Bushfire Community Service

A Homily preached by Bishop Brian Farran at the Community Service in Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle for the victims of the Victorian Bushfires, Wednesday February 11th 2009.

We have all been horrified at the bushfire disaster that has engulfed Victoria. Our sense of horror has been compounded by the magnitude of this disaster, by the sudden ferocity of fires the like of which we have not previously experienced. Our empathy with the victims has been heightened by the visual scenes of whole scale devastation. And we have watched our national leaders, who have visited the devastated areas and met with those suffering give, way to their own emotions as they have reported to the Nation.

A national pall has been cast upon us by what has happened.

In the small tent towns that now act as refugee centres for the homeless in Victoria there is much time for reflection, for common care and support, for grieving and for realizing the magnitude of what has occurred. Our nation, like them, is in a period of prolonged and profound reflection.

This service tonight allows us to reflect too and to be more centred in our awareness of what others are enduring and on both the wonder and the cost of living in as harsh a land as Australia.

One cogent realization as we have viewed news footage of the fires and their aftermath is that Australia is by nature a land of bushfire.  Australians have a love affair with the Bush. Camping out at night and looking up at the myriad of stars does give an awesome yet gentle perspective of our minuteness within the totality of Creation. That experience is beautiful and tinged with romanticism whilst still underlining our personal fragility.

The experience of firestorms raging unpredictably through bush is a traumatizing experience of that same sense of vulnerability. We do live within forces of Nature that are no respecters of our humanity. This can be a difficult realization to accept for we have become accustomed to being able to control.

This immense tragedy is alerting us to new natural phenomena that were not predicted and thus people did not know that accustomed responses to bushfires would prove to be insufficient. Already bushfire experts have analyzed the unique conjunction of circumstances that gave rise to the volatility of last Saturday.

This is a new realization that will require through the Royal Commission that has been established much careful scrutiny so that future policies and practices for responding to firestorms take account of their nature, their intense heat and their ferocious speed.

Many more Australians will realize that living in the Bush will require changed habits of ecology. We will all be engaged in processes of reassessment in order to ensure that human activity does not contribute to potential carnage through fire.

A chief realization from this trauma is our natural sense of solidarity, that we are connected with one another, that the suffering of others affects us no matter the geographical distance. The Latin poet some years before Jesus Christ once wrote: I am a man; therefore nothing human is alien to me. That sentiment is gut-wrenchingly true now. We are all shocked by what has happened to other Australians and our hearts go out to them.

Within the darkness of this tragedy we have been encouraged by those who place themselves at risk fighting the fires. There will doubtless be heroic stories eventually told. However, it is the daily facing up to the fires by volunteer fire-fighters that expresses the altruism that so energizes and restores us. Our prayers tonight are also prayers of thanksgiving for those who serve the community in such self-giving ways.

One newspaper headline captured, I think, the psychological condition of our nation:  The Nation’s heartbreak: Australia has grief on its mind, but strength in its heart to endure.

We reflect on the contagion of grief and its power to trigger past grief experiences. Much understanding of the nature and process of grief is now available to us and we recognize that whenever we encounter massive grief, as with these devastating fires, grief about other losses can be reactivated in us. And grief is turbulent; it tosses us around, disorienting us, disconcerting us so that we are agitated by our lack of psychological balance.

Being aware of the emotional power of grief is important as we seek to recognize the depth of our reactions to what has happened to the people of Victoria. Grief is a form of healing, a means of letting go, of major transition, yet it lingers within us so that we never get over it; we learn gradually to live within it. And counselors and chaplains comforting the victims of these fires will at the appropriate moment help those whom they are attending to know what grief may be like for them.

All these reflections that I have alluded to combine to question us, to prompt us to reassess our life understanding, our priorities and our behaviours. These critical times are moments (strangely) of both danger and opportunity. We have all sensed the dangers, now we will move into a period of discerning opportunities.

This reflective service provides an opportunity to attend deeply to how we feel, we recognize and understand our feelings and not to run from them or deny them. We are given too in this holy space an opportunity to reflect on our priorities and values, to make decisions about them, but more especially to sense in the mystery of prayer our inter-connections with others (even unnamed others) with God’s compassion and embrace. Prayer does mystically enable channels of God’s love to others.

And most of all we can reflect on how we are all bound together in this bundle of life . That is a biblical phrase that helps us to appreciate our natural human solidarity but all to realize that religion is what ties those bundles together. The very origin of the word ‘religio’ (ties) enables us to sense religion’s supportive function.

I hope that tonight our compassion will be deepened, our solidarity with fellow Australians in Victoria will be strengthened and that our prayers will envelop them with a felt sense of God’s love and compassion as they move to rebuild their lives and to deal with their grievous losses.