On Parting - Never to Meet Again - An Experience of Timelessness

There are some moments in life when the transcendent is expressed inside the mundane; where the eternal seems to enter the passage of time. They are moments, usually unexpected, perhaps not even recognized until later. I had such a moment earlier this year that will not go away and so I have decided to write about it.

We invited to dinner a couple who have been our friends for many years, despite the fact that they live on another continent. The conversation at this meal was easy, as it normally is when it comes out of a long history of relatedness. We recalled shared experiences, some of which brought laughter and some of which had been painful, but we are both survivors. It did not occur to me until near the end of this meal and their subsequent departure that this would probably be the last time we would ever have time with this couple. When they drove out of our driveway, my nostalgia turned to a deep sadness, tinged with the positive realization that relationships are what give life its beauty, its meaning and perhaps even its intimation of immortality. So let me introduce you to these friends.

We first met Ann and Peter Carnley in their home in Perth, Australia, in the early 1990’s. At that time, he was the Anglican Archbishop of Perth in the Province of Western Australia. Ann was his lovely, no even beautiful, wife and the mother of their fantastic children, who are now grown and are marvelously creative adults. I was on my first foreign book tour with my book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. Most authors on a book tour of Australia tend to limit their exposure to that continent to the eastern part of that country visiting Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. I had, however, also received invitations to speak and to be interviewed by the media in Canberra, Adelaide, Darwin and Perth. So our tour was an extensive one. On our stop in Perth, we were the guests of the Archbishop and his wife.

Peter was one of the better-educated Anglican bishops of the world, having studied extensively at Cambridge University in England and having taught theology in Australia prior to being chosen to be a bishop. He was a well-known author and the recipient of a number of honorary doctoral degrees. He was also a brilliant interpreter of the cultural life of Australia. When he was chosen at a relatively young age to be the Archbishop of Perth (the Anglican Church of Australia is divided into the various provinces of the country with Archbishops in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane), he went immediately from being a priest to being an archbishop. As the Archbishop of Perth he was in charge of a territory constituting about a third of Australia’s land mass. Perth is a city of just under four million people. It is near the port city of Fremantle. From where I live when one is in Perth, one is literally half-way round the world. This is symbolized by the fact that 12 midnight in Perth is 12 noon in New York and that summer and winter are exactly reversed. The nearest major city to Perth is Singapore. Perth is famous for the beauty and variety of its wild flowers. To us, however, it was famous primarily because Peter and Ann Carnley lived there.

Over the years we made nine trips to Australia and on three of those trips we went to Perth and spent time with the Carnleys. It was always a highlight of the trip. We met some of their friends, including on one occasion the governor general of Western Australia, who eventually would become the governor general of all Australia. That is Australia’s ceremonial head-of-state position; ultimately the representative of the Queen of England. We went to the theatre together in Perth and saw Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, a play about the trial of the witches in Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century. Miller’s play, published in 1962, was written to counter the hysteria generated by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt carried out during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Together we watched Australian football, known in that land as “footie,” which is different and rougher than any professional game I have ever seen. We talked about life together, including church life. Both Peter and I sat uneasily on what passed for evangelical religion with its uninformed literal use of the sacred scriptures. My primary audience in Australia was drawn from among those who were alienated from organized religion by this very kind of mindless fundamentalism. Peter, who was later to become the Primate of Australia’s Anglican Church, had to deal with Sydney Anglicans, who reminded me of 18th century Northern Irish, Catholic-hating Protestants, who had migrated to the South Pacific and frozen their faith in time. Sydney’s bishops and clergy were like a group of Ian Paisleys, only now ordained as Anglicans. They made both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson look bright and liberal. Evangelical Christians so often act as if they possess the full truth of God and they can be quite imperialistic. I had confronted this same fundamentalist reality in my career; first in the struggle for inclusion into the life of the church of people of color in the segregated South; later, in the quest for the full equality of women in both the church and the society, and finally on the issue of justice and welcome for gay and lesbian Christians. Peter confronted them in Sydney, where to this day, women are denied ordination and homosexuals are treated as either sick or sinful people. So we had lots in common and battle scars to show for it.

On one trip to Perth, Christine and I traveled up the northern coast of Australia and headed east, seeing some magnificent scenery. On another, we went straight east into the heart of Western Australia to the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie, a town that advertises: “We have more brothels than churches.” It is the only place I have ever known where a brothel offers guided tours in the mornings when business is slow, complete with cookies and lemonade at the end. The bishop of Kalgoorlie, Gerald Beaumont, was one of Peter‘s assistants. We had known Gerald and his wife Lyn, who is a doctor, when he was the Anglican priest in Alice Springs and had driven with him to Uluru (Ayers Rock) on a memorable trip. The two of them had been called by Peter to work in Kalgoorlie and they had blessed it with their presence.

When Peter retired, he returned to teaching and accepted a position that brought him for one semester a year to the General Theological Seminary in New York City. So we continued to see the Carnleys. On one occasion, he filled in for me as the confirming bishop at one of our churches in the Diocese of Newark. On another occasion, I taught a class for him on the resurrection of Jesus at General Seminary. So, in those days, it did not seem to be so difficult to say goodbye whenever we parted. We could always anticipate meeting again.

