p.44
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood
I see that the elementary laws never apologise…
I exist as I am, that is enough
If no other in the world be aware I sit content…
I know the amplitude of time
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains
of hell are with me.
p.31
Who need be afraid of the merge?
Undrape… you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded.
Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass
I have believed
in things unseen
for as long as I
can remember
I remember fairies,
Borrowers, Father Christmas,
and more…
In the believing
one knows
the power of things unseen
to work to our good,
and the good of others,
whether they believed or not.
The seeds of faith were born here,
among flowers and thimbles,
cycles and stockings,
the seeds of faith were born.
Talitha Fraser
What Goes Unsaid
In each mind, even the most candid,
there are forests, where needled haze overshadows
the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen,
or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,
loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.
In these forests there live certain events, shards
of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations
once familiar – some painful, shameful, some
drably or laughably inconsequent, others
thoughts that the thinker
could never hold fast and begin to tell.
And some – a few – that are noble, tender,
and so complete in themselves, they had
no need of saying.
There they dwell,
no sky above them, resting
like dragonflies on the dense air, or nested
on inaccessible twigs.
It is right that there are these secrets
(even the weightless ones have perhaps
some part to play in the inconceivable whole)
and these forests; privacies
and the deep terrain to receive them.
Right that they rise at times to our ken,
and are acknowledged.
and other excerpts…
Primal speech
If there’s an Ur-language still among us…
then it’s the exclamation,
universal whatever the sound, the triumphant,
wondering, infant utterance, ‘This! This!’,
showing and proffering the thing, anything,
the affirmation even before the naming.
Primary Wonder
…once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the thong’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
The Servant Girl at Emmaus
…Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognise yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the wine jug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
PRAYER
[p.31]
Lord Jesus, now that beneath those world-forces you have become truly and physically everything for me, everything about me, I shall gather into a single prayer both my delight in what I have and my thirst for what I lack; and following the lead of your great servant I shall repeat those enflamed words in which, I firmly believe, the christianity of tomorrow will find its increasingly clear portrayal:
‘Lord, lock me up in the deepest depths of your heart; and then, holding me there, burn me, purify me, set me on fire, sublimate me, until I become utterly what you would have me be, through the utter annihilation of my ego.’
[p.33]
Glorious Lord Christ: the divine influence secretly diffused and active in the depths of matter, and the dazzling centre where all the innumerable fibres of the manifold meet; power as implacable as the world and as warm as life; you whose forehead is of the whiteness of snow, whose eyes are of fire, and whose feet are brighter than molten gold; you whose hands imprison the stars; you who are the first and the last, the living and the dead and the risen again; you who gather into your exuberant unity every beauty, every affinity, every energy, every mode of existence; it is you to whom my being cried out with a desire as vast as the universe, ‘In truth you are my Lord and my God’.
‘Lord, lock me up within you’: yes indeed I believe – and this belief is so strong that it has become one of the supports of my inner life.
[p.34]
This is the criterion by which I can judge at each moment how far I have progressed within you. When all the things around me, while preserving their own individual contours, their own special savours, nevertheless appear to me as animated by a single secret spirit and therefore as diffused and intermingled within a single element, infinitely close, infinitely remote; and when locked within the jealous intimacy of a divine sanctuary, I yet feel myself to be wandering at large in the empyrean of all created being: then I shall know that I am approaching that central point where the heart of the world is caught in the descending radiance of the heart of God.
***
Through a marvellous combination of your divine magnetism with the charm and the inadequacy of creatures, with their sweetness and their malice, their disappointing weakness and their terrifying power, do you fill my heart alternately with exaltation and distaste; teach it the true meaning of purity: not a debilitating separation from all created reality but an impulse carrying one through all forms of created beauty; show it the true nature of charity: not a sterile fear of doing wrong but a vigorous determination that all of us together shall break open the doors of life; and give it finally – give it above all – through an ever-increasing awareness of your omnipresence, a blessed desire to go on advancing, discovering, fashioning and experiencing the world so as to penetrate ever further and further into yourself.
[p.35]
It is to your body in this its fullest extension – that is, to the world become through your power and my faith the glorious living crucible in which everything melts away in order to be born anew; it is to this that I dedicate myself with all the resources which your creative magnetism has brought forth in me: with the all too feeble resources of my scientific knowledge, with my religious vows, with my priesthood, and (most dear to me) with my deepest human convictions. It is in this dedication, Lord Jesus, I desire to live, in this I desire to die.
