Principal's Update
Each week, Mrs Sylvia Walton's address to our School families in The Weekly News is published here for our wider community's interest.
Simple and Straightforward Faith
The Age newspaper of a year or so ago contained this article in the ‘Faith' column contributed by Christopher Bantick, ‘In Jean's Garden, Goodness Grows'.
Jean used to greet me at the gate. She was always dressed the same. An apron over a plaid or floral dress, a dilapidated straw hat, gum boots and, in winter, a black sou'wester. Jean was a gardener. She kept cackling chooks in a rickety coop. Fruit on bending bows caressed her head as she shuffled down the path between a shambles of nasturtiums and silverbeet. But there was another point to Jean's gardening. Her vegetables and flowers became her faith currency. Anyone who visited was given hope. This came with a few eggs, a bunch of parsley and, when in season, a pocket full of plums. She would make tea and in her sitting room, with Boomer her cat stretched out before the fire, she would talk about how good God was to her. Jean had a Psalm for every occasion and she would quote them liberally. Her favourite was Psalm 72. ‘He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth.'
Jean knew poetry too and Gerard Manley Hopkins was a regular guest at her table. She would often recite ‘God's Grandeur'. In her garden she knew. ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God.'
The broken and bereft of all faiths, and some with none, came through her gate. They were all treated the same. Jean had a simple belief. It was tilled in her garden and fruited in the heart of all who came to know her. She accepted difference without judgment. She never said she was right or what she believed to be right. Her hope in God was what she knew and that was all. Her garden was an example of how she lived. Sometimes she would be brought plants that were ill. A week or so with Jean and they would show signs of new life. She never gave up on plants or people. Her belief in the innate goodness of human beings was, she said, so often reflected in the goodness she received from them. In her gentle way, Jean taught people a new way of living. The way of charity. Of looking for the good in everyone and never ruling out possibilities for change. ‘Love takes time to grow,' she would say. Although Jean was a churchgoer she would have been at home in a mosque, a Buddhist temple or a synagogue. Jean was firm that she always needed to ask for forgiveness.
When Jean died, her graveside was ringed by a motley group of people, young and old, who mumbled their way through ‘Amazing Grace'. Few knew each other, but all had been through her garden gate and had tasted the fruit of life.'
I find this a wonderful and moving tribute to someone whom I wish I had known. To me it is a reflection of the Christmas story. New beginnings, day in and day out, not just at Christmas time. Although it could be said that Jean had a simple and straightforward faith and way of life, it could also be said that what other is there to aspire to? Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life." He said to ordinary people of his day and age, many of whom were the outcasts of society, "Follow me". In Mark, Chapter 8, from verse 34, Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the Gospel, will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?"
Jean, in her straightforward way, followed a particular path. Her soul grew every day and others were enriched by knowing her. The spirit of tolerance and acceptance and non-judgmental behaviour is perhaps a very good one for us all to meditate on during this Christmas and holiday season.
For Thought
‘He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
‘When we walk to the edge of all light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen - there will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will be taught to fly." Christian Medical Society Journal, 1985.
Sylvia Walton AO
Principal