2005

The days are starting to blur into each other. One big beautiful blur where each day is walk, eat, walk and repeat. The landscape continues to take me through some beautiful little towns and through increasingly wide open vineyards as we are now in the La Rioja region. 

Each day our different walking speeds allow time to spend alone in reflection, which is very much part of why I have come, and with different companions, some for a few minutes and some for a couple of hours like affable Melbournian Greg with whom I had some great conversations. 

 

 

Yesterday I met Korean priest Michael and British Anglican priest-to-be Ingrid. Michael and I met at Mass and then had dinner together also. 

 

In some good news, I think my ankle is improving with regular rest, icing and a compression bandage. Hooray! I was walking much more with my usual speed and gait today. Alas Mykey's injury doesn't seem to be improving at the same pace. 

My quiet time took me back to remembering 2005 at Narraweena. I think that was the year that Fr Joseph Pattakandam came to the parish (more about him in the next post). 

But a stand out memory of 2005 was that we launched the Community Dinners. This was something which came to me when I was reflecting on Jesus' image of the Vine and the Branches and preparing to preach on connection. I thought of how Jesus gathered people together for meals, and wondered if we could do the same. 

I discussed the idea with the pastoral council and then pitched the idea to the whole parish, and asked anyone who wanted to be part of the team to come for a team meeting on a certain night, and if we got enough people we'd go ahead. 

The idea was to offer a free, open dinner one night a week to anyone who wanted to eat a meal in company, recognising Mother Teresa's maxim that the greatest poverty is loneliness. It would not just be for parishioners, but for the whole community, and the food would be prepared and served by 4 teams of parishioners who would take one night of the month each. 

We got enough volunteers to have 4 teams of 10 people and we launched in the spring. We didn't know who if anyone would come, but we started with about 50 people and this grew up to 100 on some nights. For some people this was the only meal they would eat in company all week. For some it was the only meal they would eat at a table and off a plate. 

It did a lot of good for the guests, but also for the volunteers in whom it drew out great generosity, including people on the edge of the parish, school parents and friends of friends whom might never feel that they could do anything "religious" in ministry, but they could certainly cook. Some people's role was just to be the minglers on the tables to bring people together, and one lady decided that she would draw a list of birthdays and make birthday cakes. One guest burst into tears when she said that it was only the second birthday cake she's ever had in her difficult life. 

We did nothing more explicitly religious than to say grace at the start of the meal. No talks or persuasion, simply gathering people together and showing love and inclusion as Jesus did. 

The Community Dinners came to be one of the defining features of the parish, and they continued on for many years.