Not so this last time, Peter was completing his work in New York City and did not plan to teach there again. There is little possibility that we will ever return to Australia at this stage of our lives. In the middle of dinner, this realization began to overwhelm me. I looked at these two special people: Peter tall and stately with an infectious smile; Ann with a face that always exudes love and the kind of caring that reaches deeply into her being. We had been colleagues in our struggles within the Anglican Communion to move this church of ours into life giving stances, especially toward those the church has consistently marginalized. We had both taken our lumps from those who did not share our vision. We had both been sustained and upheld by the love of our wives, who shared in our lives more deeply than most can only imagine. On this occasion, however, they were retiring to their newly-built home well outside Perth. So I began to realize that this would probably be our final encounter. Of course, there is e-mail, Facebook and Christmas cards, but those are not the same. The realization that we would probably never see these two again in person felt very much like enduring a death experience.

Suddenly, the end of the meal became emotional. We shared with them our gratitude for what they had meant in our lives. When the time came to say goodbye, we embraced each other a little more firmly and a little longer than would normally have been the case. This embrace had to last for a lifetime. They got into their car and began to pull away. We stood at the door waving until they passed out of view. Christine and I turned and embraced each other. I suspect a tear or two trickled down our cheeks. A part of our life was ending. That relationship would live from now on only in our memories or, as the old song says, “Among my Souvenirs.” Ann must have felt something similar for she wrote afterwards that she was feeling “the terror of Australia’s distance.”

Life does not stand still. It is an ever-moving stream that bears all its sons and daughters away. It hurts to have a final parting with those you have loved for so long. If I could change the nature of life, however, I would not do it. I have been enriched by many relationships. Peter and Ann Carnley are two of them. I am more alive today because I know them. Their physical departure from my life will never remove what they have given me. Life is not quite so individualistic as we pretend. Life expands and contracts regularly and always in response to being loved and losing those we love. I often wonder if we are ever really alone. Do we not always transcend our limits when we enter deeply into another’s life? If God is the Source of life, do we not worship God when we live fully? If God is the Source of love do we not worship God when we love wastefully? If God is the Ground of Being, do we not worship God when we have the courage to be all that we can be? Is not this God found in those relationships that enrich our lives, expand our love and give us the power to share our being with another? Is this not what an intimation of immortality is?

Thanks Peter! Thanks Ann! You have been something of the life of God to us and when we live in the life of God distance become finite and time enters eternity.

~John Shelby Spong

Read the essay online here.

Debbie Medves from North Carolina writes:

I need some help regarding the Bible, especially the injunction to “Honor thy Mother and Father." I have read almost every book that Alice Miller, a famed Swiss psychotherapist, has written. She died just last year, but she bravely went against the grain of our culture and her colleagues to expose the damage caused by child abuse. She uses a great variety of historical figures such as Hitler and other dictators, writers and artists in her books to demonstrate her theories of how the repressed child maltreatment manifested itself in their lives. She also does a great analysis of Mel Gibson's refusal to question his father (who did not believe the Holocaust occurred). She is one of many who found that most people repressed the feelings that accompanied abusive treatment at the most vulnerable times of their lives at the hands of their caretakers in the name of socially sanctioned “parenting” and “discipline.” She finds that this abuse leads to crime, violence, addiction, illness and the perpetuation of abuse onto one’s own children (or an entire nation if you are a dictator) if not therapeutically worked through. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta also found huge correlations to illness and addictions with child maltreatment in their “Adverse Childhood Experiences” studies. The new findings by Bruce Perry and Alan Schore (among others) in the neuroscience of trauma are in alignment with this theory also. To think this all starts in “the family!” Even as I write this, I can feel my own deeply-embedded resistance to acknowledging these truths and how honoring and not questioning certain systems is as ingrained in me as my next breath. Miller found the Bible’s “spare the rod, spoil the child,” the scripture story of Abraham’s blind obedience to God and the “honor thy parent” command to encourage the perpetuation of these abuses of children throughout the generations of our culture. The idea of forgiving impedes healing for many adults, damaged in their youth as once again, the injured party must care for the adult instead of self. Why not “Honor thy son and daughter,” Miller asks? I have seen lives hideously damaged and so can readily see this in extreme forms I daily witness. Yet most of us have degrees of damage, less extreme on a continuum-than that which makes it so visible-though it is repressed and we are not aware of it. I ask you to help educate where these biblical references come from as most people cling to them (literally) like barnacles to a sea worn ship. Can you do some scraping? This will help me to do the prevention and intervention work I must do as a school counselor in the “Bible Belt” where children are whipped with belts as a norm as if God desired it. Only decades later will the results become visible in more child abuse, depression, physical and mental illness and sometimes even suicide.

With great appreciation for your work and your God-given intelligence.

 

Dear Debbie,

Thank you for your long and informative letter. I have printed it in almost all its entirety because you describe the total scene so well. I thank you for bringing reality to our attention in such a provocative way.

I tried to address the themes you raise in a book entitled The Sins of the Scriptures and most specifically in the chapter on the relationship between the text “spare the rod” and child abuse. Even the Christian story is often portrayed in our hymns, liturgies and sermons as the Father God punishing the Son for the sins of the people. The abusive activities perpetrated by the church throughout history including the Flagellants, the Inquisition and the abuse scandal of recent history reveal that this kind of insensitivity and downright cruelty has been a constant in church history and points to a sickness in the soul of Christianity that must be brought to light, exposed and cured.

The only thing I would add to your letter as a cautionary note is that there are exceptions to the rule. People have been able to transform their abusive childhood situations and to channel their anger in creative not destructive ways. What usually makes the difference is the intervention into the abused child’s life of a healthy and mature counselor, teacher, godparent, friend or family member.

There is no one who cannot make a difference in the life of another. We only have to be open to the opportunity. Keep up your good work.

~John Shelby Spong