twists and turns as Tiamat’s tail.

The heart of these paragraphs has to do with the generosity and kindness that a man in a high professional post would express to another man whose life was at a crossroads. I started these paragraphs with the promise of revealing a clue which communicated to me in a profoundly moving way a hidden connection between myself and Brian, and why he seemed to understand where even some of my oldest and dearest friends could not. Here was a stranger, who discovered more in me in only a few hours of conversation, what others could not over the duration of many years. I learnt much about friendship during those agonizing months and it would become a subject of lasting fascination for me.

I did not know until a few days ago that Brian himself had been a seminarian at Saint Columba’s Seminary and was preparing for the priesthood.[10] Incredibly and in another lovely twist, our vocations would again career into each other when much later we would both be awarded professorships.

My final correspondence with Brian was a quarter of a century ago. A letter sent from London a day or two after my arrival, and a postcard from Madrid a month after my request to be relieved of my priesthood had been granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Our lives are to be measured by good deeds and little else. It is where it all begins and where it will all end.

Thank you dear Brian, requiescat in pace.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2016

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Johns_(businessman)

[3] http://www.sbs.com.au/

[4] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Presbyter [I was ordained into the diaconate as a celibate with the view towards a bishopric].

[5] William Styron rightly made this distinction between depression and melancholia in his own memoir of his struggle with mental illness in the memorable Darkness Visible. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/the-hope-that-william-styrons-darkness-visible-offers-25-years-later/383406/

[6] https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2DIM1.HTM

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Broadcasting_Service

[8] http://www.thyateira.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=373&Itemid=163

[9] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Sophrony_(Sakharov)

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Johns_(businessman)