2004

 Today I walked from Puerta Le Reina to Estella. It was a cooler day and made for easier walking, despite my ankle flaring up at times during the day. 

The walk took us, as it has most days, through beautiful little villages with what to me is extraordinary architecture. The church here in Estella, or should I saw, one of the 3 churches here in a town of 14,000 was first built in the 12th century, and then continued to be added to until the 18th century. You can see the change in architectural style move from the heavy Romaneque to the lighter and airier Gothic with its vaulted ceilings and stained glass. It would be a fine cathedral in many places, but is just the local church in a small town. 

I should mention last night's Mass in Puerta La Reina. Most towns seem to have an evening Mass at 7pm. Whether that is deliberately for the pilgrims or just works out conveniently I don't know. I could feel the young Indian priest praying every word of the Mass, not just saying it. I felt so drawn in and engaged, because even though I can't understand every word, I can feel that he is praying it. The best Mass I've been to so far. 

As I walked along I remembered 2004. I moved to Narraweena for my first time as parish priest in the middle of 2003, but I'll pick up the story here. 

One of the changes I noticed was that my peers were no longer young single adults, but the parents of  primary school children. Here began the richest connection of a parish and school that I have ever had. 

I think a few things all converged. Firstly, the school principal Anne Duncan who is wonderful was also a parishioner, as was the REC. It made for such an organic connection (which I also had later in Kincumber). The diocese had initiated a new project called the School Board which was different to a company board and more like a Parish Pastoral Council. It was incredibly well run and featured an annual retreat, shown below. 

The secret sauce though was a model of conversation and discernment called Shared Wisdom, whose motto was: Everybody has a piece of the wisdom. Nobody has all the wisdom. When we listen to everyone the wisdom of the Spirit is heard. And it worked. We didn't vote. We moved slowly and went deep, sometimes trusting that the minority opinion might actually turn out to be prophetic, and was the way forward when listened to. 

There were fantastic young parents on the School Board, and they became my first strong relationships in the school community, especially Tim Denmead who also became my running buddy for several years. These parents were a leaven in the school community, and soon there were more and more school families at Mass on the weekend and parents and their kids getting involved in ministries. 

We adopted the School Board / Shared Wisdom for the Parish Pastoral Council also, and the following year had a shared retreat which was a crystalising moment in the life of the parish, making deeper connections between the school parents and older adults in the parish. 

The School Board model was used in other schools too, but it seemed to devolve over the years as it took some very intentional leadership and was frustrating for task oriented people who just wanted quick results, and the present model used in our schools is alas a poor imitation of it. 

The night of Tim's 40th birthday party (which might have been a couple of years later) was a stand out moment in which Anne Duncan looked around and saw that our school, our parish, our community and our friends were all one and the same.