Ted
Kennedy's presence in my life since I first met him
at Mass in Redfern in 1979 has been one of great joy
and fun with the odd anxious moment caused by his stubborn
refusal to surrender to the dictates of modern healthy
living....lettuce, greens (Wappo food) and the odd bit
of exercise
But
it is Teds spiritual `exercise” that has given me the
greatest joy and indeed hope and courage in an otherwise
alien and misogynistic institutional Catholic Church.
Teds presence in Redfern has been a great gift of love,
a symbol of God presence among the world’s poor, impoverished,
marginalised and struggling peoples. And his presence
and spirituality has been a model of faith in God's
universal love.
Mass
at Redfern
Church
was always a lesson in Gods love and acceptance. Not
only were Indigenous Australians Mum Shirl, and Griffo
and many others honoured and loved; Redfern
Church
was their place but it was also opened to a world well
beyond inner Sydney
to the peoples of Palatine,
South
Africa,
Burma,
the Philippines
among many.
Ted
welcomed peoples of other faiths in humble acts of inter-faith
love which were spiritual but actively political in
the revolutionary tradition of Jesus Christ. Olfat Mohamed
my dear friend, a Palestinian refugee born into the
miserable squalid camps in Lebanon and trapped, with
millions of Palestinians in similar conditions, for
over fifty fours years as the world betrayed their rights
as a people, spoke eloquently and passionately of the
Palestinian liberation struggle at Redfern on three
separate occasions over these past twenty three years.
South African Father Smangaliso Makhawasha former political
prisoner, activist, liberation theologist, and now the
first black Mayor of the South African capital of Pretoria,
was similarly welcomed. And there were many more. There
have been numerous moments of inter-faith dialogue with
more recently the besieged Australian Muslim community
being welcomed in acts of solidarity and love.
These
threads of faith and activism have reached well beyond
the doors of the Catholic Church at Redfern with those
of us now living in rural and regional Australia
stretching these threads in a living and embracing spirituality
well beyond the rigid confines of an ossified institutional
Church.
Teds
gift to us has been this leadership of faith; a faith
of love, of presence, of witness but above all of activism
with the poor and oppressed of Australia*
and the wider world. It is a great gift... a beautiful
spiritual legacy.
by Helen McCue
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