Today feels like a day for bright colours. Uncharacteristically I am wearing one of the skirts I have made – full and colourful, no one around today to comment on it and I love that – what would we wear any given day if we thought no one would ever say anything?
I feel nervous carrying my homemade 
signs to the marriage equality march – do I carry them facing inwards until I get there? Am I going to draw negative attention from people that are anti-gay or anti-Christian? You are making a choice, to set yourself out, apart, from ‘normal’ people going about their ‘normal’ day, doing ‘normal’things.
To be contrary, I line them up beside me on the seat at the bus stop while I wait – people idling in the weekend traffic read them but no one says 
anything and I am almost disappointed… let’s do it, let’s talk about how we’re treating one another. People see the signs – rainbow broadcasting
makes the topic clear – no one says anything… aah, I have found a new way to be invisible.
Now at the train station, I put in my headphones as I step into the train carriage, block out an uncaring world and I am tapped on the shoulder…
“Hey, you want to join us here in the marriage equality corner?”
…I am welcomed in, a place, a space made for me and my signs. they look me over assessingly, am I like them?
“I haven’t ever been to a rally before, But I have been to the Sydney Mardi Gras – I hope it’s like that – there’s a power in people coming together from all over, no matter what their age, race, religion, gender orientation is… there’s something really powerful about that, ay?”
Yes. Yes there is.
How much riskier must it be if your clothes or mannerisms or something “give you away” and make you feel like you’re carrying a rainbow coloured banner with you everywhere you go… I’m embarrassed of the fear I felt of some kind of retaliation for sticking my neck out… is this a fear people live with going out their door every day?
The act of solidarity isn’t just showing up at the parade but being willing to put yourself in a position to share the experience of the person being marginalised – so what if someone did yell something out of a car on the way past or defaced the sign or comes into my personal space with aggression. Is this something gay people ask of themselves every day? “Do I wave the banner today or mute something of who I am so I don’t attract attention?” As with all movements perhaps it requires some to be be ‘extreme’ with it to broaden the range of what’s ‘normal’… maybe that’s literally carrying a rainbow banner – drawing some of the attention away from you over there to me right here.
It’s not the same, hating me when it’s not my lifestyle choice. You have to have a conversation with me to find out why I’m doing it – and I’ll have a conversation with you about why you aren’t.
p.34-35
She makes an unlikely preacher’s wife. She says so herself. But she never flinches from any of it. Mary Magdalene probably made an occasional casserole, whatever the ancient equivalent might have been… I mean only respect when I say your mother has always struck me as someone with whom the lord might have chosen to spend some part of His Mortal time… There is an earned innocence, I believe, which is as much to be honoured as the innocence of children… When the Lord says you must ‘become as one of these little ones’ , I take Him to mean you must be stripped of all the accretions of smugness and pretense and triviality. “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb’, and so on… It has pleased me when I have thought your mother felt at home in the world, even momentarily. At peace in it, I should say, because I believe her familiarity with the world may be much deeper than mine. I do truly wish I had the means to spare you the slightest acquaintance with that very poverty the Lord Himself blessed by word and example… still it shames me to think that I will leave you and your mother so naked to the world – dear Lord, I think, spare them that blessing.
p.45
I get much more respect than I deserve. This seems harmless enough in most cases. People want to respect the pastor and I’m not going to interfere with that. But I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books that I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from except, of course, some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.
Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was much better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starvling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you will never have. ‘The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.’ There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them.
p.51
A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there to even the most private thought – the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider.
p. 54-55
I read somewhere that a thing that does not exist in relation to anything else cannot itself be said to exist. I can’t quite see the meaning of a statement so purely hypothetical as this, though I may simply lack understanding… My grandfather had nowhere to spend his courage, no way to feel it in himself. That was a great pity.
…I can’t tell you though, how I felt, walking alon
g beside him [my father] that night, along the rutted road, through that empty world – what a sweet strength I felt, in him, and in myself, and all around us. I am glad I didn’t understand, because I have rarely felt joy like that, and assurance.
put yourself in the way
and turn out fear
scent anticipation instead
and the advent of things
long awaited for
it’s coming, it’s coming
it’s here
Talitha Fraser
Quotable Quotes
About Catholic music in general: The music tradition of the universal church is a treasure of immeasurable value, greater than that of any other art. Vatican II
About the Gregorian melodies: The Gregorian melodies air to foster the spiritual development of the individuals by providing an atmosphere conducive to a better understanding and living out of both God’s gift and the totality of the Christian faith.
