Come and See

He is holding her hand.

And they are laughing.

And as I walk past, they look up and smile.

Sit down love -sit down

they say

and so I do,

because this is why I am here,

in my High Vis Vest with my clerical collar on. Working as a volunteer Chaplain, in this temporary shelter, set up to provide shelter for those fleeing the fires.

I am here to pay attention,

to stay a while,

to come and see

how folk are travelling

as they sit in this shelter in Whittlesea:

having fled with their cats

and their dogs and their babies and bedding,

mainly from Flowerdale and the surrounding farmlands,

on this 45 degree

inferno

of a day,

as the bushfires roar across our state.

This couple - she is 78 and he is 80

are cattle farmers

and they lost their house in the 2020 fires

and now they may lose it again.

I hear stories of cutting carrots

bags and bags of carrots

and of par boiling them to feed the cows

to see them through the drought

( the one that has been leaching life away

all this past year.)

I hear about their courtship

and the proposal

when she was only seventeen.

I hear about how he drives one handed

so that the other hand can hold hers

and of how, when he fell from the ladder

and she thought she had lost him

the world cascaded inside her like

slipping

stones-

like

a

landslide.

I hear about their daughter who died, bled out on the table

and the grandchildren left behind

and I discover

weirdly, that she grew up near the Wombat Forrest just out of Daylesford,

where my mum was born

and that she went to school with one of my aunties.

I get them some mattresses

and I watch them lay down to sleep,

in this foyer of a public building

and I see how

across the lilos

they are holding hands.

They invited me to come and see

and I said yes

andI walked away

fattened

by their love.

There is a story in the Gospel of John where Jesus encourages those

around him to

Come and see.

He doesn’t say-

Come and listen

( although those who know him know that he loved to tell a story or two )

This detail of

seeing

rather than listening

is important-

for far too long

far too many

churches

just seemed to think their job

was to speak and preach and pontificate while the world listened

and this might be where they went wrong.

Jesus is saying

Come and see

what God is doing.

Come and see

where the body of the Sacred Wild is active,

Come and see

the great signs and wonders.

Come and see

the great change movements across history

where people rise up against oppression,

Come and see

the clergy and the artists and the everyday folk

take to the streets in Minneapolis to fight ICE

and then come and see the Catholic Church

call out the false christianity of JD Vance who says he follows Jesus

while all the while

locking up the migrant

and the widow and the orphan

and defending those

who murder a woman

in cold

mysogynist

blood.

Faith without works

is not

what Jesus is inviting us into-

words are only half the story.

and if you tell us one thing and do another

we cannot follow you.

We are witnessing the worst bushfire conditions

since the Black Summer

and

now

devastating flash floods.

It is undeniable

that conditions have been made worse by ongoing fossil fuel consumption

particularly from coal and gas.

It is undeniable that our current government

came to power promising action on climate change.

It is undeniable that in their time they have opened

14 new coal and gas sites.

Come and see the devastation of our bush -through fire and now flood.

Come and see the cars washed out to sea

Come and see the folk grabbing their toddlers and fleeing their tents

as the water

rises.

Imagine if this had happened at night,

while people were sleeping.

( actually slow down and imagine that, for just a moment, imagine the nighttime flood, the river breaking, the water rushing in through the zipped up tent, feel the cold dread of this thought rushing up your legs and pooling in your stomach, now shake that off and galvanise your rage )

Humans are

actually

remarkable-

if we want to be.

We can turn this around.

Maybe not completely- but enough.

I go up to the couple to say goodnight

She says:

We hold hands in the paddock too

We’ve been holding hands since I was 16.

And we won’t let go.

I go outside and look up into the inky black and smoke filled sky,

there is rain in the air and it smells

like a campfire.

I feel weirdly patriotic,

loving all these sleeping people and loving Country

and then I drive back home,

into the dark.