I am a priest and the vicar of the Anglican parishes of St George the Martyr,
Queenscliff and St James, Point Lonsdale in the Diocese of Melbourne,
Australia.
My
spiritual awakening and life in Christ began in the early 1970s when travelling
in S.E. Asia. The ensuing desire to be a minister of the gospel has, from
the very beginning, been accompanied a deep desire for and call to
prayer. I will be forever grateful to the Anglican Franciscans who,
during the 1970s, by the example of their own practice, introduced me to the
mystical traditions of the church. These living traditions have sustained me
over the decades and for 10 years, 1984 to 1994, I had the great privilege of
being a member of the monastic community of Tarrawarra in the Yarra Valley.
Now,
after 40 years of spiritual practice which has been nourished by these great
living traditions I am
convinced that a contemplative stance in life is not an idiosyncratic optional
extra for a few odd people like myself but is simply ordinary Christianity,
with Our Lord being the great exemplar. My current hero of the
contemplative stance is St Paul who is often miscast as primarily a
thinker/systematic theologian but whose words and actions always come directly
from the abiding consciousness of his union with God in Christ in the depths of
his own subjectivity.
I believe that all Christians need this dimension of life opened up so that once again it
becomes part of normative Christianity.
These days it is sometimes
described as a journey from living our lives predominantly in ‘the head’ to
living in and from ‘the heart’ – without leaving the mind behind. St Paul
being a wonderful example of this.
This
insight informs my life and ministry.
Since being ordained in 1981, as well as my years as a monk, there have been 15 years in parish
ministry and 6 years as Senior Anglican Prison Chaplain leading a state wide
team of 13 Chaplains during the time when the older prisons, including
Pentridge Prison, were closed and the new generation of private prisons was opened.
My
lifelong interest in and association with traditions of spiritual practice within other faiths
has led to greater involvement in the inter-faith scene and I was a founding
member of the Geelong Interfaith Network in 2003 of which I am still an active
member.