About the Divine Office: This great prayer of the church, divided into portions throughout the day, sanctifies and consecrates the whole of human time by divine praise.
Ubi Caritas is taken fro th anitphons sung during the ceremony of the Washing of the Feet at the Mass of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday. As is the entire Mass of the Last Supper, this hymn is intimately connected with the Eucharist, and is thus often used during the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Recent tradition has the first line as “Ubi caritas at amor” (where charity and love are), but certain very early manuscripts show “Ubi caritas est vera” (where charity is true). The current Roman Missal favors this later version, while the 1962 Roman Missal and classical music favours the former.
| UBI caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor. Exultemus, et in ipso iucundemur. Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum. Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero. |
WHERE charity and love are, God is there. Christ’s love has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him. Let us fear, and let us love the living God. And may we love each other with a sincere heart. |
| UBI caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Simul ergo cum in unum congregamur: Ne nos mente dividamur, caveamus. Cessent iurgia maligna, cessent lites. Et in medio nostri sit Christus Deus. |
WHERE charity and love are, God is there. As we are gathered into one body, Beware, lest we be divided in mind. Let evil impulses stop, let controversy cease, And may Christ our God be in our midst. |
| UBI caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Simul quoque cum beatis videamus, Glorianter vultum tuum, Christe Deus: Gaudium quod est immensum, atque probum, Saecula per infinita saeculorum. Amen. |
WHERE charity and love are, God is there. And may we with the saints also, See Thy face in glory, O Christ our God: The joy that is immense and good, Unto the ages through infinite ages. Amen. |
“Sing about it until it can be realised” is a quote from Ched at the Kinsler Institute earlier this year… a call to write, play and sing the songs of freedom until freedom is won. During Love Makes A Way (LMAW) actions some supporters stay outside to bear witness to the action – singing, praying and advocating for those within. So far this draws heavily on the freedom songs of the Negro Spirituals, changing the lyrics to familiar tunes but what are the songs for and from our own context?
Started brainstorming how these songs are effective/communicate… says without saying, not religious language but accessible, short, call and repeat/memorable/simple/easy to pick up, capture sadness/grief…
Here’s a couple of goes at playing around:
Let me in
There is room at the table x3
Let me in, let me in
There is room at the borders x3
Let me in, let me in
There is room in our hearts x3
Let me in, let me in
There is hope for a new tomorrow x3
Let me in, let me in
[can make up your own variations: there is room for… the children, in the playground, in the classroom, etc.]
And who is already speaking for these issues? who are our own voices in the wilderness calling for a world that is different? Michael Leunig is an Australian cartoonist, poet and cultural commentator, I’ve appropriated some of his words from a cartoon and arranged them so this can be sung as a round which is beautiful because when you’re looping “love is born” rings out through and over the “dark and troubled” and “when hope is dead”.
And because I write words not music the best I can offer is a basic recording to give a gist with my blessings and my apologies!
#LoveMakesAWay is a movement of Christians 
seeking an end to Australia’s inhumane asylum seeker policies through prayer and nonviolent love in action.
A Christian movement based in seeking God, actions
are the last resort after other channels have been attempted and failed. Invite the mainstream to engage. Don’t care who knows we’re doing it, work behind the scenes, care whether the people who need it are being reached. Gospel tells us about the vision for the community that God envisions. We want to find God in the eyes of those who are suffering. In March 2014 1,138 children held in detention. Non-violent direct action that creates tension, where people say “No way!” we want to present the opposing voice that “Love makes a way” in the civil disobedience traditions of Ghandi and Martin Luther King. We want to bring attention to how serious an issue is and communicate that the church is serious about it. Encourage others to be bold and advocate in a stronger voice. 23 actions in 2014 – all agree children shouldn’t be in detention; care for them when they come out; rising up/mobilise church for policy change; dialogue with faithful Christian conservative leaders.
Witness of Christian faith.
Until we have a humane refugee/asylum seeker policy the LMAW campaign will continue.
itellyouarise 